What is word of mouth marketing

New methods of word-of-mouth marketing

Word of mouth marketing is the topic of this article from Keyupseo blog and we will explain its new methods along with examples.

Marketing has different methods, but we want to teach you marketing through talking or word of mouth marketing.

According to information published by Nielsen website, 92% of consumers trust the word of friends and family over any other advertisements. Therefore, a large number of consumers are convinced by the words of acquaintances to use a product or service.

As you know, many businesses today are influenced by word of mouth marketing.

The praise and praise of users has been useful for a large number of them, of course, the complaints and complaints of users also lead them to fall.

With the help of marketing methods, you will attract more users and by improving SEO and growing the site's position in Google, you will see Increase the Organic traffic site.

In the rest of this article, we will talk about this marketing method and we will try to explain all its strategies and methods.

What is word of mouth marketing?

Word of mouth marketing can be compared to friendly chats. In this friendly talk, the products, services or other things seen from the business are talked about. But if no one is familiar with your business, you cannot benefit from the power of such a method.

This is where the benefit of advertising becomes clear. Businesses need to use advertising for their development and progress, and they spend a lot of money for this. Of course, other materials can increase positive talk about the brand.

For example, this marketing method can be in the form of creating a topic that can be discussed and make people eager to participate in it. As you know, this method is applicable both in the virtual space and in the real space of our lives. In social networks, questions and answers are created every day.

The value of your service should be so high that the user will use his credit to introduce it to his friends and acquaintances.

Word of mouth advertising can go beyond expectations and these words are really effective. Marketers who work in this field consider situations such as increasing traffic, methods of increasing sales, and several other items.

Since when has word of mouth marketing been used?

According to Wikipedia documents, George Silverman (psychologist) created the word-of-mouth marketing initiative to engage physicians about new drug products. He called these influential groups "remote peers".

Dr. Silverman came up with an interesting clue in the discussions of doctors (in the 1970s). One or more doctors who had good experiences with a drug influenced a group of pessimists with their words.

Also, they were able to influence people who had a negative experience with the drug in the past.

Today, this type of advertising is used almost everywhere, such as social networks, friendly conversations in the club, at work, in the subway, etc. Topics that may be mostly unimportant to people, but can take a brand to the top. These things can be known as one of the main methods for branding.

What is the effect of word of mouth advertising?

Word-of-mouth marketing increases users' sense of trust in a product or service. If a customer praises the brand's services, it can definitely increase the number of customers of that business. Let me give you an example to understand the effect of word of mouth advertising.

People who have read the book you want, without any profit to them, give their opinion without compliments. These conversations can have the greatest possible impact on the buyer's decision.

Or consider a person who can't decide between 3 products HP, Acer and Asus. In this situation, the advice of a friend can definitely help a person to make a decision. For example, if your friend has used an HP laptop and is satisfied with it, his recommendation can influence your purchase.

Now you know that people's words can create a sense of trust in others. If your most trusted friend praises the services of a company, this issue can influence your mind to use the services of that company.

A strong word-of-mouth strategy at the heart of the business can lay the foundation for growth.

Word of mouth marketing always works and never goes out of style. This is the best way to encourage people to choose brands.

How does word of mouth advertising help business growth?

• Business growth without advertising costs: Many businesses use word-of-mouth advertising instead of paying for internet advertising, etc.

• Building a community: Word of mouth marketing focuses on building fans of the business rather than just introducing buyers to the business. In this situation, customers buy with more enthusiasm and introduce the business to their friends. Also, business efficiency increases during the time spent on creating strategy and customer loyalty.

In fact, the benefits of word of mouth advertising are summarized in 3 options, which we will discuss below.

1- Increasing brand loyalty

According to extensive research by researchers, attracting a new customer can cost five times more than retaining existing customers. Bain & Co. estimated that a 5% retention activity can increase a company's profitability by 75%.

Users talking positively about the brand can significantly make customers use the services or products of that brand again. Undoubtedly, this can increase people's loyalty to the brand; Of course, if they get good experience.

2- People's trust in the brand increases

"Hubspot" believes that 75% of people do not believe all kinds of advertisements. He also mentioned that 90% of people trust the recommendations of family and friends and 70% of consumers believe in the opinions of users.

In fact, people trust friends, family and even strangers more than advertisements.

This is a pure truth!

Word-of-mouth advertising ensures that the target brand is recommended to people in the most authentic context possible.

3- Making noise!

Allocating budgets for various advertisements is great. In fact, these things create a buzz for your brand so that people interested in your services or products are persuaded to use them.

A good word of mouth marketing strategy is likely to increase this greatly. Impress the potential customer and may even turn the business into a big brand.

This is what Bamilo online store did with the Friday auction or Black Friday. This campaign created so much noise that countless users became aware of it.

Therefore, creating quality and suitable services or products can create a strong buzz for your brand.

Ideas for building a word-of-mouth marketing strategy

As you've figured out by now, building a great experience for consumers can increase the chances that a few of them will talk about you. These positive comments can be considered the foundations of business.

Although building a word-of-mouth marketing strategy requires more activities. It's better to get people to talk about you than to hope they will. Develop a strategy that encourages people to participate.

Let's explore some strategies together.

1- Create word of mouth agents

Word-of-mouth factors are factors that you determine yourself in the strategy.

This is the event that can make your business unique compared to your competitors in the market. It means giving consumers something memorable.

An experience, or a feeling they can't have anywhere else. So that they are encouraged to talk about your brand well with others. Even an attractive packaging can provide a good experience to users.

2- Using visual stimuli

Visual or visual stimuli will have a great impact on the interaction of people with the business you have created.

But when it comes to making money from these stimuli, the matter becomes a little more complicated.

You can do something by designing a unique and attractive website for users to share it with their friends. It is very important that the site is easy to use.

3- Create a unique product or service

Creating a different product or service is one of the ways people talk about the business you've created.

All businesses that have been able to achieve great success have introduced a solution to people's problems. For example, Elon Musk made it possible for drivers to sleep safely behind the wheel and also clean the air in the city. Steve Jobs made it easier for people to use their mobile phones with the release of the iPhone.

Of course, a unique product or service doesn't always mean creating something that doesn't exist. You may do business in a different way than others. Or you are selling an old product in a completely new way.

4- Stimulating consumers' emotions

Stimulating customers' emotions can be one of the most important word-of-mouth marketing strategies. Doing this can get people to share your activity and talk about the business.

This is what the Tomaz Shoes brand has done:

In the business model of this brand, a campaign named "one for one" has been created. For every pair of shoes he sells, he donates a pair of shoes to people in need.

With this, Tom's Shoes was able to create a name for its business. Because the feeling of participating in a bigger movement was an important factor that made consumers buy from this brand. This brand earned seven hundred million dollars in sales in less than 10 years.

You can do this with what you believe and connecting it with your business on social networks, website and other spaces.

5- Encourage users to create content

Content is not limited to a few articles on websites or newspapers. Currently, visual content (photos and infographics), video content, audio content (music and podcasts), e-books, e-courses and many others are used.

Content generated by users, customers or company followers can be very powerful.

This will bring satisfaction to users and create a high chance that they will talk about the business with their friends and acquaintances.

6- Send free products to consumers

One of the best word of mouth marketing strategies is to distribute your products to consumers for free. They will be very happy about this and will undoubtedly talk about your brand.

So if you can provide your product or service to users for free, don't hesitate to do so. They will definitely respond to your benevolent gesture.

7- Encouraging users to post comments

Chances are, not everyone will talk about the brand with their friends or family; But it does not mean that they had a bad experience.

It also doesn't mean you can't use their valuable feedback to convince others to buy.

Now you know that getting customer feedback is vital. This is what big companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. do.

If someone is interested in talking about your business, make sure everyone knows about it.

Our advice is to encourage users to give their opinion about your products, services and brand. It is also great to use things like discount code, bonus, etc. to encourage customers.

The presence of user comments on different pages is also considered a great word-of-mouth marketing for potential buyers and can encourage other people to express their opinion. We recommend that you respond even to negative comments. They can be an opportunity to attract the attention of potential customers.

8- Create a formal referral program

Creating a referral program alone cannot provide a good customer experience. But if you can reward users systematically, you have taken a big step to introduce your business to others.

So encouraging users without bothering them can act as a game changer in a referral program. Rewards can be as follows:

• Discount for next purchase or first purchase

• Donating a certain amount within the program

• Direct payment to referrals

•        And …

9- Getting to know customers based on statistics and figures

An important thing to consider when creating a word-of-mouth marketing strategy is complete customer information. Especially the average value of each of them.

By getting the numbers related to the customers, you can choose the amount of the bonus cost to them correctly.

For example, in its early days, PayPal paid $10 to people who encouraged their friends to create accounts in the system. This is something that few businesses are willing to do.

But PayPal had calculated the average amount of customers and a few years later it achieved sales of more than 1.5 billion dollars. Today, Paypal has become the first choice for recharges, purchases and many other things.

E-commerce expert William Harris says:

Word of mouth marketing is undoubtedly the most important marketing tactic for any business.

Companies that have gained the most impact from word-of-mouth marketing

1- Pinterest

Pinterest is a social network that thrives on user-generated content. The success of this company depends on users to create Pins or Boards.

The main question is, how did Pinterest go from 3000 users in 2010 to more than 460 million users in 2020?

Its founder, Ben Silberman, approached the site's small but passionate audience to plan a campaign. As you can imagine, the little group really loved it; So Silberman arranged several meetings to get their feedback.

It showed each and every one of them that the Pinterest team is serious about creating a better site and community. Pinterest used this program to run one of the most successful referral programs in history. "Pin It Forward" was a campaign that encouraged users to create a new Pinboard and invite their friends to do the same.

These images were interesting for people to join the social network and gave them a preview of what they could do.

2- Threadless company

Growing a community is a valuable way to gain insight into your audience; While doing this, you will increase your brand's fans. Threadless is a t-shirt company that did just that by bringing graphic enthusiasts and art fans together to make, share, and buy custom products.

This company was created in 2000 and gained more than 10,000 members in 2 years of its operation. The amount received by this company reached more than 6.5 million dollars in less than 4 years.

The company created ongoing contests and challenges for its fans that helped designers hone their skills. The Threadless team realized they were open to a creative and energetic audience. The company promoted user-generated content as much as possible.

From turning t-shirt designs into custom cakes to hosting war themes! and displayed them. In this way, people were happy to accept their designs and suggested the site to more people.

3- Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has gone through many ups and downs and still managed to be at the top of the beverage chain for some reason. The company has a knack for surprising people and spreading well-intentioned, multicultural messages.

In 2012, this company installed "Happiness Machines" in many countries of the world. Customers looking for a cool drink can get a free Coca-Cola in exchange for hugging the machine, dancing, etc.

In another "Happiness" campaign, Coke created kiosks to allow workers to use soda bottle caps to call their families instead of change.

Recently, the Coca-Cola Company revived its sales in 70 countries by using "Share a Coke". Popular and widely used names were printed on Coke bottles, and consumers were eager to buy more drinks to see their or their friends' names on the bottle.

To make this campaign more effective, Coca created a hashtag. So the power of social networks increased people's purchases and allowed them to share interesting pictures of these soft drinks with others.

4- Dropbox

Not all companies can make money using Coca-Cola's word-of-mouth marketing method. Smaller businesses can focus on smaller incentives such as discounts, gift cards or key product features.

Dropbox focused on free storage referrals. When users were new to the cloud, Dropbox provided a useful service. The company offered 500 MB of additional storage space to new customers and people who joined Dropbox by referral.

Customers can get more cloud space by introducing more people, which increases their loyalty. Referral features gave people a compelling reason to choose Dropbox over their competitors.

5- Casper Mattress Company

When a product is different and priced more expensive than the market standard, there is some imagination to reach consumers. Casper entered the crowded mattress market with an irresistible proposition and a $1,000 product.

Their motto was: Take a mattress home and sleep on it for 100 days before deciding whether to return it! Who can not welcome such an offer that includes home delivery? Additionally, offering a long trial period takes away the big fear of buying a high-end mattress.

Customers had plenty of time to review the mattress for comfort and durability. Most importantly, customers had a tangible product in their homes that they could show off to others.

At the time of Casper's activity, detailed advertisements were also carried out on social media. In the whole of this strategy, a significant noise was created so that the company could find a good position in the field of competition.

As you know, many companies have achieved great success through word of mouth marketing. We introduced only 5 examples of the biggest ones.

Our recommendation for word of mouth advertising

Word of mouth advertising can be known as the strongest foundation for the growth of any business. But our advice is to start this work in principle.

Doing this in a principled way will increase site visits and boost your online business.

If you can't provide a unique and quality experience for customers, you will fail in the long way to attract customers.

Our advice is not to enter this marketing method with low cost and before you want to use different strategies, make sure you have enough budget to do it.

Be careful that you never annoy users with your poor services or products. You may think you've lost just one user, but the issue is deeper than you think. That user may have thousands of followers on one of their social networks. His negative words about your business can have a significant impact.

Big start-ups have emerged in Iran, but unfortunately, many of them don't care about their users after growing. My intention here is not to criticize the brands, I am just recounting the facts spread on social networks and friendly conversations of people.

Be sure to use the solutions and examples on this page to make your customers happier than before.