7 Key Things for Word of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth is the oldest form of marketing that exists. If you think about it, 500 years ago there wasn’t a lot else to spread the word when you had a great product with great service. There was no mass marketing that would allow your adoring fans to “like” you in a nanosecond of your latest post about your new Version 3.2 wagon wheel.

So how do you get people talking about you and your stuff?

To get people talking about your business, you have to give them a reason to talk. You also have to make it easy for that conversation to take place. Ultimately word of mouth is consumer to consumer marketing (A business still consumes goods so still works the same). There has always been word of mouth, and providing great service creates organic word of mouth. But word of mouth marketing can use specific existing conversations and amplify them.

So where do you start?

1. Be interesting to your customers.

Who wants to talk about boring companies that do boring things? You have to do something special to get people talking about you. If you are contemplating doing something, ask yourself: Would anyone tell a friend about this? Don’t forget, a seemingly mundane product can be enhanced with amazing service.

 2. Make it easy for everyone

You need to find a very simple message and then help it along. If your message is longer than a sentence, the message will end up getting jumbled and confused, a bit like Chinese whispers. If you take for example, “they hand out chocolate fish while you wait”, is a simple message that friends will pass along easily. 

1. Make people happy

A happy customer is your greatest advertiser. Make the experience remarkable through amazing products, unbelievable customer service or fixing problems like no-one else does. Make sure the work you do gets people energised and thrilled by what they have experienced then they will be keen to tell a friend. 

1. You have to earn trust and respect

This means you need to be consistent with what you do. You can’t create great buzz today only to let down people tomorrow. When someone tells a friend but the friend doesn’t get the same great service or product then everything stops. 

1. Have stuff to share

Sometimes when you are business to business you don’t have customers in a show room, everything is done online or on the phone. So how does your company make it easy to for word of mouth to happen? Give them stuff to share, whether that be some stickers, coupons to share or flyers in a carton of shipped widgets. Make it easy to share online with specially prepared emails for your talkers to be able to forward to others. 

1. Thank people

People love to receive recognition. Thank people personally via handwritten cards and the appreciation they show is amazing as it happens so infrequently. People have put the thank you cards I have sent them on their desk for everyone to see because they thought it was so special. Those people become raving fans. You can also thank people publicly for spreading the word, mention your top talkers or referrers on your website. 

1. Be Authentic

Success comes from what you deliver not from what you advertise. Make sure that the passions that drive you and your company are genuine. People will soon pick up on the fact that you are not genuine or if the product doesn’t match the hype and then negative word of mouth will kick in. 

I would love to hear some positive word of mouth success stories.

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