Word of mouth is not enough - Word и Excel - помощь в работе с программами

Word of mouth has always been powerful thanks to the trust consumers place in their coworkers, friends, and family. However, in the digital era, word of mouth has been extended to include online interactions and engagement via social media and social review sites. These are “places” consumers go to learn about brands, products, and how other customers use and experience them. In fact, according to HubSpot, consumers typically have 90 conversations a week regarding different brands. They not only trust brand recommendations from their friends and families (90%), they also trust consumer opinions they find online (70%).

The evolution of word of mouth occurred at the same time as other seismic shifts in how consumers relate to brands. Advertising now bombards them nearly around the clock from numerous marketing channels across multiple devices. Brands cannot rely on word of mouth alone to strengthen and grow the loyalty of your customer base, lift brand awareness, or improve sales. It’s a powerful tactic, but it does have some downsides.

Akin to influencer marketing, word of mouth by its nature necessitates independent and authentic reactions. You will never be able to control what’s being said, who’s saying it and when, or who they’re saying it to.
Even with more proactive advertising tactics also in play, it takes time to raise awareness about your brand and educate customers about how you can alleviate pain points or add value to their lives. If you aren’t using other marketing techniques and leaning only on word of mouth, it will take even longer.
Relying solely on word of mouth means there’s an array of touch points throughout the audience’s day where they simply don’t intersect with your brand. It leaves them open to being influenced by other brands, including your competitors. Any strategy you use to encourage positive word of mouth needs attention and effort to ensure success.

In short, word of mouth can’t get the job done alone — but it’s nevertheless an important factor to stay on top of and leverage as part of your marketing strategy.

4 Tips to Make Word of Mouth Work for You

1. Take Control with Radio

Word of mouth relies on trust and authenticity, but you don’t have to wait for reviews or commentary to pop up. That’s part of why we recommend endorsements from radio personalities — it taps into the connection between station talent and the audience, and relies on the trust they’ve already built. You can also use client or customer testimonials in your radio spots to spread a positive message using real, related voices.

2. Encourage, Collect, and Share Positive Customer Reviews and Testimonials

As with referrals, your larger marketing strategy ought to include a plan for inspiring positive word of mouth. Whenever a customer is happy, prompt them gently to leave a review, rating, or comment. However, be careful about offering some kind of reward as motivation — it’s disingenuous and can backfire on efforts to improve word of mouth.

3. Regularly Monitor Your Online Presence

There’s a lot to be learned about your target audience by perusing reviews and commentary about your business. At the same time, negative reviews noting problems they’ve had with your company need to be addressed in a timely, professional manner. Always be respectful, and avoid wording or tone that could be perceived as condescending. You have the opportunity to turn a negative brand experience into a positive one, and avoid similar negative experiences in the future.

4. Remember — You Can’t Build a Positive out of a Negative

Word of mouth, customer reviews, and ratings are always going to stem from the experiences actually had with your brand. That means that if your customers are constantly running into issues on the path to purchase, they’re not going to have nice things to say. In turn this discourages the next prospect from choosing your brand. In other words: you must offer quality products, reliable services, and solid customer support in order to create positive word of mouth. It’s that simple.

Word of mouth can have a huge impact on the success of your business, but you can’t rely solely on word of mouth to thrive (or even survive). Positive word of mouth needs to be encouraged and amplified, especially through mass reach media like radio advertising. Your online reputation must be monitored, and negative reviews need responses that earn customers back. Most of all, you can’t generate positive word of mouth if your customers aren’t having positive experiences. Be sure they’re receiving the best you can offer. Bear these tips in mind, and word of mouth can work for you and support your overall marketing efforts.

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If your business enjoys strong word-of-mouth referrals, congratulations! It speaks volumes about your brand. Not to mention, it’s powerful: 92% of people say they trust recommendations from family and friends above any other advertising, Nielsen’s Consumer Trust Index reports.

So why on earth would you want to do more — especially if it’s working for you?

It’s a great question, and one we hear at Zoe Marketing & Communications. We have 15+ years of experience in digital marketing plus 35+ years in traditional advertising. Through all that time and change, we’ve seen drawbacks for companies relying solely on word of mouth.

In this blog, we harness this experience to highlight word of mouth’s power and pitfalls, such as:

It’s often unsustainable on its own
Your message can get muddled
It’s hard to control who your message reaches
It’s tough to quantify
Negative word of mouth can be extra derailing

By the end, you’ll still feel confident that word of mouth is beneficial! But you’ll also feel more empowered to combine it with digital marketing to fortify your business.

The perks of word of mouth

No doubt: Word of mouth is fantastic. It’s an endorsement, which every business is seeking. It can also fast-track a potential customer’s deliberation time. That’s because they’re trusting the word of a family member, friend, colleague or acquaintance. The stats support this:

It leads to 5 times more sales than paid media
It results in about 13% of all sales
88% of people put the «highest level» of trust in recommendations from folks they know
64% of marketing pros even say it’s the most effective form of marketing

While word of mouth is huge, it’s not enough for many companies to meet revenue goals. And in the cases where it is? There’s an opportunity to expand your reach even more through targeted digital marketing. Let’s pivot to a few ways word of mouth comes up short.

For all its good, putting all of your marketing eggs in the word-of-mouth basket can have drawbacks. Here’s a look at some top challenges.

1. It’s often unsustainable on its own

Over the years, local businesses have told us, «I don’t need to do marketing. I just have word of mouth.» Which is great — until it possibly isn’t.

All businesses try to forecast revenue in any given month. When it’s based on the whim of other people recommending you, there can be more fluctuation.

The trend may keep up for a while. But things can change on a dime — especially in the unpredictable pandemic era. It can be short-sighted to rely on word of mouth alone.

Pairing word of mouth with digital marketing gives another referral source. Ideally, it’s a constant «drip» of marketing — unlike turning a faucet on or off. So if something «breaks,» you’re primed and ready.

2. Your message can get muddled

Word of mouth is a bit like the old game of «telephone.» You’re not sure exactly what people first heard or their expectations. You have far less opportunity to control the message.

Granted: Your referral probably heard something positive about you. But maybe the person giving the referral got something slightly «off» or didn’t offer enough detail. Inaccuracies can be common in word-of-mouth referrals.

With complementary digital marketing, however, you can tailor that message — whether in the ads you create or the landing pages you send people to. It creates clarity for key prospects.

3. It’s hard to control who your message reaches

That transitions into the next point. With word of mouth, you also can’t control who your message is reaching. You’re relying on the people who do hear about you to like whatever they heard and reach out. And it then takes more effort on your end to vet them.

Quality networking doesn’t magically happen. For instance, someone may rave about a great plumber to a friend. But maybe they didn’t talk money, and that plumber is out of the friend’s budget.

Some prospects will pan out, but inevitably, others won’t.

Digital marketing fills the gap by targeting your message to a specific audience. You can hone in on geographic location, age, gender, interests, income and recent online behavior.

4. It’s tough to quantify

How much of your business came from word of mouth last year? In the past few months? This gets tricky. Evidence is often anecdotal — or, if new clients fill out a form saying where they heard about you, you’ll get some sense.

Still, analyzing those leads is more challenging and unpredictable than using trackable, measurable digital marketing methods.

5. Negative word of mouth can be extra derailing

Particularly in the world of online reviews. Of course, when that feedback is positive, it’s terrific: People search for you and quickly find glowing referrals on Google Business Profile or Yelp.

But unfortunately, not all word of mouth is positive. Negative reviews can be harder to combat if you don’t also have a solid digital marketing presence.

After all, those reviews can give people pause and make them feel less confident about doing business with you. Even when you’ve respectfully and publicly responded to the complaint. (Which is worth doing, but not always read.)

Again, it comes down to controlling your message — and building up public esteem.

Next steps to expanding beyond word-of-mouth marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerhouse. But, even if you’re fortunate enough to have lots of it, it’s savvy to augment it with digital marketing to avoid common pitfalls.

In this blog, we covered five word-of-mouth shortcomings, including issues with sustainability, messaging, targeting the best audience, quantifying your leads and handling negative reviews.

Ready to diversify your word-of-mouth marketing? Talk to your advisor at Zoe Marketing & Communications. We’ll use our digital marketing expertise to tailor a plan that fits your needs.

Still learning about digital marketing? Discover how it can help your business in these articles:

Are digital ads worth it for my marketing strategy?
How can digital marketing help you achieve your business goals?

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It’s hard not to be impressed when you hear someone grew their business via word-of-mouth. After all, if a company can rely solely on customer recommendations to sustain or even scale, that’s a clear indicator its product or service is pretty damn good.

But while word-of-mouth marketing can be effective (and also usually cheap, or even free), it has its limits. Sure, it may help an entrepreneur launch their practice or earn a small retailer those crucial first sales, but it’s unlikely this tactic alone will provide the reliable, sustainable stream of business established organizations need to generate consistent revenue.

But this doesn’t mean you should trash your word-of-mouth marketing strategy altogether (especially if it’s driving results). Instead, it’s important to understand when word-of-mouth alone is least effective and how you can boost your business results by including it among a more holistic strategy.

Before we delve into why (and when) word-of-mouth marketing isn’t always enough, let’s cover a few basics.

What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

Word-of-mouth marketing refers to any type of recommendation a satisfied customer provides to a prospective customer. This can be written (an online review) or oral (a casual conversation).

Because buyers are more likely to trust other buyer experiences than messages shared by a company, word-of-mouth is one of the most useful tools for establishing credibility and growing brand recognition.

Here are a few examples of word-of-mouth marketing:

Customer reviews on third-party sites (Yelp, Google, G2, Capterra)
Recommendations via social media conversations
Blog posts that list and link to one or more products or services
Satisfied customers sharing their positive experiences with personal contacts

Keep in mind, the active ingredient in word-of-mouth marketing’s success is authenticity. For example, a shocking 91 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds and 79 percent of 35- to 54-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, according to data from BrightLocal. But as soon as it’s obvious a reviewer was paid for their feedback, trust levels begin to dip.

What are the Drawbacks of Word-of-Mouth Marketing?

Word-of-mouth has plenty of benefits and is an essential part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. But it also has a few disadvantages, which is why it often performs best in conjunction with other efforts.

Here are a few common drawbacks:

It can take a long time.

Successful marketing requires the right message in the right place at the right time. While word-of-mouth marketing might tick the boxes for “right message” and “right place,” its timing isn’t always best.

Take, for example, an HR professional telling another HR professional about their positive experience using new workforce management software. While the second person may be interested in learning about the product, or even in the market for a new solution, it could be several months before they finally get around to following their colleague’s recommendation — if at all.

It limits your reach.

How many existing happy customers do you have? How many of those customers would be willing to review your product or service, or tell their friends about the success they’ve experienced with your business? And how many of those word-of-mouth marketing interactions will drive prospects to your organization? And how many of those leads will actually convert?

While it’s almost impossible to earn a conversion rate of 100 percent through any single marketing tactic, it’s especially tricky with word-of-mouth marketing. You’ll always be limited to the number of satisfied customers willing to evangelize your offering.

It can spread misinformation.

A simple mention of the term “negative online reviews” can send some business owners into a full-blown anxiety attack. While everyone wants more reviews, nobody wants to deal with the bad ones. And the only thing worse than a bad review is an untruthful one.

Word-of-mouth marketing can trigger a release of inaccurate information that’s misleading at best and reputation-damaging at worst. Of course, you can respond to reviews, flag inaccurate or offensive content and do your best to boost your reputation through other means. But if you’re relying solely on word-of-mouth marketing and then something goes amiss, you’ll be in a tight spot.

It isn’t targeted.

A positive review may go semi-viral, earning you plenty of incoming traffic from highly qualified buyers, or it might land on deaf ears. A recommendation might reach precisely the sorts of buyers most likely to benefit from your product or service, or it might be shared to a network of people in an entirely different role or industry than your ideal buyers. There’s really no way of knowing.

While word-of-mouth marketing can help spread your brand name around, where it’s shared and who hears the message is largely out of your control. This sometimes results in unqualified leads and lengthy periods of radio silence.

It’s difficult to measure.

You can usually measure the effectiveness of online reviews and recommendations through analytics. Many third-party review sites give businesses access to an internal dashboard and, even if they don’t, you can check your referral sources through your marketing automation software to determine what’s driving traffic and leads.

But when it comes to tracking word-of-mouth marketing offline, it’s pretty much impossible to quantify. You can’t be everywhere everyone is talking about you, no matter how hard you try.

5 Cases When Word-of-Mouth Marketing Isn’t Enough

Here are a few scenarios when word-of-mouth marketing alone isn’t recommended.

1. You’re a well-established brand.

Once you’ve achieved a certain level of brand recognition, word-of-mouth may get your name on the short list, but it won’t make the sale. In this case, you need to delve into multichannel efforts that can help amplify the movement your word-of-mouth efforts began.

2. You need to generate revenue fast.

As previously mentioned, seeing results from word-of-mouth marketing can take a long time. And if your business is in a position where you need to increase deal velocity, word-of-mouth efforts alone aren’t going to get you the outcome you need. Instead, you need to make sure your prospects are hearing the right messages at the right times to keep them moving (quickly) through the buyer’s journey.

3. You need to prove the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

If senior stakeholders are bearing down and demanding results, it’s not the time to experiment with only using word-of-mouth efforts — especially since they can be so challenging to measure. Instead, it’s critical you stick to initiatives you can monitor closely for the sake of performance management as well as reporting.

4. You’re trying to enter a new market.

If you’re attempting to break into a new sector, you may not have enough relevant customers to make a word-of-mouth campaign worth your time. While having existing clients share their success stories can be helpful when trying to stake a claim in a new market, you need to ensure you’re also creating highly targeted content tailored to the new decision-makers you’re hoping to reach.

5. You have a complex set of products or services.

If your offering is complicated to explain, you can bet your customers aren’t doing it justice. While their pure delight may be enough to drive someone to check out your product or service, you need to spread plenty of factual, educational messages about your product to help counteract any misinformation.

Word-of-mouth marketing can be wildly powerful and is one of the most useful tools for organizations of all sizes that want to increase brand authenticity and earn prospects’ trust. However, this tactic alone is rarely enough to drive consistent qualified leads and keep your business steady and growing. By understanding the limits of word-of-mouth efforts and identifying how to build it into a larger, more holistic strategy, you’ll be well-positioned to meet your goals.

The Author

Carrie Dagenhard

Carrie is a seasoned content strategist who worked as a department editor and music journalist before making her foray into inbound marketing as a content analyst. Carrie works hard at crafting the perfect content strategy for clients and using her hard-hitting journalism skills to tell your brand’s unique story.

Why Word of Mouth is Not Enough

When you limit yourself to word of mouth, you limit your audience, your authorship of the message, and the value of your contacts.

Just look at the numbers. The number of people coming to your store is X. The number of people attending an event is Y. The number of people who are going to discuss that event with their friends is Z. These are smaller and smaller numbers—do you really want your marketing to rely on that fraction?

If you’re relying on customers to share your message, not only are you unable to control who it’s going out to—you’re unable to control what the message is. Who do you want to be in control of the conversation? You or a handful of your customers? How about competitors?

And if you take ownership of the conversation, contacts become more valuable. For example, my staff ask every customer if they receive our newsletter. Subscribers are usually more valuable than non-subscribers, and while word of mouth is powerful, it won’t drive people toward a newsletter.

That’s the best approach: generate contacts, then support them.

If every contact leaves an impression, online and IRL, you need to both actively generate those contacts and have resources in place to support them.

Generating Contacts: Social Media

We focus on social media because it corrects all the shortcomings of word of mouth: we can easily control the audience, the reach, and the message. You’re able to direct the age range, the city, the gender—you can really control the conversation.

Timing is key. Test the waters and see what works. Check the readership stats on social media and e-newsletter sites. For example, we found that sending the newsletter at the beginning of the week resulted in lower readership and preregistrations.

Supporting Contacts: Yelp and your Website

To support the contacts you generate, start with Yelp. At least here in the Bay Area, Yelp is a part of daily life. You don’t get a haircut, you don’t go eat somewhere, you don’t even go to a park without checking Yelp. And Google just sends people there. Hate Yelp? That’s fine. You still have to do it. Because Google.

Second, your website. If you only have a single page with no images, if your hours aren’t listed in the top third of your homepage, if it’s outdated or disorganized, potential customers will think that’s reflective of your shop.

We use Weebly, but Wix and Squarespace are also great. For newsletters, Constant Contact or MailChimp are affordable on any budget and have customizable templates. I’m not a tech person, but I’m able to easily craft newsletters and manage my website by myself.

If there’s just one thing you should do to start, it’s this:

Look at your online presence with fresh eyes.

See it from the point of view of a brand new customer. Look at your website and start updating. Make sure your Google and Yelp pages are updated with the correct hours. Be posting online every day.

Otherwise, you’re letting money walk out the door.

Anna Cebrian is the owner of an Advanced Plus location and an Eisner-nominated comic book shop. Before joining the industry, she earned an MBA in e-business from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelors in Art from Whittier College.

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