Why is Word of Mouth Marketing so Important?

As marketers, we are always worried about marketing strategies to attract new audiences and gain more conversion. We often forget one of the most powerful marketing assets in our bag, our existing user pool.

Yes, we spend such large amounts on new marketing strategies and advertising neglecting the potential of what we already have.

Word-Of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is a strategy that can compete with a lot of marketing strategies and win single-handedly. Today we will be talking about WOMM in detail.

So let’s start!

Word-Of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM) – Explained

Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOMM) also known as Word-Of-Mouth Advertising refers to an interactive process of unpaid promotion by satisfied customers of a brand. Those satisfied customers tell other people about how much they like the products and services of the brand.

Traditionally, Word-Of-Mouth was a personal & face to face recommendation according to the user’s experience with a brand. The difference now is that social media has made word-of-mouth easier and more essential. Brands know that social media has the power to spur up their brand image by reaching a large audience faster.

Importance of WOMM

The most important aspect to build among the market is TRUST. If I have to sum-up Word-Of-Mouth Marketing in one word, it will be TRUST.

People trust their friends. This is the reason Word-Of-Mouth is so valuable, it can influence anyone to make purchases from your brand. 92% of people say that they trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. Therefore, that is the key to build trust among users.

This process doesn’t just stop with one interaction. The chain keeps on going on, one person tells another, that person will tell another and the process will keep going on. This can help expand the target audience and exposure of the brand to unimagined heights.

How is it different from referral marketing?

Now that you know what WOMM is at its basic, you understand that the more you interact with people, the better WOM will be followed. You can consider it as a snowball effect. You start with one person at the initial stage and slowly it keeps on building up on its own. For instance, a customer posts about your products on their social media, his followers see it and buy from your brand, then those people post, and the cycle keeps on running increasing the clientele and reliability of the brand.

Whereas when we talk about referral marketing, it focuses on targeting specific people personally so that they refer their friends and family. Referral marketing is a part of WOMM but it is a more enterprising way of creating a customer-base as you have to take care of the whole referral process and check on the conversions.

Instead of a social media shout, Referral marketing is more of a personal recommendation that is given personally to the targeted person.

How to plan your WOMM Strategy?

Whenever you are planning a WOMM Strategy for your brand, keep these few things in mind to make it more effective.

Take an interesting approach

People tend to remember and talk about things that are interesting or new to them. You can try to take an approach that is interesting. Share something funny, interesting, or different. Make sure you can give them a reason to actually engage with your content and promote it as well.

Provide value to the consumers

Have you ever experienced somebody recommending you a product they had an average experience with? No right? No one will ever promote your products and services if they didn’t truly enjoy it. Make sure to add enough value to their experience which motivates them to share their experience with others.

Stimulate emotion

People respond to emotions. If you can create something that can emotionally trigger the person, may it be any emotion, they will connect with it. It goes hand in hand with providing value because nobody will ever promote something they are not emotionally invested it. People are likely to share something that triggers high arousal.

Conclusion

Now that you know WOM is an essential and effective marketing strategy for a brand, you can miss out on a great marketing potential if you do not focus on it.

Some other things to promote WOM can be buzz marketing, blog marketing, and social media marketing which focus on reaching a large audience with their content aiming to engage the users.

Therefore, make sure to give your customers the best experience with both the products & services. This way they will not hesitate in recommending it to their peers, and family. Then start posting some interesting content for people to like and share. Once they start sharing, the chain will be formed. That’s what we are aiming for, right?