Word of mouth marketing, often abbreviated to WOMM, is one of the most important marketing concepts that every business needs to understand. As the name suggests, word of mouth is used as the primary marketing vessel. It relies on customers recommending products through word of mouth, but this doesn’t need to be physically done with your voice. WOMM could refer to the use of social media, influencers, micro-influencers or even popular online content creators to help grow your brand.
It’s one of the quickest and cheapest ways to grow a brand, but it’s important to understand how to harness it if you want the best possible results. In this short guide, we’ll be going through some of the key concepts to understand with WOMM and how you can take advantage of it.
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Quantifying Word of Mouth Marketing
Unlike other forms of marketing, WOMM isn’t easy to quantify. For banner advertisements, it’s possible to use analytics to help visualise how many of your clicks turn into actual purchases. WOMM often relies on customer honesty. If you’ve ever seen those “how did you hear about us?” sections when you purchase from relatively niche companies, then you’ll understand why. It’s hard to pinpoint when a sale is influenced by WOMM or not, but there are metrics such as your net promoter score that can be calculated with specialist tools. If you’re serious about tracking your WOMM and its effect on your business, then it’s important to use specialised tools.
Enhancing Your Website
It’s always a good idea to improve your website, especially if your aim is to use WOMM. Your website serves as a central hub for all of your digital customers to use. They look at your website for information, news, product changes, updates and even to purchase from you if you have eCommerce modules attached. Your website should contain easy-to-use widgets that let people share product pages on social media or built-in comment sections that you actually pay attention to. The idea is to always be connected with your audience by improving your website so that people can talk about it and share it with their friends.
Effective Use of Social Media
Far too many companies are overly concerned with how many followers they have on social media instead of what those followers actually do. A single active follower that promotes your brand or recommends it is infinitely more helpful than an inactive follower that doesn’t post messages. Social media can be one of the most effective ways to spread your brand via WOMM, but you need to pay close attention to what your followers do and how you interact with them, not an arbitrary number. The more your followers actually care about your business, the more passion they will display in their messages and posts.
As you can see, WOMM is a powerful tool if put in the right hands. Business often doesn’t use WOMM effectively because they’re doing it wrong. These tips will point you in the right direction and eventually give your business the much-needed boost it deserves.
