The amount of trust and publicity and the speed at which Word-of-Mouth (WOM) strategy can garner success is unmatched by any other marketing tool. If you analyze it carefully, you will realize that Word-of-Mouth is no marketing tool at all. In fact it is a natural. When a business is genuine and is dedicated to its work, the word-of-mouth is an expected thing.
WOM can be attained through many powerful techniques that ultimately lead to the customer talking about the brand’s products. The best part of WOM is that it works only when the information going around is genuine. As long as word of mouth marketers are honest they will earn the respect of their customers, but even a pinch of deception detected will result in backfire.
Here are a few WOM techniques that would take your brand a long way:
1. Deliver as Promised; Better Yet- Over Deliver: Make sure you deliver as promised. When a customer pays you for your product or service, you better deliver as mentioned, keeping upto his expectations. To add more flavor try and over-deliver. If an online product is said to be delivered in 7 days, reduce the time to 4 days and witness the customer’s joy.
By over delivering, you are doing something which is more than expected and this naturally makes the customer want to talk about you. The same applies if you under deliver, not one but two more people will hear about you not delivering; hence always make sure you are never late.
2. Make Sure you Follow the Rules: If you have a few set rules in place, make sure you follow it to the T, irrespective of penalizing the person violating the rules. By standing up for your brand, you will make your customers value what you believe in, automatically making your customers follow the cue.
3. Acknowledge the Effort: If you see your customer has said something nice about you, make sure you acknowledge it. Recognizing your customer’s efforts for something he has done will lure him to do more again.
Suppose you have a video on YouTube and you find that a particular customer has shared it the maximum, helping you increase your viewership, do the unexpected by gifting him a voucher or something from the brand.
If you have just started your business, the ball game of WOM will be a little different. You would have to start introducing your business to people, double checking that the message sent across is right. Along with the various other marketing tools, WOM is a must and a quicker way of garnering awareness about your business.
Coupled with the above tips which you can follow at a later stage, here are a few tips for beginners:
1. Friends are your First Target: Though you might be hesitant on reaching out to your friends to spread the word, they are the best people who you can trust to send across the right message.
2. The Give and Take Policy: If you are looking at some response from others, make sure you have done the same. Show your support or respond to another person confirming that you have recognized their effort. By showing you care, the others will follow suit and you will see responses on your page in no time.
3. Create Excitement: Your business is your baby, make sure you create some excitement around it, targeting the right set of people. Spread the message across using all the available social media options, but make sure to never spam people with an overdose of mails and posts. By sounding and seeming excited, the excitement will be contagious and will spread along.
4. Strike the Right Chord: Professional and social networks be in it any field has an established set of people writing about the topic. Find these people, contact them and build a relation with them. The works of these people would have already been recognized by a wide spread of people you would want to reach out to. So making these individuals write about your work creates maximum WOM.
WOM also happens to be the most effective and sustainable forms of marketing with a high ROI turn over. The irony of WOM is that because it is such a powerful tool, getting it right, though not a struggle needs more dedication to get it right!
