Have you ever made a purchase for a product that someone recommended you or when you heard good words about it for customers?
If you have then, you have been influenced by the positive word of mouth that influenced your purchase decision and there are many reasons for that which we will discuss in the blog.
In this digital age, Believe it or not, but the word of mouth is a huge aspect of marketing especially in 2020. So, let’s get a better understanding of the digital word of mouth marketing.
What is Digital Word Of Mouth Marketing?
We know word of mouth is a marketing context is anything that existing customers or general audience says about a product/brand based on their experience, knowledge, reviews, feedback, opinion, etc.
Similarly, Digital word of mouth marketing is when users share their product/brand experience on digital platforms in the form of user-generated content like reviews, images, videos, etc.
As the digital influence rises, people are resorting to digital platforms especially social media to find, explore, evaluate, learn, and shop. Unlike offline, digital marketing requires to build trust & engagement to get conversions & brand growth.
And the digital word of mouth marketing plays a huge role in helping consumers and brands in generating valuable outcomes.
Why The Word Of Mouth Marketing Is Important?
Word of mouth is rated highly by brands and marketers as it presents vast opportunities for long-term brand building.
- Highlight Brand loyalty
Positive word of mouth is nothing but your customers speaking highly of your products or the brand as they have had a great experience with you. So, this highlights to your audience how loyal your customers are.
Brand loyalty is a rare phenomenon these days due to high competition & investments. Therefore, it becomes more valuable to show brand loyalty in your marketing and word of mouth does that perfectly.
- Generate Brand Desirability
When people are talking good about your brand then it attracts the attention of those who are unaware or are not associated with your brand but might be your potential customers.
So, using digital word of mouth in your marketing creates brand desirability as the non-customers would want to associate them with your brand and join the community leading to increased conversions.
- Build Social Proof With UGC
Probably the most important benefits of digital word of mouth marketing i.e. gaining consumers’ trust by showcasing authenticity & reliability through the content of your existing customers.
User-generated content is the most trustworthy & authentic form of content available to the marketers that can help them hugely increase their engagement & conversions.
UGC is trusted by over 90% of the people to assist them in their digital purchase decisions along with the influence of about 10% increase in conversions.
- Free Of Cost Advertising
Word of mouth marketing is generally done voluntarily by the users with minimum efforts from brand to encourage users to share their experiences with their networks about the brand.
Even though it is highly influential and beneficial in marketing still digital word of mouth comes with no or minimal costs. This makes it a win-win situation for the marketers & the brand.
Also, it saves a lot of resources for the marketers in content creation and marketing strategies leading to an overall improvement in returns on investments.
- Magnified Brand Reach & Exposure
What is the primary goal that marketers look to achieve with their strategies? It is to reach a maximum number of people and create greater brand awareness.
When users or customers share their positive outlooks about the products they use or brands they buy from on their social or digital profiles, it helps in expanding brand reach and exposure to a greater network that would not have been possible otherwise … that too organically.
- Increased Engagement & Interaction
Digital word of mouth helps exponentially in increasing user engagement and interaction especially on the social media platforms for example when a user posts their image with Nike shoes & appreciates it, this brings likes, comments, and shares from those who love Nike.
Similarly, brand-user engagement also increases when brands can respond to users’ positive word of mouth that will be an acknowledgment to the users where they will feel rewarded & motivate to engage further.
Brand-user interaction on social media also gives birth to motivated users who will start sharing their views & reviews.
- Boost Sales & Revenue
Finally, all the aforementioned reasons ultimately contribute to helping a brand in increasing its sales & revenue with positive digital word of mouth marketing.
As consumers want to buy from brands that they can trust and where the customers are happy & satisfied and positive word of mouth marketing showcases that perfectly.
When you create a journey for the consumer by forming trust then engagement and finally leading to conversions, it helps in maintaining long-term success for the brands with a higher customer retention rate.
Challenge With Word Of Mouth Marketing
- Negative Words
It is obvious that all the word of mouth about your brand won’t be positive. There will be negative reviews and feedback as well that you will need to acknowledge and manage carefully.
- Discovery & Collection
You might not be aware of the platforms where users have shared their positive UGC about you or how you can find it and even if you do then how can you collect the scattered word of mouth from digital media for your purpose.
How To Leverage Digital Word Of Mouth (WOM) In Your Marketing
Given the benefits and challenges, the best solution to leverage positive word of mouth is by using a UGC platform to discover and collect all the relevant and valuable word of mouth i.e. UGC from different digital platforms into a single place.
The UGC platform will help you in the curation of the collected content so where you can filter the irrelevant or negative elements to get a premium quality digital word of mouth.
Further, the platform will help you publish this WOM on any marketing channel be it events, websites, digital signages, outdoor advertising, in-store advertising, emails, social ads, etc.
For example – you can leverage the UGC platform to create a digital social media wall of positive word of mouth about your brand and display it in your events to engage the audience, create a buzz about your brand, encourage more WOM, and boost your brand growth.
Conclusion
Word of mouth marketing has a lot of potential in 2020 and to leverage this, you need a strategy to start from the base and move ahead with it. There are a lot of global brands that are leveraging their customers’ content in their marketing activities like coca-cola, GoPro, etc.
Therefore, it is time for you to get started with your digital word of mouth marketing strategy. A WOM strategy will ensure long-term success for your brand with consistent brand growth driven by your customers.
