Examples of word of mouth advertising

Word of mouth marketing isn’t just about getting customers to talk about your brand. It’s about turning your customer into a raving fan.

Look at someone like Taylor Swift. She didn’t build her empire by getting someone to buy her album one time. Nope. She built her empire by building relationships. She occasionally sends flowers, gifts or special event invites to her hardcore fans.

And what do those fans do? They don’t just buy an album. They’ll also get their friends to buy albums, go to concerts with them, and more.

Her hardcore fans usually don’t just buy one album either. When she was promoting her 1989 album, she added five different sets of 13 imitation Polaroids, which were 65 pictures of her with song lyrics written on them, inside each CD. 

And what did fans do? They bought several of the same album. Why? To collect all 65 Polaroids. The result? She sold 1.287 million albums in one week.

Not bad.

While the marketing strategy on its own is quite clever, it never would’ve worked unless she had built up a hardcore fanbase.

So if you wanna know how to really get people talking about your brand to the point of obsession, in this article you’ll learn all about word of mouth marketing. This includes, what word of mouth marketing is, the importance of word of mouth marketing, the benefits, and word of mouth marketing strategies, alongside much more.  

Word of mouth marketing is a form of promotion that relies on happy customers and fans to promote a brand organically. This can be done through many forms of media like images, video, vlogs, etc. Word of mouth marketing is a great way of championing your product as those who create organic content around it genuinely care for it. As this form of marketing is free and can result in additional sales without your staff needing to do anything, offering a top-quality product that is easy to capture and describe can sell itself through your customers.

What is Word of Mouth Advertising?

By contrast, word of mouth advertising can result in the same impact as word of mouth marketing but typically involves payment to an influencer. Word of mouth advertising is a form of paid advertising where brands have control over the content pushed out by other people about the brand. The important thing to consider as a brand is if the person pushing out the content is the right person for the job. Do they represent the brand? Do they believe in your brand as much as you do? Are you willing to put your reputation on the line to use this person? There is much to consider before going down the route of word of mouth advertising.

Benefits of Word of Mouth Marketing

If you’re on the fence about whether or not to try increasing your word of mouth marketing, these benefits will help you consider trying it out.

1. Free marketing: Unless you’re doing word of mouth advertising, word of mouth marketing is free. You’ll still need to put effort in to get customers and build a strong enough relationship. However, their word of mouth promotion doesn’t come at a cost for you unless you’re paying for a loyalty app on the Shopify app store. For the most part, if you’re offering a shopping experience worth talking about, over time some customers may start raving about your brand to their friends.

2. More Sales: You benefit from the additional sales from the free referral your customer made. But you also get a few sales from the customer who recommended your brand. Why? Because if a customer loves your brand enough to recommend your brand to their friends, they’ll likely keep shopping with you. Learn how I made $743.65 with a customer loyalty program.

3. Grow brand at a faster rate: Word of mouth marketing has a viral marketing element to it. If you add enough hype around your brand or build an epic experience for your customers, it’s possible that a popular customer will help your brand go viral. When starting out, word of mouth may only lead to a couple of sales. However, as your brand grows bigger you might notice that more people start tagging friends on your social media posts, forwarding emails to friends and more. Over time, you’ll find your brand grows at a faster rate than if you were to just rely on Facebook advertising or social media marketing.

Why is Word of Mouth Important?

There are many benefits of word of mouth marketing but why is it so important? Well, according to SDL, about more than half of all consumers (58%) share their positive experiences with a company on social media.

What does this mean? It means that after buying from your store or interacting with your brand, your customers are engaging in word of mouth promotion online.

It can come in the form of posting a photo of a package they just received or taking a selfie wearing your product. They might tag you in a post to thank you or to show off their product.

On top of that, Nielsen shared an article where they found that 84% of consumers say they completely or somewhat trust product recommendations from those around them like friends, family, and coworkers.

Not only do customers share their experiences but their network are also likely to trust those recommendations. Organic Word of mouth marketing is not forced like word of mouth advertising, therefore, it is easier to interact with.

So, word of mouth marketing can be a powerful way to help you build your brand and customer base.

10 Word of Mouth Marketing Strategies

#1. Influencer Marketing

If you’re looking for a word of mouth advertising tactic you can have control over, influencer marketing is for you.

With influencer marketing, you’ll need to pay an influencer to feature your products on their social media. Since you’re paying them, you can have some control over what they post, when they post and how they post it.

The best thing about word of mouth advertising is that you can pay to start creating conversations around your product and potentially gain some sales from it.

The downside? It’s not really organic. Having real customers honestly rave about your products is a great feeling. And while you might get excited about getting sales this way, over the long haul this word of mouth tactic can get expensive.

#2. Hashtag Effect

Whenever I create a new Instagram account for my store, I always create a hashtag. It’s never anything super fancy, I usually just do my business name after the hashtag like #businessname.

At first, all the posts are my brand’s posts. However, every time without fail, eventually other people start using that hashtag too. Customers and fans of the niche end up using the hashtag for their posts too. Hashtags are a subtle but easy way to get your customers to do word of mouth marketing.

And as a result, it ends up making the hashtag more popular. While it can be hard to track whether the sales came from the hashtag or some other channel, this simple tactic helps build a stronger brand awareness.

Since the hashtag is the same as your brand name, you’ll be more likely to get found on Instagram. Plus, if your posts are dominating the hashtag feed, you’re more likely to get found. If you’re more likely to get found, you have a better chance of getting more sales.

#3. User-Generated Content

As your store grows, customers will start sharing user-generated content. What’s that? It’s content they create. It could be an Instagram post showing them wearing your product or a blog post on their website where they rave about your products.

You can take simple steps to encourage word of mouth by getting customers to create content. How? Post customer photos on your social media or on your product pages. Don’t forget to credit them in the post!

Offer incentives for promoting your brand. Maybe you have a referral or affiliate program where you offer perks or points for various types of content customers create.

Create a contest where you ask customers to send pictures of them with your product for a chance to win a free product or gift card to your store. You can even ask them to get their friends to vote on their post to help them win which can also boost your word of mouth outreach. Be careful with this type of marketing to ensure that it is not perceived as word of mouth advertising by tracking interactions closely.

#4. Get Reviews

Reviews work as an effective word of mouth strategy. The customer leaves a product review on the product page for the product they purchased. Then, store visitors end up seeing the post and may become influenced to buy the product based on the reviews they’ve read from real customers.

You can use Shopify apps like Product Reviews Addon to automate the collection of product reviews on your store. The emails are sent directly to your customers for you. If customers leave negative reviews, they’ll be redirected to your customer support team so that you can improve their experience.

#5. Create a Referral Program

A referral program can be designed to help you increase the success of your word of mouth marketing campaigns. You can offer perks for different levels of promotion. For example, if your customer refers a friend who purchases, you can offer a financial reward as a token of appreciation.

You can also offer non-monetary perks for other levels of promotion such as sharing user-generated content, posting product links on social media, tagging your brand on product posts and more.

You can use Shopify apps like Smile.io and Referral Candy to easily build a referral program on your online store.

So about a year ago, Carter Wilkerson tweeted Wendy’s asking how many retweets he’d need to get free nuggets. Wendy’s tweeted back saying an astronomical 18 million and while he didn’t get 18 million tweets, his tweet still became the most retweeted tweet of all time.

Imagine if Wendy’s didn’t respond to his tweet. That word of mouth campaign never would’ve happened. Becoming the most retweeted tweet of all time is a pretty big deal. It ended up amassing a ton of free media coverage because of the nature of the tweet, the record he broke and the nuggets he ended up receiving despite not achieving the goal.

As you build your store, you’re going to have countless interactions with your customers. If you can be positive, playful and active with them all, you may have a home run one day. It might not be as big as ‘the most retweeted tweet’ but it could still help boost your brand’s success.

#7. Give People No Choice But To Talk

There’s no brand who can get people talking as much as Red Bull. They often do these extreme stunts that go viral just because of how insane they are. Felix Baumgartner skydived from the edge of space. Paul Steiner climbed off one plane onto another while in the air. Basically, every stunt Red Bull does is fast and dangerous.

Naturally, when you do something extreme to get attention, you’re going to get people talking. While most brands don’t have the budget to do extreme and dangerous stunts, you can still get a similar impact with easy to execute ideas.

Some ecommerce brands hand deliver packages if customers need it delivered by a specific deadline. You can also surprise a customer with a free gift on their birthday using the Happy Birthday Email app. Your customer support team can respond to emails with video responses instead of text or talk in silly accents like a pirate.

#8. Surprise with Freebies

Shoppers love free stuff. And Sephora uses that fact to their advantage.

Multiple times a week Sephora sends emails with discount codes customers can use to get a free product. If a customer spends a certain amount of money, they can even use that money to get even more free stuff.

On a customers birthday month, they can collect their free gift from any Sephora location for free or with purchase if buying online. But does it result in word of mouth promotion? Yup, on my birthday back in January, even I posted about my free gift online.

You might think that freebies cost more money than they make. However, the 2017 birthday gift I got resulted in me buying that free gift multiple times. And now two years in a row I’ve spent over $300 each year on Sephora’s website. And I’m just one example. Truth is, the freebie can hook a person in and build their loyalty.

#9. Host Giveaways

Giveaways and contests are a great word of mouth marketing idea for those starting out. You can give away a free product on your store. You can have entries that require customers to share the giveaway on social media for a chance to win the prize. This helps you reach a newer audience organically.

You can use Shopify apps like ViralSweep or Social Boost to create contests and giveaways on your store.

The best part? After your contest has ended, you can reach out to everyone who lost and offer a runner-up prize. The runner-up prize could be a $5 gift card to your store. That way you can incentivize people to buy from your store despite not winning the contest. Just make sure that customers can’t score any freebies with the free gift card so you don’t lose money.

#10. Affiliate Networks

Affiliate marketing can help you increase your word of mouth marketing. You have a few key options you can experiment with.

First, you can get customers to sign up for your affiliate program. After a customer has made a purchase on your store, you can ask them to refer their friends and receive a commission for the sale if their friend using their referral link.

Second, you can reach out to niche bloggers. You can ask them to write articles about your products and brand. They can include affiliate links that allow them to monetize the post.

While you’re offering a monetary incentive, the reality is the risk is low as you only need to pay a commission if a sale is made. Also, even when sales aren’t made a brand awareness is being created by affiliates to help make more people familiar with your brand. 

Word of Mouth Marketing Statistics

Why should you believe us? Word of mouth marketing is a great strategy for some but how do you know if it is worthwhile for your business. Statistics can answer many of your questions and tell you if word of mouth marketing is the right strategy for you.

1. 51 percent of marketers say that Word of Mouth marketing outperforms brand-created content

   

Searchers, and indeed customers, have increasingly found it hard to believe branded content due to the rise in companies claiming to be the number 1 service provider in their area, or the best in the business without providing proof behind the claim. It is only fair to believe a customer’s word over a brand’s for this very reason. Customers can give a great first-hand account of their experience with a brand and be 100 percent truthful as they have nothing to lose.

2.  40 percent of desktop searchers use ad-blockers

Ad-blockers are making it harder for brands to advertise their products to potential customers. Due to the ever rising use of these plug-ins companies need to find other ways of generating new leads. Word of mouth marketing is the obvious first choice to replace ads as it is honest and organic.

3. Searchers need, on average, 2-6 reviews to instill trust in a brand

Reviews on Google, Yelp, and other review sites have never been more important, especially for smaller and local businesses. Reaching out to happy customers and asking them for online reviews can help increase trust in your brand among people who are thinking to buy from you. By having more than two reviews online you can increase sales of your product without doing any work yourself.

4 Great Word of Mouth Marketing Examples

1. ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

   In 2014 ALS released their ice bucket challenge as a fundraiser presented in the form of a challenge. Nominees poured a bucket of ice-cold water over themselves, capturing it in the form of an image or video, and donated money to the charity. The challenge was then posted over social media, and friends or family members were nominated to do the challenge. This campaign blew up with videos coming in from all over the world. The campaign was partaken by celebrities also. The biggest success for the campaign, of course, was the money raised which amounted to $115 million during the 8-week period in 2014

2. Dunkin’ Donuts

   Dunkin’ Donuts is an important part of America culture. Locals and tourists alike enjoy the delicious treat and it has become a beloved brand to the US. Because of their great product, they have earned staunch followers across the world and Dunkin’ Donut’s have found great ways to utilize word of mouth marketing through these great people. Using social media to launch competitions and post unique content, followers engage with them regularly. They engage in different ways like liking content, sharing it or even creating their own content around the brand to portray their experience of it. Their hard work paid off with their social media profiles growing hugely –  15 million Facebook fans, 1.5 million Instagram followers, and 1.2 million Twitter followers.

3. Netflix

   Using customer information to really understand what customers want on their platform, Netflix has not only been able to recommend shows to users but they have been able to create Netflix originals that are tailored to the biggest interests on the platform. Using this information in a smart way the company has been able to grow their customer sentiment positively creating an army of Netflix influencers who rave about the brand over the many social media platforms available to them. This free publicity has allowed the company to grow exponentially over its competitors like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and even YouTube.

4. Lush Loyalty

   Lush, as a beauty brand, offer ethical products that have not be tested on animals. Fighting for both social and environmental causes like animal testing and fair trade the company has collected an army of cult-like followers who believe in their values. These young followers are comfortable on most social media channels and also have more disposable income than the generations before them. Using unique content and promoting gifting Lush products, the company has been able to grow its profits year on year without needed to splash out on any advertising.

Word of Mouth Marketing: Conclusion

Creating a word of mouth marketing campaign can help you build brand recognition and get sales in the process. Turning your customers into raving fans isn’t easy. But you can apply the word of mouth marketing ideas from this article to help you start getting your customers talking. You may need to invest in word of mouth advertising in the beginning to build the hype but as your brand continues to grow, you’ll start to notice word of mouth happening on your social media quite regularly. Encourage customers to tag friends on social media posts, share their product photos online and leave product reviews. These little steps done regularly can help you master word of mouth marketing, even if you’re just starting out. The benefits are endless when you use word of mouth marketing alongside other forms of marketing.

Want to Learn More?

• 50 Most Inspiring and Successful Shopify Stores
• 9 Marketing Strategies That’ll Level Up Your Ecommerce Store
• 20 Great Customer Service Ideas to Surprise and Delight Shoppers
• Customer Retention: 8 Tips to Keep Your Customers Coming Back

How have you been building up hype around your brand? Share in the comments!

Word of mouth marketing is when a consumer’s interest is reflected in their everyday dialogue. It’s a low-cost (sometimes even free) and effective marketing method.

Many businesses consider word of mouth marketing the most valuable form of marketing because it enables you to spread good reviews about your product or service to a large audience, boosting brand awareness and loyalty.

Word of mouth marketing has been successfully used by many companies to get their customers to promote their brand by talking about experiences that they’d like to share with their friends and families.

Netflix, for example, used word of mouth marketing to make binge-watching popular with its organic tagline Netflix and chill. The company promoted it on social media which became a huge success.

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how businesses have used word of mouth marketing to connect with their target audience and boost sales. Along the way, we’ll share actionable tips that you can use to engage customers with your brand.

But first, let’s quickly take a look at why word of mouth marketing is arguably one of the most valuable sources of advertising.

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Why Is Word of Mouth Marketing Important?

Word of mouth marketing – also called word of mouth advertising – is a modern form of simple word of mouth. It’s one of the most effective forms of advertising for boosting brand recognition and sales.

Many businesses have adopted strategies that encourage customers to talk about positive experiences with their products.

According to HubSpot, consumers discuss specific brands casually around 90 times per week! The same study also reports that around 71% of people trust consumer reviews online. In simple words, consumers trust recommendations made by family and friends.

Word of mouth marketing is an honest promotion which helps you build trust with prospective customers. In fact, The Nielsen Company reports that 83% of customers trust recommendations from family, friends, and peers when making purchasing decisions. This goes to show that people don’t believe advertisements to the extent they trust suggestions from family and friends.

In the context of digital marketing, user-generated content is basically a form of word of mouth marketing that enables customers to promote your brand. And one of the most effective types of user-generated content is online reviews.

This involves existing customers sharing their positive experiences with your products and services with prospective customers. According to BrightLocal, 72% of respondents say positive product reviews boost their trust in a company.

Check out our in-depth article to learn more about how product reviews increase conversions.

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Before we dig deeper into how you can come up with an effective word of mouth marketing strategy for your business, let’s quickly step through some of the advantages of word of mouth marketing.

Instills brand loyalty

Successful businesses, whether online or brick-and-mortar – quickly realize that loyal customers lead to positive word of mouth about their product. To make the most of it, they focus more on building customer loyalty.

The thing is, these businesses know that while people don’t always trust paid advertisements, they are much more likely to heed a recommendation by someone they trust. Trust drives consumer decisions and, in turn, sales.

Associating positive emotions with the brand through word of mouth can help differentiate them from the competition and enhance the company’s brand image.

It’s cost-effective

As mentioned earlier, word of mouth marketing is an inexpensive method of promoting your products and services. While businesses spend thousands (or even millions) of dollars to run TV or online marketing campaigns, word of mouth marketing is a comparatively low-cost strategy.

Moreover, it doesn’t cost the consumers anything to spread the word about your company or your products. This is precisely why more and more companies are relying on their customers to share good product experiences with their friends and families.

Builds a community of brand advocates

Word of mouth marketing can help you build a community of brand advocates. This means when customers purchase your product, they tell their friends, families, and peers about it and share their experience on social platforms. These customers will likely support and vouch for your product online as well as offline.

Take a look at how this customer recommends the Shoptimizer WooCommerce theme to a first-time online store owner and highlights its key advantage i.e. conversion optimization.

As a result, you can attract more and more consumers that will continue to interact with your brand post-purchase. A loyal community of fans stands as proof of your brand quality. It can help promote your brand and persuade others to buy your products, helping you increase customer retention.

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3 Strategies for Word of Mouth Marketing

Here are some ways you can use word of mouth marketing to promote your brand.

#1: Ask for reviews

As a business owner, you should always be encouraging customers to leave a review. Online reviews are engaging, shareable, and (perhaps most importantly) unbiased.

You can use online product reviews to establish social proof. To take things up a notch, you can publish customer reviews and testimonials on your product pages and social media pages. This way, prospective customers will be more likely to purchase from you based on reviews they read from other people.

You can collect reviews and ratings on your product pages, social media, and email newsletters. CommerceKit, for example, is a powerful tool that can help you automatically collect reviews directly on your site.

Along the way, you might receive some negative reviews. But don’t worry, we got you! Check out our article on why a bad review is actually good for tips on how to interact with customers that leave negative reviews.

Online reviews aren’t the only type of user-generated content that can bolster your word of mouth marketing strategy.

Savvy digital marketers use social media to promote their content all the time. As your sales grow, you’ll notice customers sharing user-generated content on their social pages. This includes engaging and shareable content containing images, videos, Tweet threads, or Instagram captions that highlight their positive experience with your products.

Forever21 example

Apparel brand Forever21, for example, encourages buyers to share their style by uploading their favorite outfit photos on Instagram. Organic sharing like this is an effective way to boost your word of mouth outreach.

Promotional incentives, like coupons and exclusive discounts, are a great way to boost brand awareness. You can use your affiliate or referral program to give away points or perks for different types of user-generated content – more on this later.

Cluse example

Here’s how Cluse does it:

Cluse’s giveaway post encourages its followers to tag their friends in a user-generated content post and also asks them to get their friends to follow its Instagram page.

Check out our article on how to ask for a review for actionable tips!

#2: Interact over social media

When brands start or join conversations over social media, it generates many opportunities for word of mouth marketing. Positive and memorable social media interactions help build a community around the brand.

Aviation American Gin example

Last year, when Popeyes Chicken announced a new chicken sandwich, it started an online battle between two fast-food giants Wendy’s and Chick-fil-A. This gave Aviation American Gin a chance to get in the conversation in a playful way, and swoop thousands of valuable retweets on Twitter.

Aviation American Gin moved quickly at the fast-food heavyweights using other companies’ social posts to its advantage.

This is a great example of why word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective types of outreach. This sort of savvy social media campaign has helped the company attract the attention of a large number of social media users looking for entertaining content to consume and share online.

Netflix Film example

It’s simple, really. Social media offers a powerful medium to communicate with your target audience and build a strong and authentic brand image. You can use it to inform, educate, and entertain your consumers as well as find new customers by getting them to engage with your content.

Another way you can increase your brand recognition on social media is by creating a hashtag. Remember the Forever21 example? The apparel giant tells customers to upload their outfit photos using the hashtag #F21xME.

Hashtag campaigns are useful for building brand recognition and driving traffic. You can also use a hashtag on social platforms to start an online word of mouth campaign to share your promotional messages.

In other words, use your business hashtag every time you share a post on Instagram or Twitter and your customers will likely follow suit. Plus, hashtag feeds offer a quick and easy way to get in the conversations around your products. As a result, you can tap into conversations and respond to them in a timely manner. This, in turn, generates positive word of mouth from your customers!

Away example

A branded hashtag is a useful tool that can help you collect user-generated content. Here’s an example of Away using #travelaway in their Instagram post:

#3: Engage with consumers

A well-designed referral program can help you boost the results of your word of mouth marketing efforts. Encouraging existing customers to share positive words about you with their family, friends, and peers is a great way to attract new customers.

Your aim is to give customers a reason to share your brand with others, online or offline, and referral incentives are just the tools you need. You can offer coupons, credits, discounts, or free products to the referrer that leads to a purchase.

Similarly, you can incentivize customers to share user-generated content by tagging your brand on social posts or sharing product links on social pages.

7-Eleven example

The convenience store 7-Eleven encourages customers to post photos on social media using the hashtags #7ElevenDay, #TFW, and #slurplife for a free small Slurpee cup on July 11th.

Affiliate marketing is also a great way to acquire new customers. Here’s how you build an affiliate network: after you make a successful sale, ask the customer to refer their friend and earn a commission for the sale if their friend uses their referral link.

Niche bloggers can also help you promote your products on their blogs by including affiliate links in their content. Every sale leading from their referral will generate a commission for them while helping you boost your brand recognition.

You can also organize giveaways, contests, and lucky draws. All you have to do is tell customers to share user-generated content or the giveaway post on their social pages. This way, you’ll be able to get customers to interact with your brand and generate organic traffic along the way.

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Examples of Word of Mouth Marketing

Here’s a quick question for you: What does a beverage company, a cloud storage solution, and a mattress manufacturer have in common? Word of mouth marketing.

Let’s take a look at how different types of companies use word of mouth marketing strategies to create positive feelings and emotions about their products.

Coca-Cola

It’s no secret that Coca-Cola is one of the world’s most popular drinks. Over the years, it has run multiple campaigns which have led to positive word of mouth promotion for the brand and increased the consumption of Coke worldwide.

Its “Share a Coke” campaign was launched in 2014 to get consumers to view Coke in a way that boosts its consumption i.e. by getting people to share it with their friends and family. Its social media campaign asked customers to find bottles with common names (and uncommon spellings of common names!) on them and share it online using the hashtag #ShareaCoke.

Dropbox

Dropbox is an online storage company that has successfully used word of mouth to attract a lot of new customers. It offered free storage space in the early days with bonus free space for referrals that drew a lot of attention.

It offered 500 MB extra storage space to new users and the people referred by them. This campaign led to rapid growth in Dropbox’s revenue.

Casper

Casper is an online company that produces mattresses, bedding, and other sleep-related products. For each of their mattresses, it offers a trial period for 100 days from purchase. Consumers can then decide to keep the mattress or return it.

This customer-focused approach has clicked with consumers who prefer testing a product’s comfort and durability. Casper also ran aggressive social media campaigns sharing customer reviews, helping it acquire more than one million customers in eight countries.

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Conclusion

Word of mouth marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing that involves giving customers reasons to share good opinions about your products with their friends and family. It helps you influence the customer’s purchase decisions, build trust, and boost brand awareness.

To recap, word of mouth marketing builds a community of brand advocates who vouch for your products online and offline. There are tons of ways to make your business a topic of conversation. Asking for reviews, interacting over social media, and engaging with consumers is just the tip of the iceberg.

Ready to collect reviews and leverage word of mouth marketing to increase sales? Sign up for CommerceKit updates as we build it!

Marketers and entrepreneurs dream of the days they see their campaign costs plunge and their growth rate skyrocket through word of mouth from customers and advocates.

Many brands go beyond dreaming and pursue word of mouth marketing strategies that actively give customers a reason to share their thoughts and support the brand.

Outlined below are some of the best examples of word of mouth marketing across a number of niches.

Muji — Word of mouth through store experience

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Muji is a popular Japanese lifestyle brand centred around an ethos of quality customer experience, timeless design and no advertising, a strategy that has allowed Muji to expand to over 900 stores in 26 countries since 1989. Muji’s success relies on word of mouth recommendations that come primarily from a relaxing store experience and simple product design.

The store experience resembles a spa more than a retailer. Shoppers are greeted with meditative music and a calming scent diffused throughout a store themed around neutral colours and soft lighting. The relaxing ambiance can serve as a much needed refuge from retail environments that expose shoppers to harsher lighting, upbeat music and a generally heightened tempo of buying.

The store experience also couples perfectly with the design language of Muji’s products. All products follow a similar design language of simple, neutral colours and natural themes are woven into each item. The store’s ambiance and the design of its products meld together perfectly to create a memorable and comfortable shopping experience for customers.

Although the company is facing growth troubles now, their commitment to customer experience and design allowed them to efficiently grow for decades without the need for heavy advertising spends.

Dropbox — Growth through referrals

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It is possible that no other company has ever implemented referrals as a word of mouth growth system better than Dropbox. Dropbox grew their user base from 100,000 to 4,000,000 in only 15 months through an incredibly effective referral strategy for a product that was difficult to market in 2008: personal cloud storage. While extremely useful, cloud storage was not something the average consumer understood or searched for, making it particularly difficult to spread through word of mouth.

In cases like this, word of mouth needs to be based on some sort of incentive or transactional benefit that is easily understood by both users and potential new customers—Dropbox managed to hit the bullseye after trying growth strategies that failed horribly.

Dropbox implemented a simple two-sided referral program that rewarded both the referrer and referee. While many brands have tried referrals, this word of mouth strategy worked so well because of the reward they chose as well as the referral user experience. 

Firstly, Dropbox followed a cardinal rule of referrals: relevance. Instead of giving away t-shirts or mousepads, they gave users more of the product they signed up for in the first place, storage space. While this may seem like a simple decision, its impact was significant. Dropbox could already be confident that the incentive was appealing because customers had already signed up for their service, more storage would only make the service more useful. Storage space was also an efficient incentive for Dropbox as it is relatively inexpensive compared to purchasing merchandise and shipping it around the world.

Secondly, Dropbox made the referral process as easy as possible with an intuitive user experience and compelling copy. Immediately after signing up for an account, users were given the opportunity to get more space by referring friends directly or creating social posts through a link. 

Ultimately, Dropbox nailed three tenets of effective referrals to achieve major growth:

1. The product was desirable
2. The incentive was related directly to customer needs and the product
3. The user experience made referrals frictionless

OnePlus — Invite only releases 

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OnePlus is known for creating smartphones that are “flagship killers” that compete with major brands like Apple and Samsung on performance, but at a much more affordable price point. They are a clear example of successful word of mouth marketing that combines status building with quality products to invoke desire and recommendation behaviour in potential buyers. 

Customers couldn’t simply purchase a OnePlus phone when it was initially released—they had to receive an invite, typically from another customer. Customers flocked to social media and personal networks to lobby for an invite to purchase the phone and OnePlus found themselves in the middle of a terrific word of mouth marketing campaign. 

The exclusive invite model drove word of mouth by creating a status benefit for customers that had invites to give, and a desire element for those who didn’t. Customers felt as if they had membership to a unique club and the power to bring others into that club.

The strategy paid off for OnePlus because they created a product that lived up to its promises, which boosted the brand’s value and made purchase invites a highly valued commodity. The OnePlus One was a genuinely high performance phone at a significantly lower price point, and had the benefit of using Google’s Android operating system to bring the brand a more trustworthy foundation.

Consumers have a plethora of choice in today’s smartphone market, but this was not the case when OnePlus launched. Apple and Samsung dominated global market share in 2014 with established brands like Motorola, LG and Sony filling much of the left over space. Brands would have to build great phones and spread their reputation quickly, which OnePlus successfully did through their invite system.

OnePlus still trails Samsung and Apple by a large margin, but they are now effectively competing against much larger brands in the premium smartphone market.

Supreme — Status through scarcity

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Supreme is perhaps the most powerful word of mouth marketing example when it comes to appealing to younger generations of buyers. The iconic “supreme red” coupled with simple white lettering grew astronomically from a small rebellious skateboard shop to an iconic luxury streetwear brand with a $1 billion valuation.

How has Supreme built a brand empire with minimal paid advertising? Similar to OnePlus, Supreme creates desire and sharable moments by boosting the status of their customers. Their word of mouth marketing strategy centres on achieving this through:

1. Limited product runs
2. High profile collaborations
3. The use of queues and purchase events

Supreme releases a limited amount of products for their lines before discontinuing them. The fear of missing out compels customers to buy products as quickly as possible to avoid entering the extremely expensive resale market for Supreme products. These limitations also create exclusivity for Supreme fans—giving them more reason to show off products -especially unique ones like bricks and nun chucks-  to their own friends and social networks. 

With strong levels of desire for their products, Supreme creates conversations and buzz amidst the public by orchestrating long queues to get into stores to purchase products. Customers tend to wait in queues that are hundreds of people in length and can last the entire day—leading pedestrians and potential customers walking by to inquire about the brand. 

Finally, Supreme uses strategic collaborations to get organic coverage from press and more demand from customers for rare collectable items. Luxury fashion producers like Louis Vuitton and streetwear leaders like Nike and Adidas have all launched collaborations with Supreme. 

This calculated word of mouth marketing strategy requires deep dedication, but it has allowed Supreme to brand itself as both a cult brand and a worldwide titan of fashion.

Grenade Fitness — Word of mouth through compelling packaging

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Brands have often used unique packaging as a part of providing a premium customer experience, and with that experience comes many opportunities to spread through word of mouth. Unique packaging gives customers and potential buyers compelling reasons to take and share photos, and visually striking products are easy to recall in conversations. 

Grenade Fitness grew in a cramped and competitive market by doubling-down on this strategy. The company’s weight-loss fitness supplements are packaged in containers that are shaped like hand grenades and the entire brand is built around military themes (including a pillbox designed to look like an ammunition container). These visual cues represent a stark contrast to most weight-loss products that are typically packaged in round tubs with neutral colour themes and clinical language, meaning Grenade products are more eye-catching on shelves and can appeal to new customer segments.

The key to Grenade’s success is its nuanced understanding of the market. While aggressive branding is common in many niches of fitness supplements, it is not common specifically in the weight-loss category that Grenade used as its beachhead into the market—they were not only more memorable and sharable than competitors, but could also appeal to untapped customer segments. The brand’s approach has paid off, they’ve now been featured as one of the fastest growing UK brands for international sales.

BrewDog — Mission-driven word of mouth 

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Some companies tell effective and elegant stories about their mission to muster up buzz and get customers advocating for them, others opt for shock value and stunts that immediately capture attention. BrewDog has managed to do both. 

The brewery leverages their punk lifestyle and values to deliver public shock campaigns including driving a tank through Camden Town in London and selling small-batch beers stored in deceased animals. 

BrewDog’s word of mouth marketing strategy combines two different approaches: clarity of mission and controversial publicity. Customers that believe in a brand’s mission will be intrinsically driven to share products and make recommendations—as long as the brand continues to live up to those values.

Controversial publicity also creates compelling reasons for customers and the public to speak, argue and share their opinions. In BrewDog’s case, the use of visuals only made it easier to be featured by press and create shareable conversations. While controversy is a dangerous strategy for most, it worked for BrewDog because the ideals of the punk lifestyle are inherently rebellious and steeped in counter-culture. 

Asking customers to advocate for a brand through word of mouth is to ask them to stake their reputation on a brand. It is a request that must be based on powerful incentives and appeal for a customer, whether that’s through a gift or the pursuit of a noble vision. Brands that can connect with the identity of their customers stand to build better word of mouth programs, and more organic growth as a result. 

When customers are excited to talk about a product or service on social media, WOM marketing succeeds. People put more faith in friends’ and family’s recommendations than they do in commercials.

Even though there are many different brand marketing strategies in the market, word of mouth marketing examples has proven that WOM marketing is the most effective form of marketing for many brands.

Even while customers and fans are the ones who will determine the success of your WOM marketing, there are steps you can take to increase the likelihood of positive feedback. There are many methods by which your word of mouth marketing strategies could be strengthened.

Don’t underestimate the importance of Word of mouth marketing campaigns.

Nevertheless, to help you make an informed decision about how to promote your business, we have collected 12 case studies of successful word of mouth campaigns.

If a satisfied customer recommends your product or service to others, you have successfully implemented word of mouth marketing.

It might be current or potential customers who have heard good things about your company from satisfied clients.

Marketers have long relied on casual conversations between friends and acquaintances to disseminate their messages.

In modern times, social media has become an integral part of this type of advertising campaign.

It’s important to remember that word of mouth advertising can have a significant impact on your business. Don’t undervalue the benefits of word of mouth marketing since there’s more to it than meets the eye.

How Does Word of Mouth Spread?

If you want people to talk positively about your product on their own, you need to use a strategy that engages people and make them want to talk about it.

You may get your company’s word of mouth marketing off to a great start with these strategies:

1. Join forces with influencers

 Perhaps you’re wondering where you’d even begin to look for the ideal influencer for your needs. Well, you’re in luck, since Ainfluencer is here to help you out.

Ainfluencer is an influencer marketplace where companies and influencers can connect to strike mutually beneficial deals that benefit both parties. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can find the ideal influencers for any given niche market, have a look at Ainfluencer. Our marketplace is one of the best and easiest ways to find Instagram influencers for your next campaign.

Ainfluencer is free of cost and easy to use. Not to mention every transaction you do in the app is completely secure and safe.

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2. Sponsored giveaways 

Promote your goods and encourage customers to enter giveaways.

Hosting giveaways and offering rewards to social media users who share photos of your goods using a designated hashtag, will get your happy consumers to spread user-generated content. 

You can incentivize your most dedicated consumers to share content by linking loyalty program incentives to user-generated content.

3. Come up with a referral system 

Roll out a referral program that rewards customers for telling their friends about your product. One method of word of mouth brand advertising examples is known as “referral marketing,” and its goal is to have satisfied clients spread the word about your business in exchange for a financial reward. 

Referral marketing, sometimes known as “refer a friend” schemes, has quickly become a popular tool for online retailers to increase sales with a low cost per action.

We have a dedicated blog to WOM marketing strategy, so if you’re interested in seeing some word of mouth statistics, that’s where you should go.

12 examples of word of mouth marketing campaigns

Now we are going to read 12 word of mouth marketing examples and catch a glimpse of how different brands have used this marketing strategy to their advantage.

1. Netflix

The first example of word of mouth marketing mentioned in this list is Netflix. By offering excellent service, Netflix encourages positive customer reviews and recommendations. This feature was crucial in making the service a household name in the home entertainment industry.

One of the main selling points of the platform is that it can analyze user activity to make personalized recommendations for TV episodes and movies. Netflix also displays all of its videos in high-definition (HD) resolution for the best possible viewing experience.

In addition to improving the overall user experience, personalized recommendations help users feel more understood.

Netflix also promotes its shows by using social media to get people talking about them. Posting teasers and memes is one strategy for boosting user activity.

Netflix does this so its customers will create UGC and have a place to talk to others about what they’ve seen on the service.

Since everybody’s talking about Chris Evans today, here are some photos from The Red Sea Diving Resort you might be interested in. pic.twitter.com/KWG25Fk7wB

— Netflix (@netflix) November 8, 2022

This stunning teaser of Chris Evan in The Red Sea Diving Resort has garnered over 15K likes and 1K retweets.

2. Starbucks

The second word of mouth marketing example to highlight is Starbucks. The brand Starbucks was a little Seattle establishment 30 years ago. They didn’t employ typical word of mouth marketing strategies; instead, they created an incentive plan that matches their message.

How often do you see Starbucks Latte billboards? Consider magazines, newspapers, and other ad spots.

Starbucks hasn’t advertised in newspapers or on highway billboards since it launched over 30 years ago.

Starbucks wanted to create a “third home” for its customers.

They know who their customers are and endeavor to ensure no one leaves unhappy. Starbucks is expensive, but customers keep returning. Why? Because they deliver a high-quality product and work hard to make the “ideal cup of coffee”.

Starbucks gave customers a positive experience, service, and product, and customers helped shape the company. A few customers had a memorable coffee experience and notified their friends and relatives. So hopefully, now you can understand why Starbucks can be mentioned as one of the top word of mouth marketing examples.

3. Lush

Lush exemplifies how engaging in social activism can boost brand awareness.

As the third word of mouth marketing example, the brand Lush is noticeable. Since 2016, the brand’s popularity and sales have been sustained in part by social media marketing efforts.

Lush supports social causes like fair trade, animal welfare, and anti-fracking with their cruelty-free cosmetics.

By advocating for worthy causes, Lush’s customers are more inclined to buy the company’s products and tell their friends and family about them.

4. Casper

Next on the list for word of mouth marketing companies is the direct-to-consumer mattress maker Casper, which has gained attention for its rapid expansion in a short period of time. A small advertising budget and positive WOM can be seen as one of the benefits of word of mouth marketing which has helped it sell $20 million in its first 10 months.

The brand’s social media strategy is entertaining and includes posts on sleeping, prompt replies to comments, and giveaways. When combined with quality goods, these factors increase the likelihood that satisfied consumers will spread the word on their own.

Philip Krim, co-founder of Casper: “Getting customers to engage with Casper was a crucial part of the startup’s strategy from the beginning because it didn’t have the advertising budget to compete against the mattress giants.”

5. Threadless

Another one of word of mouth advertising examples to mention is Threadless, headquartered in Chicago, which is an online marketplace for custom t-shirts. It facilitates the internet dissemination and sale of artists’ designs for apparel and accessories.

More than 10,000 people signed up in the first two years, and the site made six figures from the sale of t-shirts (mostly through word of mouth marketing).

It used contests as a tactic in some of its plans. Jake Nickell, the company’s creator, used blog comments and social media to spread the word about a contest for people to create T-shirts. The event was openly shared amongst family and friends.

The company’s early dedication to the word of mouth advertising has helped it grow to a $12M annual revenue run rate.

6. Zappos

Next word of mouth marketing example is Zappos. The brand Zappos, headquartered in Las Vegas, is an internet-based company that specializes in shoes and apparel. Established in 1999, Amazon paid $1.2 billion in 2009 to acquire the company.

How does it plan to expand? Marketing through personal recommendations.

It’s yet another example of how a company’s focus on customer satisfaction led to rapid growth. When Zappos learned that one of its customers wanted to return the shoes his late wife had purchased before she had passed away, the company went out of its way to make them feel special by sending flowers and giving them VIP service.

Excellent service is built into every aspect of the Zappos brand, including the return process. Anyone who doesn’t absolutely adore their new pair of kicks is welcome to send them back without penalty.

7. Sozy

Sozy is an apparel company with the goal of providing women with confidence via their clothing. Furthermore, it deserves a spot in the word of mouth marketing examples list as it has a social mission, devoting 10% of its income to helping victims of sexual abuse and another 10% to various other charitable causes. One may safely assume that they are a popular brand among female consumers.

One of the most efficient methods of advertising is word of mouth. Sozy’s creator, Lanai Moliterno, claims this is the only way to prove the worth of your work. The brand’s ambassador program actively seeks out and rewards those who organically spread the word about the company.

“We offer ambassadors a gift card to join. Once they do, they are usually our best marketers. Our clothing is so soft and flattering that it doesn’t take much convincing for them to talk about it with their audiences. It works so well. We built a dedicated process to grow our ambassador program.”

As a bonus, Sozy’s brand advocates offer their opinions on potential new goods. In this discussion, they discuss design ideas, popular content, and audience reactions. Sozy is able to refine its offerings for its clientele, which in turn generates word of mouth marketing and increased sales.

8. Sephora

Customers adore freebies. As a result, the next brand which can be mentioned as a word of mouth marketing example is Sephora capitalizes on the beauty industry’s obsession with them.

Several times a week, Sephora clients receive promotional emails with codes good for a freebie. Customers who spend beyond a particular threshold are eligible for bonus freebies.

In the month of their birthday, clients can pick up their free gift at any Sephora store or online with any purchase. Does it lead to recommendations from satisfied customers? yes, many users tweeted about their free birthday present.

I got my birthday gift from @Sephora today 😂
They were so tiny! pic.twitter.com/6WPtDUWpKw

— Yemigold (@y_e_m_i_) November 25, 2022

9. Dunkin’ donuts

The widespread Dunkin’ Donuts has become a significant element of America. And so this allows the brand to be counted as one of the greatest word of mouth marketing examples in the list. The tasty snack has become a renowned US brand among both natives and visitors. Dunkin’ Donuts has developed brilliant methods to capitalize on the WOM marketing opportunities presented by its devoted customer base. 

They constantly communicate with their fans and customers by using social media to host contests and share original material with their audience. People participate in a variety of ways, including liking posts, sharing them, and even making their own content based on the brand to talk about how they feel about it.

Following their efforts, their social media profiles saw massive growth, with more than 16M Facebook fans, 2.2M Instagram followers, and 1.3M Twitter followers.

10. Jeep

The Jeep brand hosts Jeep owner gatherings, known as Jeep Jamborees, several times a year for off-roading adventures. These gatherings are a continuation of a custom that began in 1953, in which participants load up their decked-out SUVs and travel for several days across rough terrain.

What makes the Jeep Jamborees so powerful for word of mouth, according to Rosen’s The Anatomy of Buzz, is that “for two days attendees eat, drink, sleep, dream, and think Jeep.” When they return to work on Monday, Jeep is the only topic of conversation.

As one auto executive put it to Brandweek, “A Jamboree makes for fantastic drink talk.” It’s quite unlikely that anyone would pass along information about a cool Jeep commercial or billboard they saw to a friend or family member. However, spending the weekend with other Jeep fans off-roading in the Ozarks in your 4×4? At the very least, you’ll share it on Instagram or talk about it with a coworker during lunch. This gives us the ability to mention Jeep as part of the word of mouth marketing examples on this list.

11. Superhuman

Another example of word of mouth marketing is Superhuman. The email app developed by tech firm Superhuman prioritizes speed. The package costs $30 per month and is designed for “email power users,” or those who receive and answer numerous emails daily.

Superhuman has built a customer base in the thousands without resorting to expensive marketing campaigns or employing a large sales force.

How? To begin with, it is a highly selective app, with many of its earliest adopters being key decision-makers and influential business executives. Each new user of Superhuman has a one-on-one onboarding session with a representative of the organization, and joining Superhuman is contingent upon passing a pre-qualification process.

Former venture capitalist Kevin Kwok remarked, “The perceived status of being acknowledged as an early user of Superhuman has aided Superhuman’s acquisition and conversion.” It’s not that users require other people to use Superhuman for it to work; rather, they spread the word about it because they like doing so.

Superhuman’s simple yet ingenious design characteristics also helped boost the product’s profile. Every email includes a “sent via Superhuman” link at the bottom that, when clicked, directs the recipient to a specific page. In addition, with a single keystroke, customers may easily create an email containing a referral link to send to their friends.

“It was all word of mouth. It was all referral,”  Speaking to Mixergy, Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra attributed the company’s rapid early development to word of mouth. “The untold truth about most consumerist companies is that growth happens through word of mouth.”

12. Dropbox

The last on the list for word of mouth marketing examples is Dropbox. Not every company has the financial resources of the Coca-Cola Company to waste on expensive advertising campaigns. That’s fine, by the way. Discounts, gift cards, and highlighted features are all good incentives, especially for smaller firms.

When Dropbox first launched, the lure of free storage space attracted a large amount of referral traffic. Many people had never heard of “the cloud,” or online storage for their files, so the service it provided was immensely valuable.

For both new and recommended customers, the corporation provided 500 MB of free space in its cloud. Customers are more likely to remain dedicated to your brand when they know they can keep earning bonus storage space simply by referring their friends.

People have more of a motivation to prefer Dropbox over its rivals because of the referral program. By giving customers additional room to store their data at no cost, hosting providers have successfully discouraged the practice of consumers scattering their content over various free sites.

Conclusion

Word of mouth (WOM) marketing is, without a doubt, an effective method of boosting both foot traffic in stores and click-through rates on websites as can be seen throughout the word of mouth marketing examples said in this blog.

Making products people want to speak about is the key. Provide excellent support to customers, encourage brand evangelists, and grow your fan base on social media. Consistent word of mouth referrals are hard to standardize as a marketing approach, yet they can significantly expand your firm.