When a business, product or service is good, people start to recommend it freely to others because they have themselves benefited from it. This sort of marketing does not cost anything and since people selflessly and without asking for it, recommend it to their connections, this becomes the ultimate form of marketing.
However, just like anything else in life, good things don’t come to you naturally, they have to be built and gained. Here, we are going to discuss several ways in which we can boost this word of mouth marketing to our benefit and make the best of it.
Here are the top 11 Tips to Get Started with Word of Mouth Marketing.
1. Let users add content – The best way to get your customers and users to interact and get involved with your product and community is to let them add their voice. Be it social media, blog comments, forum sections, if you allow your customers to add content, they will get more involved and eventually promote the same on social media.
You can make quizzes; surveys etc. to get more feedback from your customers, but this can be taken a step forward by getting some creative media built for the sole purpose of user feedback. This can be in the form of mobile games which are both interesting to play and one can get good insights from the customers as well.
2. Testimonials – Users can give reviews and testimonials anywhere, it can be on your social media pages, direct emails, on social updates or even on review sites. Keep an eye open for these testimonials and whenever you find these, make sure to pull them on to your testimonial page and other section of your website so that others can easily check them out.
Getting organic testimonials and reviews are great but even if it is happening naturally, one should keep pushing their customers and users to give more feedback. These reviews are your digital assets and you should do whatever you can to get more of these feedbacks.
3. Incentivize Referrals – There are several ways to do it and the easiest way is to integrate a third party system for tracking referrals and then based on how many paid customers a user has referred, set some kind of rewards which can be both cash or some form of credits.
This is pretty easy to do with a custom referral link; all the user needs to do is to actively promote your stuff with his personalized referral link. The system will do the rest of the tracking and if the user is able to convert some paid users then he will be able to get something back.
4. Invest in your product – If you are the best in your niche then people will automatically promote and support you. This is the true form of word of mouth marketing, but for it to happen, one needs to keep working on their product and make sure that none in your niche is better than what you have to offer.
5. Ask for ratings – Always ask your customers to give you 5 star ratings and once someone does that, give the customer links to a number of places like Yelp, Facebook etc. where the user can post the same 5 start ratings everywhere. It is always better to get these ratings on-site, so that the customers are safe to be presented with star ratings on 3rd party sites.
6. Use the News – Any current incident, especially if it is emotional or it is on your niche, then use it to your advantage. Try to align your product along those lines and build emotional connection and get the maximum benefit of the News item.
7. Use Influencer Marketing – Influencers are people with more followers or they have a greater reach on a specific niche. Whichever way you put it, an influencer can spread your message or product faster than normal people. If several of these influencers start to recommend your product then very soon the word of mouth marketing will spread like wild fire.
People value an influencer’s words more than normal people. This way, a positive recommendation from an influencer will propel your business like wildfire.
8. Use Social Media to your advantage – Social media isn’t all about posting well timed content and pushing it with the power of PPC. Real social media success requires a following that is strong and loyal. If there’s people on your profile that is loyal to you and are ready to share your content and stuff without questioning, then you are already cooking a winning recipe.
Start working on your social community, build it slowly and in time you will have a loyal following. If you keep valuing this community then overtime word of marketing will happen naturally because of your followers.
9. Allow people to talk freely – A community often fails because of stopping and moderating content and members. Give your community more freedom and let them say things straight from their hearts, even if it is negative, don’t remove them.
The best way to block and fight a negative comment or feedback is to respond to it right away and fix the problem.
10. Beta Testers – One of the easiest ways to make sure that you have enough people to wait for your launch is to have them try out your beta program. This way there will be people ready to test your new stuff and give feedback, after that they will share their feedback which you can further share on the social media and push the word of mouth marketing further.
These same testers will create the buzz around your launch date and talk good things about it since they have got the early access for which they are always thankful.
11. Free Features – If you have a free option on your signup check-list, no matter how limited the free version is, people are still going to use it. If it does serve its purpose then, even a really limited version and feature can work out. This way, the users will sign up and use the free version and promote it with the word of mouth marketing. This can be in the form of social media sharing and recommendation, perhaps even as a requirement to use the free version. Furthermore, several users will sign up for the paid plans eventually, making the whole process a success.
The best way to gain word of mouth marketing is to work on customer happiness and satisfaction. If your product is truly worth it, it will get word of mouth recommendations eventually.