Finding new approaches to generate ecommerce sales is getting difficult.
Competition is fierce. What’s more, simply having a presence and a decent looking web store is no longer enough to make you stand out.
Winning these days requires strategy and squeezing the most out of each opportunity.
But there’s one incredible area that tends to get dismissed by ecommerce businesses: Word of mouth marketing (or WOMM).
What is Word of Mouth Marketing?
Word of mouth marketing (WOMM), additionally called word of mouth advertising, is the social media era’s version of simple word of mouth.
- Traditionally, word of mouth marketing was spread from one individual to another depending on the recommendation.
- Modern word of mouth marketing shows both targeted efforts and naturally occurring examples where users share their satisfaction with a brand.
In today’s hyper-connected world, a single suggestion can have a far greater impact – leading to word of mouth advertising strategies or word of mouth marketing (WOMM) to capitalize on the opportunity.
Many best marketing tactics and practices empower natural word of mouth, yet campaigns — especially on social media — can have the explicit purpose of promoting an online business’ social exposure.
As per Nielsen, almost 92% of people trust recommendations from family and friends over any other type of advertising. Indeed, even academic research into WOMM has demonstrated its effectiveness in conversion.
Why Care About Word of Mouth Marketing?
Tactics such as setting up a cool social media ad or testing with AI in ecommerce may sound more exciting.
The Advantages of Word of Mouth Marketing:
- Grow sales without the ad spend: Many brands from The Hustle to Bangs Shoes and more use word of mouth marketing rather advertising spend to boost sales and fanbase.
- Build a community, not a commodity: Word of mouth marketing works to build an engaged fan base rather than a purchase and bolt customer. Higher engaged customers purchase more frequently and prescribe their friends more often, extended your return on time spent on the strategy and producing high customer lifetime loyalty.
In fact, there are three significant factors a quality WOM marketing tactic can affect:
Brand trust
HubSpot shows that 75% of individuals don’t accept adverts, yet 90% trust recommendations from friends and family and 70% trust consumer feedbacks.
Word of mouth marketing implies your brand is being recommended in the most trustworthy context conceivable. What’s more, first-time browsers are more liable to take that crucial extra step of giving over their payment details.
Creating a buzz
It’s incredible to have ad spending plans and perfect sales funnels. But the best way to create an authentic buzz about your brand is to have impartial people yelling about you in the media and on social networks.
Also, a good word of mouth marketing strategy seriously increases the probability of this happening.
Brand loyalty
As per the National Law Review, it can cost multiple times more to get a new customer than keep a current one.
And Bain and Co estimate that a 5% expansion in client maintenance can help an organization’s benefit by 75%.
Amazing Ideas For Building Your Word of Mouth Marketing Strategy
Creating an epic experience for customers is some of the time enough to get some of them shouting about you and suggesting others.
You have to move away from trusting people enlighten their friends about you. Also, towards explicit strategies that actively urge people to refer.
Let’s take a look at a few ideas to help you build your WOMM strategy:
Set up word of mouth triggers
The thing that makes your business stand out from any other in your industry. This implies giving your customers something memorable. An experience, feeling, or thought they can’t go anywhere else.
Also, they’re left being almost forced to discuss you with others.
Use visual triggers
Disney works superbly of this with their theme parks. They create a stunning visual experience that individuals simply want to take photos of and share with other people.
But this can be somewhat trickier to create when it comes to ecommerce.
You could make a website so stunning and unique that people simply need to share it. But navigation, conversions, and ease-of-use ought to always be your first point of call.
IKEA is an extraordinary example of a brand utilizing a visual trigger to make word of mouth.
Emotional provocation
Taking advantage of people’s emotions can be extremely powerful for generating shares and getting people to discuss your business.
This can be done by taking something you have confidence in and tying your company brand closely to it on your social commerce networks, and anywhere you can.
Push ratings and reviews hard
Not every person is going to refer dozens of family and friends. Yet, that doesn’t mean they didn’t love their experience. Undoubtedly doesn’t mean you can’t utilize their review to convince others to buy.
As per BrightLocal’s 2017 Customer Review Survey:
- More than 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal suggestions
- Consumers read an average of 7 reviews before confiding a business – up from six the earlier year.
So feedback and word of mouth from your existing customers are important.
WOMM Executive Summary
Word of mouth marketing and advertising can be a fantastically solid player in growing your retail business.
However, it’s imperative to start with the essentials.
It doesn’t make a difference how many marketing consultants you hire, or new age growth hacks you attempt. If you can’t give a quality experience for customers and run a tight operation then you’ll miss the mark incidentally.
Get this right first and then utilize the strategies in this post to continue multiplying your happy customer base again and again.
