Why is Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing so Incredibly Important?

WOM marketing, that’s right word of mouth marketing is the most organic form of marketing and is still the driving force behind customer building and customer retention – see how it can benefit you.

Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing

Have you come across a share worthy experience and can’t stop yourself from describing it to your family and friends, tweeting about the place you visited or such?

This way of spreading information about a product or service is termed as Word-of-Mouth Marketing. This is a natural type of marketing without needing to allocate a separate budget for the same by a company.

Word-of-Mouth marketing is the pure actions taken by a company so effectively that it captures the heart of the users and compels them to boast about their experience regarding the company’s product, service or brand. Also, it includes the action taken by the customers (mouth) as they recommend the product to others.

It’s an absolutely free form of promotion and advertising and as customers are directly involved in it, it has a greater power to influence others buying decisions and opinions about the company. However, as every coin has two sides, negative experiences can be as deadly for a company as well. But that’s not too much to worry about. By focusing on relationship marketing and customer service provided by your brand, any company can easily turn bad experiences of a customer good.

To help you believe the importance of WOM marketing, here are some of the statistics related to the same.

  • Don’t be afraid of negative word of mouth as around 66% of the brand mentions are found to be positive. Let your actions do the talking.
  • Social media posts from customers are capable of influencing 81% of the customers.
  • 92% of the customers buying decisions are influenced by the recommendations from their family, friends, relatives and acquaintances.
  • Half of the recommendations of word of mouth turn out to be beneficial in making buying decisions.
  • 72% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
  • 90% of the word of mouth brand conversations happen online with every 1000 customers generating about 5,00,000 conversations around the brand.

You can now easily judge the importance and the power WOM holds for any brand.

 

Why WOM marketing is important in today’s world of marketing.

  1. The exponential reach of online media

Online media has such a vast potential of making any conversation or dialogue viral. If you can make the full use of online media and its exponential reach in communicating, sharing and commenting among people. A person’s experience can reach out to millions of people in seconds by sharing it in different ways. Good communication of a company with its customers keeps them happy and satisfied.

  1. WOM works in a chain

Once a particular action by a company can provide a good experience to a customer, WOM has a potential to spread a word in millions of people as one person conveys it to another and the chain goes on.

  1. Makes it easier to ask for referrals

Referral marketing is considered one of an effective marketing strategy in increasing the sales of a product or service. Good Word-of-mouth marketing makes it easier for any company to undertake referral marketing. As customers are already familiar with the brand, asking for referrals becomes easier and turns out to be a huge success.

Referral marketing involves asking a customer to refer it to their friend in return for a certain incentive. The customer which brings the maximum new customers helps in tracking down the conversion rates. WOM and referral marketing, when used together, turns out to be the best marketing strategy for any form of business usually e-commerce.

Here are some of the WOM marketing strategies you can adopt if you are finding it difficult to get started on.

  1. Make your brand appealing

The best way to instill an image of your brand is through social media. Placing your brand on social media in an appealing manner is the first step towards WOM marketing. Next, share content that is fun, interesting and relatable to make your brand referable.

  1. Make your customers look valued

Make your customers feel you value their presence and opinions. Make them feel special by providing top customers tag, provide them with an unforgettable experience that they can pay the price for willingly.

  1. Create emotions

People find it easier to respond to emotions. Engaging customers and providing them with an experience that can be shared like happy, sad, shocked, surprised etc. will lead to better WOM marketing. Let customers connect with you through emotions, for instance, reviews are one way of sharing their emotions either positive or negative, good or bad.

Word-of-mouth marketing is full of such strategies you can adopt to shine. WOM marketing is also connected to some of the other forms of marketing like buzz marketing, blog marketing, influencer marketing, viral marketing or social media marketing. Each of them is closely related to each other yet different. Each of these marketing strategies includes word-of-mouth marketing in one way or another. It could be via blogs, influencers, social media platforms or such. Word-of-mouth marketing is a wide term and makes every other form of marketing easier and more effective.