Word of Mouth Marketing: How to get people to talk about you
Posted by Manuela Barreto @ June 18th, 2009 in New Media Tips
Blogs, viral marketing, communities, forums, chats, social networks all fall under the same category- word of mouth marketing. These are all techniques that can be used to engage with current and potential customers as well as to get people talking about your products.
You can consider it both a marketing strategy as well as an interactive customer service strategy that works for gauging feedback and opinions together with earning customer respect. It’s a great and useful way not only to come a step closer to them but also serves as pathway to humanizing your brand by listening.
What are some ways in which you can use word of mouth for your brand or business? On one hand, you can leverage social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Google together with many other social media platforms. Social media is very efficient to help you understand your audience by engaging with potential customers and open conversation while closely listening to them and their opinions. Online tools can also help you get an idea of what is being said about your brand on a daily basis.
Being transparent with your target audience is also important for building trust and remain a credible source of information. When engaging customers, be clear, respond honestly and participate openly to dicussions and blogs.
Do not forget to monitor your results. Track both offline and online conversations for word of mouth can take place anywhere. A high ROI and a sales increase are your final goals, therefore, regurlarly reviewing your marketing strategy and communication approach to meet your customer’s needs is a must. Extremely valuable information and ideas can be extracted from these activites that can lead to new and improved products made specifically for your target market, which can easily translate into sales!
Lastly, encourage word of mouth in the workplace. As I previously mentioned, word of mouth does not only take place online, you’ll be surprised to know that a lot of it comes from daily, face-to-face conversations amongst individuals or phone conversations. However, these should not be considered as two different set of activities. Offline word of mouth and online word of mouth go hand-in-hand. You can use online word of mouth to generate offline activities and vice versa.
Keep listening and sharing with your audience. The more connected you are to them, the better and the more brand endorses you’ll gain over time.
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Comments
anatinge
July 2nd, 2009
Can you give an examples of such successful Mouth Marketing? Thanks.
m.barreto
July 3rd, 2009
Hi anatinge,
you can find some good examples here http://lab.77agency.com/viral-marketing/online-videos-causing-viral-buzz-1124/
The Cadbury’s Ad is a great example of an effective WOM/viral marketing campaign..Cadbury’s came up with this original and very funny concept that got people talking and generating major buzz, which eventually got them to share and forward the video to friends. Even amateurs reproduced they’re own version of the spot. All of the above led to massive news coverage which reached the entire Web population….this is word of mouth at it’s best.