Word of Mouth Marketing - Is there more to Word of Mouth Marketing than just hoping your customers will think highly of you?

Nothing to it..?

Word of mouth marketing? There is nothing to it. All of your customers think the world of you, talk about you endlessly to their friends, family and colleagues who, as you relax on your million dollar yacht in the Bahamas, are falling over themselves to give you all of their hard earned cash.

In the real world it is about enticing your customers and others to recommend your business, products and/or services effectively and widely enough that old, new and existing customers buy from you. It is like selling to one person who then sells on to two, three, four or more who, without favour, prejudice or commission, repeats the process.

Never Easy

The more persuasive, positive messages circulating about your businesses the more sales you will make. How to achieve this effectively will vary from one business to the next. It is never easy but you would get bored if it was.

Endorsements

Marketers seek to persuade the public to buy their client’s products and services through endorsements from trusted, highly thought of sports, film, TV stars and media personalities. Word of Mouth is more effective than endorsement because it often comes from someone known to the prospective purchaser. The amount of weight the recommendation carries depends upon the trust and respect you have for the person giving you the recommendation. You are more likely to be persuaded by your best friend telling you to buy something than the company selling it.

Trust

Word of Mouth is persuasive as it is based upon an element of trust. The strength of the recommendation is based upon its source and detail. That is not to say your best friend is the person you'll always listen to when it comes to making a purchasing decision. You might place more faith in your accountant, doctor, solicitor or some other professional.

Word of Web® (or ‘Wow’) is winning your customers and potential customers trust by publishing recommendations from the purchasers themselves without charge to, or expecting favours from, the business being recommended.

Customer Testimonials

Self-published customer testimonials can be effective and are worth having. The downside is that they lack credibility. You could open a forum or a chat site but this can be highly risky as disgruntled customers and employees may use this medium to voice their opinions in the most destructive way. You could try to control this yourself but censorship will put you back to square one. To add credibility without endangering your good name your testimonials need to come from Word of Web®.

Detail

The level of detail is important. Let us say you are looking to buy jewellery for your partner. Do you shop with a jewellers described as 'really good' or one that 'offers great service, a wide a range of jewellery and is price competitive"?

If you are looking to buy a gold ring then the same review with details of what the jewellery specialises in (in this case gold rings) would probably get you on the phone if not in the shop. Wow offers web pages to allow you to fill in the blanks and provide more detail.

Bad Word of Mouth

Bad Word of Mouth is the dark side of Word of Mouth. It is invaluable albeit hard to take. The best reviews are usually the negative ones. That said, nobody wants to air their dirty laundry in public. Word of Web does not publish negative reviews. Word of Web strives to be a source of reliable and quality businesses. Wow is not looking to scare people away from a business because of what could have been an isolated occurrence. For more on the dark side see Bad Word of Mouth.

Word of Web®

Word of Web assists you to obtain customer recommendations and feedback and publishes the recommendations on the internet. Word of Web® is word of mouth recommendations on the web. Wow established itself a few years ago focused on the Lower North Shore in Sydney. Since then Wow has grown to embrace most of Sydney and have commenced collecting reviews from exotic places such as Melbourne.

How do you generate customer recommendations?

1. Set up a link to Word of Web® on your emails and/or website and encourage your customers to send their reviews or feedback. You may wish to add that the review can be an anonymous and any serious issues or problems should still be directed to yourselves.

2. Word of Web® will draft your own web page to complete any gaps in the reviews received and provide additional information and/or a link back to your businesses website.

3. There is also the direct route. Some customers are happy to respond to a brief "how are we doing" enquiry and may even appreciate being asked. Trick is to keep it short and simple.

What does it all mean?

See separate piece on Bad Word of Mouth and Customer Feedback but the flip side of Word of Mouth is the potentially valuable information it can generate for your business. Word of Web® is in a position to collate that information for you and help you make some sense of it. You can never know too much about what your customers really think of you.

How much?

Links to Wow - FREE
Publish initial reviews received - FREE
Anything else – Enquire

Bottom Line

Most businesses recognise that Word of Mouth is a powerful marketing tool but do little to utilise it. You do not have to wait and hope that someone will ask one of your happy customers before they have time to forget what a great job you did for them. You can do more and Word of Web® can help you to do it.

Copyright

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