Word-of-mouth marketing is one of the most powerful types of marketing there is, and a focus on this type of marketing should definitely be in every business's digital marketing strategy. If someone hears about your business straight from the mouth of someone they know or better yet, someone they trust, they're all but guaranteed to become a customer the next time they need your product or service.
That is just how influential word-of-mouth marketing can be and why you should strive to include a strategy for this within your marketing.
How do you create a strategy to get people talking about your business? You can't very well place your business's name inside of people's mouths. People have to talk about your business of their own accord.
You have to make that happen by making your business stand out. Go above and beyond in all areas, especially customer service and marketing campaign creativity. Let's go over a few different tactics to help you get the word out about your business a little more, and get people talking -- in a good way.
1. User-Generated Content (UGC)
The first and simplest way to get people buzzing about your business online is by encouraging customers to share user-generated content. Create a hashtag for your brand that customers can use when sharing photos of your product, and browse through various photos in order to use some within your own social media content.
The potential of being featured on your brand's platform will get people even more excited to share UGC. Their friends and followers will see what they've shared and become interested in your business. Perhaps they'll also follow you, get swooped up by your sales funnel, and eventually become a customer. Regardless, they've now heard of your business.
If you have a visually appealing product that people like to take pictures of, you absolutely need to have a UGC strategy in place for your brand. Create a hashtag, share UGC on your social accounts, and thank every person who uses your hashtag or tags your business in a photo/post.
2. Go above and beyond with your customer experience.
If your business creates a unique, shareworthy experience with every customer, guess what? That experience is going to be shared with their friends and family. Make sure that every team member is on the same page with this. One bad apple can ruin your business's reputation.
If you mail out products, what can you include within your packages to brighten up someone's day, and make them even more excited to order from your business again? If your business is service-based, how can you ensure your customer reps regularly give out 110 percent to every customer they with whom they come into contact? What can you do for your clients that will make them go, "Wow, this is incredible. I can't wait to tell someone about this."
Creating a unique experience that makes someone's day is going to be the best way to get them talking about your business. "All press is good press" does not ring true when it comes to word-of-mouth marketing. You want only good press, and you can start by offering something incredible to your clients and customers.
3. Run truly creative marketing campaigns.
Another great way to get people talking about your business is to get extremely creative with marketing content and advertising campaigns. Do something to really make your business stand out. Whether you dominate a new medium, run a clever video ad series campaign on Facebook, or whatever your brilliant marketing team (or agency, ahem) can put together for your business, make it awesome. Get people talking.
You can put guerilla marketing and digital marketing together to generate some serious buzz around your business. It gets your business name out there, it gets potential customers discussing your awesome campaign, how cool they think it is, and how they can't wait to buy from your business.
If you can create a name for your business with your clever and creative marketing campaigns, you'll be able to go far. Good marketing is everything, and it spreads like gossip on a slow Sunday.
4. Test influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing is a great way to get your business and your product or service in front of more eyes. Working with influencers means you're partnering with people who have large followings on social media and offering them a free trial or a free product in exchange for a review and a post or two about your business.
This can be a great way to get the word out about your business and how awesome your products are. If you work with influencers who have large followings of your target audience, you can get some serious traction from a few good social media posts. Be sure your business understands the FTC guidelines and disclosure rules for working with influencers, and make sure the influencers you work with understand them as well. Every post needs to disclose that it's an ad or sponsored post with some kind of phrase or hashtag.
As long as everything is notated properly, influencer marketing can be another great strategy for increasing word-of-mouth around your business. Start searching on Instagram and other platforms for influencers who match your niche to see if you can partner with them.
Word-of-mouth marketing is an extremely compelling form of marketing, and whatever you can do to increase the positive buzz about your business, you should do. Buzz and hype can turn into customers, which in turn grows your business. Sit down with your marketing team or agency to determine how you can get more and more people talking about you. If you're interested in learning more about how we can help, contact us today!
Written By: Doug Milnor
