To get word-of-mouth referrals, you provide a great buying experience, a quality product, and customer-centric service. (Quite a feat!) After that positive experience, your customer is likely to return and say good things about your company to friends. This is organic word-of-mouth advertising. Seize every opportunity to increase valuable referrals with strategies that amplify and accelerate your word-of-mouth marketing. Paid advertising and sales funnels can work for you, but nothing works as well as genuine buzz by impartial people sharing about you in the media and on social networks.
If you already have a fair amount of word-of-mouth business, a marketing strategy in this area will be even more successful. Sadly, although word-of-mouth is the number one way people make purchase decisions, only a third of businesses actively work to improve their W.O.M. referrals.
How do you encourage customers to shout out about your business or product?
- Set up Word of Mouth Triggers. These can include automated email or text requests for referrals with or without incentives and invitations to perks for brand ambassadors.
- Set up Visual Triggers for referrals and reviews on your website, follow-up communications, and at the point of sale.
- Create Something Unique. (I feel your stress about this!) If your product has a unique twist, it is more likely to be shared and discussed. Look at what other companies have done, and find an adaptation that works for your company and product. It could be something totally opposite the rest of your industry.
- Tap Into Emotions. This can be achieved by attaching your company to a cause you believe in, or drawing on the emotional impact your product has through stories.
- Encourage User-Generated Content. Content created by your customers and followers can be more engaging and sharable than company updates and photos. You can encourage it with contests or incentives.
- Push Ratings and Reviews. Collect and display your reviews prominently! Why? Consumers read an average of seven reviews before trusting a business, and 85% of consumers trust online reviews. Half of the consumers need at least a 4-star rating before they choose the business.
- Create an Official Referral Program to nudge consumers to introduce friends and family to your business. Rewards could include a discount on your next order, gift cards or cash for a certain number of referrals, and bonus gifts. Promote this program in a visible place and talk it up. Do your research before creating your bonus program. Look at data like your customer lifetime value and the cost to acquire a new client. It doesn’t make sense to give a $50 reward for a new customer who will only spend $25.
- Consider Influencer Marketing. Recruit influencers to support your product. This is a whole topic by itself. Fortunately, we have another article on influencer marketing.
For more details and examples, see Big Commerce blog’s article Word of Mouth Marketing in 2022. more details and examples.
