When you’re creating your marketing strategy, especially as we come into a new year… a customer journey is SO important. The way a consumer is looked after and treated throughout their experience with your brand is absolute key. If they love you, they’ll want to talk about you and recommend you to others. And that is the result we are looking for. Have you heard of word of mouth marketing?
As a business owner, you can spend so much [wasted] time creating content after content, scheduling up your social media channels, creating free content or giveaways, and everything else in between – but if it is not noticed, this is wasted time and resource.
A strategy holds the key to creating content and an audience that will love your brand.
Lots of small business owners, start-ups and anyone who doesn’t necessarily understand marketing thoroughly can struggle because they lack direction, knowledge and wisdom. But with a little steering and guidance this can change dramatically and amazing outcomes can be born.
Money can be poured into advertising campaigns, staff, experts and more – but for someone starting out, a good business plan is to utilise the most cost-effective strategy there is… word of mouth marketing.
What is word of mouth marketing?
WOMM is not a new thing, in fact it is the most original and basic strategy we have, and also the most effective, but not many focus their efforts on it.
Word of mouth marketing relies on customers sharing their experiences and recommendations with their networks, friends and family. They are bringing their own feelings and thoughts to the table and giving people an opportunity to trust their views. An extremely powerful process – and one that when done correctly, can impact massively.
And the facts speak for themselves; according to Nielson, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. WOW!
How can we utilise word of mouth marketing?
We can stop thinking about our needs and what we need to achieve and start to connect with people on their level.
Engage: Drawing people into conversations, understanding their pain points and creating relationships and rapport that can be nurtured and developed.
Solutions: Providing the solutions to what people are looking for and understanding what would work for them. Empower them with the answers that makes sense.
Emotion: Everything has an emotional value. If you can trigger an emotion in a consumer, you can start to relate and bring them on a journey.
Influential marketing
WOMM has influence and can trigger the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ of anyone’s decision making process. Its powerful effectiveness is often not known to outsiders, however, when you can take hold of this, and incorporate it into your business and marketing plans, you’ll see big results.
How can you influence the people you want to work with, or the types of people you want to love your brand?
Customer experience
Success with word of mouth marketing starts right at the beginning of a customer’s journey. Before they even know you exist.
You want to get to know your ideal customer [persona], understand what they are looking for, how they engage, who they talk to, where they hang out, what their pain point is, what would be the ideal solution, their budgets, their lifestyle, their demographics… research.
You also want to know what attracts, what looks good, what sounds good, styles, colours, feelings, what brands do they already engage with – this all play a part in the process.
When you have all the information you need, you can formulate a plan of action incorporating all these aspects, making sure you tick every box. When your ideal customer comes along, they will be attracted to your message and want to find out more. Their journey has begun…
Bring them through a process. Not many people will buy on the first message. They need to know, like and trust you. They will want to see proof that you are legit and when they get to a point where they trust you, they’ll start engaging with the things you say.
The more you can nurture and build a relationship, the better your chances of winning that customer.
That customer will then be happy to share their experience with others. When family members ask, when a friend is looking, a recommendation can be a powerful action.
If you’ve fallen down within the process, that review may be tainted, so it is essential that everything part of their journey is 100% good.
Have you experienced word of mouth marketing in your business and has it helped push your brand forward?
If you’re looking for exceptional results in your business marketing and would like to make the most of WOMM, we’d love to chat with you and get you started. Get in touch today, and let’s talk.
