Two ways to improve your word-of-mouth marketing

By July 16, 2015General

Marketing has never been so important. What’s more valuable when choosing a restaurant, dentist, gym, or new smart phone — an online review or a recommendation from a close friend? It’s a no-brainer isn’t it?

As a society, we are heavily influenced by the people around us. Marketers spend millions of pounds on elaborately conceived advertising campaigns, yet often what makes up a consumer’s mind is much cheaper: word-of-mouth marketing.

What is word-of-mouth marketing?

Word-of-mouth marketing is based on the principle of pull marketing, where the communication of a positive marketing message is passed from person-to-person through conversation. Pull marketing gets consumers to bring other consumers to your product. In contrast, ‘push’ marketing uses above-the-line techniques to put a product in front of consumers in order to generate sales.

The aim of word-of-mouth marketing is to provide your customers with such an amazing and life-affirming service that they can’t help but tell everyone about.

Traditionally, word-of-mouth marketing refers to verbal recommendations, but in today’s socially charged world, it has taken on a renewed importance. After all, a Facebook like, a Vine share, or a positive review can mean life or death for some businesses.

Here are two steps you can take to create a successful word-of-mouth marketing campaign:

Step 1: Give People a Reason to Rave About You

People recommend businesses to their friends and families if those businesses are good at what they do (or if they’re really cheap, but we’re assuming that you don’t want to be cheap). This means a great offering partnered with exceptional customer service.

A case in point is American shoe retailer Zappos, which is renowned for going above and beyond for its customers.

After discovering that a return shipment of shoes was delayed because the customer’s mother had passed away, a Zappos employee arranged to send a bunch of flowers to the customer’s home in lieu of an invoice.

It’s this kind of demonstrative concern for customers that has made Zappos the widely talked about brand that it is today.

Step 2: Become an Industry Thought Leader

Want to get people talking about you? Another word-of-mouth marketing technique is to establish yourself as an industry thought leader. This will require considerable effort on your part — you’ll need you to engage with existing industry leaders, and stay up-to-date with the latest industry news.

Once you know your stuff inside out, you can make your own predictions based on industry trends and establish yourself as the voice of authority in your given field. Just make sure you can back up your theories with hard evidence.

Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442 or email us on info@hotcow.co.uk.