The best for of advertising is word of mouth advertising

People often wonder whether word of mouth is better than advertising. The answer? Yes. But not always.

A great deal of research finds that word of mouth is more effective than other types of marketing. Whether compared to traditional advertising, media mentions, or promotional events, word of mouth is more useful in creating new users and customers. Indeed, McKinsey suggests that “word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones.”

Why is word of mouth more effective? Two main reasons.

1) Trust

Not surprisingly, we trust our friends more than we trust ads. Ads always say the product is great. “Nine out of ten dentists prefer new Shiny White toothpaste.” “Critics agree that Blastoids 7 is the best movie of 2013.” But because ads always say the product is wonderful, we tend not to believe them.

Our friends, however, will tell it to us straight. They’ll tell us if the product is good, or bad, and as a result we’re more likely to believe their recommendation.

2) Better Targeting

Word of mouth is also more targeted. Say your company sells golf clubs. To target your message at potential customers, you might advertise in a golf magazine. But while some of the magazine’s readers might be in the market for clubs, many may not be. So in the end, some of the ad dollars are wasted.

Word of mouth is much more focused. No one’s going to talk to you about a great baby clothes website if you don’t have a baby. People only tell you about things that they think are at least somewhat relevant to your interests. Word of mouth is like a searchlight that goes through a social network, finding the most interested receivers for a given piece of information.

So is word of mouth always better?

Well, not quite.

First, it’s slower. Think of a long line of people playing a game of telephone. Social media and online communication have definitely sped the diffusion of information. But word of mouth still moves from person to person, sequentially, so it takes time to spread. The first person tells the second person something, who tells the third person, etc. It takes a while for information to go from one end of the line to the other.

Advertising, however, tends to be more simultaneous. It’s like a broadcast that reaches everyone in line at once. It is less persuasive than word of mouth, sure, but if the goal is to quickly increase broad awareness, advertising can be a better way to go.

Second, the effectiveness of word of mouth depends on getting people to talk. Word of mouthcan be highly effective, but whether it is or not depends on whether people actually spread the word. It’s not enough just to be on social media or post things once in a while. To get people to talk about you, your business, or your idea, you need to understand why people talk and share in the first place. How to make yourself part of the conversation.

Advertising and word of mouth can also work together. Ads remind people about the brand which encourages them to talk about it. Someone hears about a product from a colleague and then sees an ad which seals the deal. The two can act as complements rather than as substitutes.

So which is better, word of mouth or advertising?

It depends.

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Want to get more people talking about your product or idea? Check out Jonah’s New York Times bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

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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!

HOW COMPANIES ADVERTISE

    Advertising informs consumers about the existence and benefits of products and services, and attempts to persuade them to buy them. The best form of advertising is probably word-of-mouth advertising, which occurs when people tell their friends about the benefits of products or services that they have purchased. Yet virtually no providers of goods or services rely on this alone, but use paid advertising instead. Indeed, many organizations also use institutional or prestige advertising, which is designed to build up their reputation rather than to sell particular products.

    Although large companies could easily set up their own advertising departments, write their own advertisements, and buy media space themselves, they tend to use the services of large advertising agencies. They are likely to have more resources, and more knowledge about all aspects of advertising and advertising media than a single company. The most talented advertising people generally prefer to work for agencies rather than individual companies as this gives them the chances to work on a variety of advertising accounts(contracts to advertise products or services). It is also easier for a dissatisfied company to give its account to another agency than it would be to fire its own advertising staff.

    The client company generally gives the advertising agency an agreed budget; a statement of the objectives of the advertising campaign, known as a brief; and an overall advertising strategy concerning the message to be communicated to the target costumers. The agency creates advertisements (the word is often abbreviated to adverts or ads ), and develops a media plan specifying which media-newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cinema, posters, mail, etc-will be used and in which proportions. (On television and radio, ads are often known as commercials.)Agencies often produce alternative ads or commercials that are pre-tested in newspapers, television stations, etc. in different parts of a country before a final choice is made prior to a national campaign.

   The agency’s media planners have to decide what percentage of the target market they want to reach(how many people will be exposed to the ads) and the number of times they are likely to see them. Advertising people talk about frequency or ‘OTS’ (opportunities to see) and the threshold effect — the point at which advertising becomes effective. The choice of advertising media is generally strongly influenced by the comparative cost of reaching 1,000 members of the target audience the cost per thousand (often abbreviated to CPM, using the Roman numeral for 1,000). The timing of advertising campaigns depends on factors such as purchasing frequency and buyer turnover (new buyers entering the market).

     How much to spend on advertising is always problematic. Some companies use the

comparative-parity method — they simply match their competitors’ spending, thereby avoiding advertising wars. Others set their ad budget at a certain percentage of current sales revenue. But both these methods disregard the fact that increased ad spending or counter-cyclical advertising can increase current sales. On the other hand, excessive advertising is counter-productive because after too many exposures people tend to stop noticing ads, or begin to find them irritating. And once the most promising prospective customers have been reached, there are diminishing returns, i.e. an ever-smaller increase in sales in relation to increased advertising spending.

Summary

   Advertising sets several goals: informs people about benefits of different products by using methods to rely on like word-to-mouth or paid advertising; attempts to persuade the potential costumers to buy them and builds up the reputation of large organizations.

   Despite the fact that large companies have all means, like resources and knowledge, for setting up their own advertising departments, they tend to use specialized agencies which offer a variety of contracts and safer work places for employees.

   The stages that precede the creation of final advertisement are the allocation of a specific budget by the client company to the advertising agency, of a brief of objectives, strategy and indication of the target costumers, all these helping the agency in charge to choose the media and to broadcast the alternative advertisement as a test.

   It is also important to analyze different indicators in creating the advertisement: the percentage of target market, the frequency of the broadcasting, the threshold effect of the target audience which may be changed by buyer turnovers and of course the purchasing frequency.

   Another key point to be taken into account is the expenditure for the creation of the advertisement which may be found out after methods like comparative-parity, current sales revenue, but it remains important to be attentive at he moment the most promising prospective customers’ attention was reached, because further spending may lead to diminishing returns i.e losses.

Translation (Russian version) 

Как компании рекламируют?

Реклама информирует пользователей о существовании и преимуществах товаров и услуг, пытается убедить их купить эти товары. Пожалуй, лучшей формой рекламы выступает передача из уст в уста, которая происходит, когда люди рассказывают своим друзьям о преимуществах купленных ими товаров или услуг. При этом, практически ни один поставщик товаров или услуг не полагается только на это, используя вместо этого оплачиваемую рекламу. Действительно, многие организации также используют однообразную или престижную рекламу, которая спроектирована скорее для того, чтобы создать репутацию, чем для того, чтобы продавать конкретный продукт.

Несмотря на то, что крупные компании могли бы легко сформировать свои собственные рекламные отделы, писать собственную рекламу и самим покупать медийное пространство, они стремятся пользоваться услугами крупных рекламных агентств. Последние, вероятно, обладают большими ресурсами и большими знаниями в области аспектов рекламы и рекламной среды, чем одна компания. Самые талантливые специалисты по рекламе обычно предпочитают работать в агентствах, а не в индивидуальных компаниях, потому что это предоставляет им возможность работать с различными клиентами (контракты на рекламу товаров или услуг). Недовольной компании также намного проще передать дело другому агентству, чем уволить весь маркетинговый персонал.

Компания-клиент чаще всего передаёт рекламному агентству согласованный бюджет, сформулированные задачи рекламной кампании, также называемые сводкой; и общую рекламную стратегию касательно сообщения, которое необходимо донести до целевой аудитории. Агентство создаёт рекламу (слово advertisements часто сокращают до adverts или ads) и разрабатывает медиа-план, в котором указывается, какую среду (газеты, журналы, радио, телевидение, кино, плакаты, почта и т.д.) будут использованы и в каком объеме. (Для телевизионной и радиорекламы в английском существует специальный термин.) Агентства часто проводят альтернативную рекламу, которая проходит предварительное тестирование в газетах, на телевизионных станциях, и т.д. в разных регионах прежде чем будет принято окончательное решение для всей страны.

Медиа планировщики должны решить, какую долю целевого рынка они хотят охватить (как много людей увидит рекламу) и количество раз, которое, они, скорее всего, её увидят. Специалисты по рекламе говорят о частоте или ВУ (возможность увидеть) и об эффекте порога – точка, с которой реклама становится эффективной. Обычно, на выбор рекламной среды оказывает влияние сравнительная стоимость достижения 1000 представителей целевой аудитории, стоимость на тысячу (обычно, применяется аббревиатура CPM, в которой используется римская цифра 1000). Время рекламных кампаний зависит от таких факторов, как частота покупок и оборот покупателей (вхождение новых покупателей на рынок).

Всегда актуальной остаётся проблема того, как много тратить на рекламу. Некоторые компании используют метод сравнительного паритета – они просто держат свои расходы на уровне с конкурентами, тем самым избегая рекламных войн. Другие просто устанавливают свой рекламный бюджет на уровне с определенным процентом текущих доходов от продаж. Оба этих метода не учитывают то, что повышение затрат на рекламу или нециклическую реклама могут поднять текущие продажи. С другой стороны, чрезмерная реклама даёт негативный эффект, потому что после слишком большого количества просмотров люди перестают замечать её, или считают её раздражающей. Как только наиболее многообещающие, перспективные клиенты были проинформированы, начинается убывающий возврат, т.е. уменьшающийся рост продаж в соотношении с ростом затрат на рекламу.

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• by Shopify Staff

• Marketing

• Nov 9, 2022
• 2 minute read

Word of mouth marketing is a tactic used to generate natural discussions about and recommendations for a product or company. Essentially, getting people to talk about your brand, product, or business.

Everyone wants people talking about their products because those conversations are what drive business—often more than any other marketing effort.

Creating word of mouth

Given how valuable such conversations are, what can a small business do to get more to happen naturally? Here are a few tactics that work:

• Show your current customers how much you appreciate them, with a small gift that fits your brand or product
• Develop an interesting story about your company or products, why it was started, why you believe in what you do—something that others will want to retell
• Create shareable content that is useful or funny or controversial
• Create incentives for your customers to share information or special deals with their friends
• Give new customers who have been referred a little something extra, too
• Schedule special events for your customers and invite them to bring a friend

Building a business worth talking about

Of course, these tactics won’t work unless you’ve created a business that gives people reasons to talk about it. That means building in awe and delight. How can you do that? Here are some ideas:

• Remember names: The more you can make each customer feel special and valued, the more likely they will be to tell others about their experience.
• Give more than expected: That might mean throwing in a little freebie with every purchase, upgrading a level of service “just because,” or sending over a free dessert or amuse bouche to every lunch patron. Good surprises get people talking.
• Add a special feature inside your store: A water sports store could add a wave pool, a shoe store could offer free frozen yogurt while customers try shoes on, or a bookstore could install a print-on-demand kiosk.
• Include an activity: That could be an in-store workshop or a live demonstration or a trunk show or a celebrity event that customers are invited to. Get customers excited about coming to your store, and wanting to talk about it on social media.

Word of mouth marketing really comes down to delighting prospects and customers and encouraging—or incentivizing—them to attract like-minded customers. 

What Is Word of Mouth Marketing? FAQ

What is meaning of word-of-mouth marketing?

Word-of-mouth marketing is a form of marketing that focuses on getting consumers to talk about and share their positive experiences with a product or service with other people. It is one of the oldest and most effective forms of marketing and is especially powerful when it comes to influencing purchasing decisions.

What is word-of-mouth marketing examples?

• Referral Programs: Referral programs are one of the most popular forms of word-of-mouth marketing. They involve incentivizing customers to refer their friends, family, and acquaintances to your business in exchange for rewards.
• Social Media: Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be used to spread the word about your brand and products. Encouraging customers to share their experiences and reviews on these platforms can be a powerful way to generate word-of-mouth marketing.
• Influencer Marketing: Influencers are individuals who have a large following on social media platforms. You can work with them to promote your products or services to their followers.
• Customer Testimonials: Customer testimonials are a great way to generate word-of-mouth marketing. They are usually shared on your website, social media pages, and other online platforms to spread the word about your business.
• Events and Networking: Events such as trade shows, conferences, and networking sessions are a great way to meet potential customers and spread the word about your business.

Is Word of Mouth considered marketing?

Yes, word of mouth can be considered a form of marketing. Word of mouth refers to informal communication between individuals about products, services, or companies. It is an effective and powerful form of marketing and can have a great impact on the success of a business.

Why word of mouth is the best advertising?

Word of mouth is the best advertising because it is highly trusted. People are more likely to believe and take action on recommendations from people they know and trust, rather than from a business or advertisement. Additionally, word of mouth is extremely cost-effective, as it does not require a lot of money for advertising and promotion. Finally, it is one of the most powerful forms of advertising, as it can reach a much larger audience than any other form of advertising.

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Asked by: Watson Beer DVM

Score: 4.4/5
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Word-of-mouth marketing differs from naturally occurring word of mouth, in that it is actively influenced or encouraged by organizations. While it is difficult to truly control WOM, research has shown that there are three generic avenues to ‘manage’ WOM for the purpose of WOMM: 1. Build a strong WOM foundation, 2.

What do you mean by word of mouth advertising?

Word-of-mouth marketing (WOM marketing) is when a consumer’s interest in a company’s product or service is reflected in their daily dialogues. Essentially, it is free advertising triggered by customer experiences—and usually, something that goes beyond what they expected.

What is an example of word of mouth advertising?

Word of mouth marketing is when a consumer’s interest is reflected in their everyday dialogue. … 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.

How successful is word of mouth advertising?

In a recent study, 64% of marketing executives indicated that they believe word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing. However, only 6% say they have mastered it.

How do I advertise on word of mouth?

7 ways to implement word-of-mouth marketing in your strategy

34 related questions found

I’m sure your marketing strategy includes a lot of channels, but isn’t it a little bit true that one of the most successful forms is word-of-mouth marketing? Today we will focus on the definition, best practices, and tools that can help you with boosting your company’s word-of-mouth marketing strategy.

Let’s face the fact that we are all relying on word-of-mouth recommendations. We are more likely to believe our good friend that the product is reliable and worth buying than base our purchase decision on an advertisement.

Some statistics say that even up to 90% of purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Impressive, right? That’s why in this article, I will tell you a little bit more about word-of-mouth marketing, why it is essential, which tools can help you achieve viral ads, and what else to do to influence your customers.

Contents:

• What is a word-of-mouth marketing strategy?
• Why is word-of-mouth important in marketing?
• What are the benefits of WOM?
• How effective is word-of-mouth marketing?
• Word-of-mouth marketing examples
• How to start a WOM campaign?
• How can I build word-of-mouth advertising on social media?
• Similar types of marketing strategies
• Try word-of-mouth marketing with Brand24

What is a word-of-mouth marketing strategy?

Word-of-mouth marketing (also known as WOM marketing or WOMM) is a strategy companies use to promote their products and services. The idea behind WOMM is that people are more likely to trust recommendations from friends and family members than advertising.

There are two variants of WOMM:

1. Organic word-of-mouth: where consumers share information about products just because they like them.
2. Amplified word-of-mouth: where the brand loyalty is boosted by various marketing tactics, such as referral programs or influencer marketing.

As a result, companies focus on creating word-of-mouth buzz by providing their customers with an exceptional product or service experience. This can be done through word-of-mouth marketing campaigns, referral programs, and social media engagement. This marketing tactic can be an extremely effective way to generate new leads and build brand awareness – when done correctly.

Why is word-of-mouth important in marketing?

Before we find the answer to this question, first, I want you to ask yourself – who do you trust more: corporations or your friends and family?

Say, you are looking for a new car and have a friend who works at a garage – you will probably ask him for recommendations first before speaking to a car dealer.

Word-of-mouth advertising is trustworthy. Because the recommendations, rather from the company itself, come from real customers, it could be forged into a cost-effective form of marketing strategy. But be careful, and don’t be too greedy, because people will spot if a brand ambassador is really loyal to the brand or are they only doing that because they were paid off.

What are the benefits of WOM?

User-generated content should be very valuable to your brand, perhaps even more than your carefully created expensive advertisements. And with WOM marketing, you get a lot of user-generated content.

Here’s a list of benefits of word-of-mouth marketing:

• you build stronger relationships with consumers;
• if your campaign performs well, it’s much cheaper than other marketing strategies;
• it has viral potential;
• makes social proof for your brand;
• WOMM has been proven to increase conversions.

How effective is word-of-mouth marketing?

Some word-of-mouth marketing statistics say that over 20% of people talk about their favorite products with friends or family every day, and almost 80% of us do it at least once a week. That means organic word of mouth does exist, and even if not amplified by the brand, there’s a big chance your customers will recommend your products to their friends (if they like them, of course).

By encouraging organic word-of-mouth marketing, you can boost your sales and gain new customers cost-efficiently.

Word-of-mouth marketing examples

Before you learn how to start your own WOMM strategy, let’s check how other popular brands embraced word-of-mouth and viral marketing.

Netflix

Netflix does a fantastic job of engaging its customers on social media and encouraging organic discussions. I know, it’s much easier for such a big brand than for a small local company, but you should always learn from the best. And Netflix’s social media marketing is always on point.

To actively encourage people to discuss, the streaming giant uses stills from the most popular movies and series, sometimes in a meme format. Their posts gather a considerable amount of users, who comment with their favorite scenes, actors, dialogues, etc. This way, they create social proof and demand for Netflix services.

The example above shows exactly how a word-of-mouth marketing strategy works. Netflix uses other people’s thoughts to promote its services instead of advertising as itself. This post on Instagram just shows various celebrities sharing their thoughts on Stranger Things season 4 – and that’s enough to go viral.

Notice how close WOMM is to influencer marketing. The main difference is that you don’t always need influencers to use WOM marketing.

Nike

Another take on word-of-mouth marketing is to use branded hashtags as Nike does. The famous clothing company uses #JustDoIt to promote its products and, at the same time, encourages loyal customers to use it on social media.

A simple slogan like Nike can encourage user-generated content with the company’s hashtags.

With a clothing company like Nike, branded hashtags are beneficial on Instagram, where you can leverage word-of-mouth marketing in regular (non-influencer) posts showing your products.

Read also: How Effective is Nike’s Social Media Strategy?

Dropbox

Another brilliant example of WOMM is Dropbox’s campaign. It didn’t have as much money for promotion when the company started, so they were forced to use other channels.

They used a referral marketing tactic to drive more traffic and gave 500 MB of extra space in the cloud for recommending Dropbox to other people. This campaign generated a lot of positive buzz around the brand, and customers quickly spread information by word of mouth.

This is a classic example of encouraging organic word-of-mouth marketing. Dropbox provides a service, and if you tell your friends about it and they convert too, you get a bonus. And it’s not the company that is advertising directly to new customers, but their existing users are telling other people how good the product is. It’s a win-win.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has a similar case study as Nike. I’m sure you remember the hashtag #ShareACoke and personalized bottles with names.

The idea was brilliant. Coca-Cola started making bottles with their slogan “Share a Coke with” and added popular names so that everybody could get a personalized wrap on their bottle or can. You could either look for your name or gift your friends.

You could even find brand ambassadors at some festivals and other events with a particular machine that would make a customized label on the spot.

Ultimately, the hashtag #ShareACoke became very recognizable, and even though the campaign has almost 10 years now, people are still talking about it.

How to start a WOM campaign?

Now that you know what WOMM is, it’s time to plan your strategy. As you can see from the examples above, there are a lot of takes on word-of-mouth marketing. You can either use a mix of influencer marketing, branded hashtags, and referral traffic – or develop your own approach.

To start WOMM, you need a quality product. Don’t ever think about advertising with WOM techniques if you don’t believe in your work. How should others be certain of your product if you don’t believe in it yourself?

Then, you need triggers: mouth triggers, visual triggers, etc. – anything that will start a conversation. It can be a question, a meme, or something so unique that it gains enough attention that people want to share it via their social media channels. You can use emotional triggers, but be careful with controversies. Excellent examples of emotional stimuli are Christmas advertisements that embrace tradition and appeal to positive emotions.

Encourage user-generated content. A SaaS company can benefit from a case study prepared with a client. A sports brand can ask for photos with their gear put in use. Whatever that will show that consumers trust your brand and actively use your products. This way, it’s not you who is advertising your brand, but regular customers.

Don’t be afraid to ask for reviews and referrals. Your potential customers want to know how the end-users feel about your products, so you need to make sure they can read some positive comments. If you get negative reviews, try to resolve the problem to at least change it to neutral.

Encouraging positive customer interaction is a challenging task and can be achieved only if your products are of top quality and you provide amazing customer service.

Amplifying word-of-mouth marketing with weak products can backfire and cause more damage than a positive experience. Or rather – word-of-mouth will spread that your products are of poor quality.

So if you are sure of your products or services, you can start subtly strengthening the WOM on social media by encouraging user-generated content.

How to do that? Here are some ideas on how you can engage your social media followers to start building your online reputation.

Ask questions. Blunt messages, simple utterances, trivial sentences; they all are too dull for interaction. You may get a few likes, but that’s not enough to spark a conversation. If you ask questions, you show that you listen to your customers and want to know their opinion. And they will love to share what they think. The more comments you can get, the more social proof you gain.

Use humor and memes (if your brand’s tone of voice allows that). These types of messages tend to go viral. But be careful. If you are too coarse, you might lose your credibility. A proper dose of humor will get lots of shares, and people will be happy to relate to your ideas.

Jump in conversations as a brand. Use social selling techniques to find relevant discussions. If you answer in a polite tone and remain helpful, other people will back you up, adding to your social credibility.

Use influencers. Find brand ambassadors in your niche and establish partnerships to have a steady flow of traffic to your site. They will use word-of-mouth recommendations to share your products with their followers. Be sure that they can incorporate a natural language when advertising products; in another case, the followers will quickly realize this is a paid ad. The best partnerships are not based on money but on brand loyalty.

Similar types of marketing strategies

As I mentioned before, the closest tactics to WOMM are influencer and referral marketing.

Influencer marketing uses famous people (they don’t necessarily have to be celebrities, some micro-influencers can also give you a lot of valuable organic word of mouth) to advertise products and ideas. They will tag you on social media and share info about your brand with their followers. A continuous partnership can grow great brand ambassadors.

Read more: What is influencer marketing?

Referral marketing is an approach that uses a word-of-mouth strategy to inform other people about your products or services. In return, they get some bonuses. A great example of referral marketing is Uber – by recommending the app, you get free credits for rides.

Read more: How Referral Marketing Can Do Wonders For Your Small Business Brand

There’s also viral marketing, which is actually another type of WOM marketing. Virals are hard to force and require a very elaborate or specific element. They usually occur naturally because the advertisement is so good or unique that everybody starts talking about it.

Combining word-of-mouth and referral marketing

Referral marketing goes in pair with WOMM. These two strategies combined can give you a lot of valuable traffic and conversions.

Think of what you can offer your new customers as a free gift. This doesn’t need to be anything potentially significant – Dropbox gave away 500 MB, which nowadays doesn’t seem a lot, but it can hold hundreds of photos or PDFs.

Try word-of-mouth marketing with Brand24

Measuring your word-of-mouth campaigns is crucial to determine if they are successful or not. You need the right tool to monitor the web for your brand mentions and context analysis.

Why not try Brand24?

Brand24 is a media monitoring tool that tracks your brand mentions across the web and provides thorough analytics and can be super helpful when introducing the word-of-mouth strategy.

If you don’t use media monitoring, you cannot say if your word-of-mouth marketing works. You can try our tool for 14 days for free (no credit card required). For your first project, I recommend setting up monitoring of your branded keywords. This way, you will be able to track real conversations about your business, perform deep sentiment analysis, and discover the context of discussions.

Complete your WOM advertising with the right tool and get insights into what your loyal customers think about your brand.

Is word of mouth really the best form of advertising?

          Yes. Without question Word of Mouth IS the best form of advertising. This fact is widely known and accepted. The big question is: How do I capitalize on this fact and use it to expand my business?  

          Just knowing that Word of Mouth is important or telling all of your employees how vital good word of mouth really is to the business will never be enough to create the level of service necessary to WOW your customers.

The purpose of this article is to expand understanding of the basic factors making up great word of mouth and excite you, the business owner, so that your creative juices flow and ideas pop like a huge 4^th of July fireworks display and you get all excited about what can be done in your company to expand through word of mouth!!!

A few basic facts…

          If a business is providing adequate, normal, regular run-of-the-mill service they will get SOME word of mouth referrals. The way this works is that if, for instance, someone asks you where to go for dry cleaning or computer repair you will most likely want to give some recommendation. People generally want to be helpful and we all like to give advice, so we will give some answer, we will often refer someone to a place where we received simply mediocre service. The point is that if you are providing what is considered to be good, or acceptable service you can only expect a few referrals.  

          Really great word of mouth comes from a remarkable or memorable experience. Lets say that you have been in to your local veterinary hospital, or Thai restaurant and the experience was memorable you very possibly will not wait until some asks you for a good vet clinic or Thai place before you tell people about it. Your word of mouth becomes unsolicited. Have you ever done this or seen it done? I have seen people talking up their hair stylist or espresso stand to people who are bald or don’t even like coffee!

          Let there be no mistake, unsolicited word of mouth is what will really drive in more new customers. This is (or should be) the goal of any company. 

          On the other hand, unsolicited word of mouth DEFINITELY applies for bad service as well! Customers who are irate with a business will sometimes tell as many as 20, 30, maybe up to 50 people about their bad experience, with out ever being asked directly about the business.   

          So, when we are speaking about word of mouth, we must understand that what, exactly, we are going for is unsolicited, positive, word of mouth about your business.

Why IS word of mouth the most effective form of advertising?

          Well, the first answer is that word of mouth means that someone, probably someone who you know, is telling you that Olympic Pizza has the best pizza, or that Fred’s Auto Repair does fantastic and reasonable work. You’re hearing it from a person, someone that you know and (probably!) trust.

          Compare this with normal advertising: TV, Radio, news papers, magazines, web, direct mail, etc. Let me ask you this, as a consumer, do you BELIEVE what you see advertised? I mean really, if you get a flyer in the mail offering you a “low cost mortgage”, do you believe it? If you see an ad for a cheap airline ticket toFlorida, are you suspicious that it may be a scam? Do you wonder if the quoted price for the ticket actually includes things like airport fees, taxes and that your baggage actually gets to go with you?

          By far the majority of consumers, when they hear any advertisement, wonder: “What’s the catch?” We look for the fine print. We think, “If it sounds too good to be true, then it is!” We have all heard the pat phrase, “new and improved” so many times that the words don’t have meaning to us. The point is the very few people completely believe ANY regular advertisement. We know that ads all too often contain exaggerations, half truths, gimmicks and sometimes even complete fabrications. In case you haven’t noticed, this trend is getting worse, not better.

          But if someone you know, or better, someone you like, or even better, someone whose taste or opinion you respect, tells you that the Mocha’s Espresso stand on 4^th and Main is awesome, or that theNorthCascadeVeterinaryHospital is the best around you will listen. If you have a connection with the person telling you about a business it becomes much more believable. Another reason for this believability is that the person has no reason to mislead you. The person telling you about the fantastic service atNorthCascadeVeterinaryHospital probably doesn’t work there, or get commissions from them, so we reason that they don’t have any reason to mislead us.

          There is also a common statement that not only is word of mouth the best form of advertising, but it’s the cheapest. This brings up the question of how to determine how much it costs to attract a new customer, client or patient. Most businesses I see are sorely lacking in any effective method to track where their new customers come from, but at least they can say how many new clients they had in a month. Calculating the “cost of each new customer” is not too difficult, simply add up your entire expenses for advertising and marketing for a month and divide this by the number of new customers, and there you have it, you can now see how much you “paid” for each new customer. This is a great exercise, by the way and I highly recommend not only doing the calculations but sharing the results withALLof your staff.

          Of course if you are really on the ball and can track not only how many new clients you got in a month but HOW each new client heard of you, it is possible to calculate the cost-effectiveness of each form of marketing you use. (Look for a new blog entry coming soon on tracking new clients.) For example you can see how much your yellow page ad cost, and how many new clients it brought you and do the math. This is a very enlightening exercise and the most intelligent way to make decisions about where you spend your advertising dollars. 

          In either case I bet you will be surprised to see how much one new client “costs”.

          Word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing because it is more believable and the less expensive than any other form of advertising. 

Great word of mouth about your company makes all of your other marketing efforts much more effective.

          The above statement should be in huge bold CAPS. This is one of most important and grossly overlooked laws in all of advertising and marketing.

Let’s say that you have a spa. You are sending out all sorts of marketing messages; yellow page ads, a web site with search engine marketing, you’re in lots of travel guides, you attend chamber meetings, maybe you use billboards, you are using a whole host of avenues to get your name out there.

          Now let’s look at this from two possibilities, let’s say first that the overall word of mouth about your spa is awesome. If someone has already heard from a friend that the spa is great and then they see one of your ads, or maybe a special offer you are currently running, they are much more likely to respond. Positive word of mouth makes your other marketing more believable, more effective, more productive. A business will get a MUCH bigger bang for their advertising buck when they have great word of mouth.

          Once in a while I have heard people talking positively about an ad they saw or heard for a business or product. Your friend tells you about the great experience she had at a clothing store recently. A little later your with a different friend and you see or hear an advertisement for that same store, and you say: “Hey, isn’t that’s the place Sally went last week where she bought those cute new dresses?!”

The effect of great word of mouth on your other marketing efforts cannot be overstated! 

          A person may hear some good word of mouth about a company and at that time not need the service or product, but later when the need arises and they are searching or when they get exposure to an ad, they willTRYto remember what they heard and will respond.

          On the other hand, if the word of mouth about your spa is poor, then the money you spend on marketing will get LESS response. If a potential new customer has already heard some negative feedback from someone about the Bayside Spa and then they see an ad somewhere promoting the Spa, their tendency will be to discount it, or ignore it. They won’t listen to your message, their mind is already turned away from the business.

          Have you ever experienced this? If you have heard bad word of mouth about a company and THEN hear an advertisement for the company, what’s the first thing that flashes in your mind? The negative story you heard before, that’s what!

          How about this example, lets say you yourself had a very bad experience with a company (think telephone service provider, or maybe bank…). Now you’re sitting with a friend watching TV and an ad comes on for the company that you feel wronged you. What happens? In many cases just seeing the ad will elicit a negative comment from you to your friend! “That’s the bank that ripped me off!” “I used to have that cell phone service and I’ll NEVER go back to them!!!” Have you ever seen this, or done this yourself?

What can be done to improve your word of mouth?

          Here are two of the most effective (and rarely done!) things to do:

Follow up.

          Calling a client, customer, patient, back to see how they are doing is an AWESOME way to improve word of mouth. Has your doctor ever called you back to see how you were feeling? If they did, did it impress you? Have you ever been to a restaurant where the chef (or cook) came out into the dining area and asked the customers how they liked the food? This can be done in auto repair, chiropractic clinics, schools, nail salons, cleaning companies; really, the list of businesses that can make use of follow up contacts is endless. It does take some basic communication skills so that your follow up doesn’t make the customer angry, but it’s pretty simple. And the higher up the person doing the follow ups is, the more wow factor it imparts. Anyone who is doing follow up calls MUST be interested in what ever the customer has to say, positive or negative. I think that one reason that follow up calls are NOT done is because there is trepidation that the response will be less than positive. Who ever makes the calls has to be equally happy to receive positive or negative response, and be prepared with what to say and do if the response is negative. 

• “Did your shipment arrive on time, did you receive what you expected?”
• “How was your adjustment with the doctor last night? How is your neck feeling today?”
• “How was your chicken cordon bleu? Did you like the green beans?”
• “I know that yesterday was your first visit to see us, did things so as smoothly as you hoped?”

There’s an infinity of questions that you can ask.

          Follow up calls, done correctly; show the customer that you genuinely care about the product or service that was provided, that you care about the customer and that their complete satisfaction is important.

          Follow up calls can give you valuable feed back from your customers that you can use right now to make your product or service better.

          Remember that statistics show that only 1 in 25 unsatisfied customer will ever say anything to you about what they don’t like. (Although they may tell 25 other people what they didn’t like about you!) Asking them in a way that shows that you WANT them to tell what they liked or didn’t like REALLY works.

Compensation when things go wrong.

          Every company has things go wrong with clients from time to time. Customers get shipped the wrong thing, or someone’s steak is cooked wrong, or there is WAY too little chocolate in their mocha. How you handle it when things go wrong is HUGE. If a customer has to wait, or client came in to pick up a product (which you forgot to order for them), or what ever you did wrong, be sure to have on hand some form of compensation ready. I recommend buying $100 worth of $5 coffee cards, and also movie tickets, or restaurant gift cards and have them on hand to give out. I say have three types and values for the various levels of how badly you may have messed up (or how irate the customer is!) 

          Your company should have a set system for compensating irate customers. Create “tiers” of compensation, start with the coffee card, then the movie tickets, then the restaurant gift card. If the client has to wait more than a short time, use the coffee card: “Mr. Thompson, we are very sorry you had to wait so long today, here is a gift card for the “Mochas” espresso stand over on Fir Street,  thanks for hanging in there with us today!”

          You may not think that a $5 coffee card is going to make any impact, but it DOES. Your customers will feel appreciated, acknowledged, validated and recognized.

           I have gone over this idea with many businesses and everyone thinks it a great idea, but implementing it is not always a snap. From my experience the hardest thing is to get the staff to hand them out as much as I would like! Sometimes employees will get a little stingy with them, “Well, she only had to wait half an hour, and it wasn’t our fault she had to wait, so no card for her”. “I don’t want to waste the card on that person, or why give away five dollars…” are some of the things I have heard. Some times you get busy and just forget to hand them out…

          Let’s go back to an earlier article: Why IS word of mouth the most effective form of advertising?

          This was where we discussed the cost of a new customer, and if you did the calculations in that article you probably saw that a new customer may “cost” $50, $80, $100 or possibly a lot more.

          Well, how many people will your customer talk to about you if they receive a coffee card or movie tickets? Do you think that they’ll tell anyone? If you give out a $5 coffee card and the customer tells 7 people about it, how does that work out? You get the idea, giving out a $5 coffee card that results in even one new client is easily the “cheapest” form of advertisement ever! So, give the cards out when there is any even slight problem. 

          Back to our tiered system of compensation, the coffee card is for a small upset or inconvenience, the movie tickets for a bigger screw up on your part, the restaurant gift certificate is used for…you get the idea, figure out your own system and tiers. If you don’t like coffee cards you can use discounts for future services at your business, you can credit money to the clients account, give out free items, the list is endless. The stuff you give out does not need to be expensive to create a powerful effect. 

This is NOT only for irate customers!

          Do you have awesome customers or clients who you love? Give them coffee cards or what ever you decide for “compensation” once in a while! “Julia, I just wanted to say that you are the most awesome customer! Here, have a coffee card (or movie tickets, or what ever).” There doesn’t have to be any set system for this (like giving a gift card on a special holiday, etc), in fact random and unexpected tends to create more of a memorable experience.

Two more short footnotes:

• Employees who are encouraged to liberally compensate customers are happier employees! They feel empowered and will also give your business good word of mouth to THEIR friends.
• The better your word of mouth the higher employee morale will be and the easier it will be to hire great employees and retain them!!!

Word of Mouth Round-up!

          Well, are your creative juices popping like pop corn? Are you excited to implement some of your new ideas about improving your company’s word of mouth?

           I certainly hope so! I am always happy to receive any feed back, so if you have any great ideas on improving word of mouth, please send them in!

          And lastly if after reading this article you are thinking that you would certainly LOVE to implement some of these ideas, but it would be difficult because of a lack of time, or that some (or all!) of your employees may not embrace your enthusiasm, then with out question you are in need of a little help!

            If you call me directly I may be able to assist you in handling these barriers. There is no charge for calling, I am available to give advice anytime! I am located inWestern Washington, Pacific Time zone! My number is: 360-809-0661.

         Best of luck!

         Andy Porter  

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