Word of Mouth Marketing

As internet usage grows and as more and more people become internet savvy, we  see a continued rise in online sales and advertising. The internet is a great place to showcase your services or products, but statistics show that word-of-mouth is still one of the best marketing tools to expose your products or services and, more importantly, create a sale. There are various low-cost ways to market your service or product by word of mouth. There are a few things to consider first:

1. Your services , product or company must be memorable.

If no one remembers you they can’t tell anyone else. Create recognizable logos for you company or product. Create a catchy tag line for your business (ex. Nike – Just do it). Help people remember you for what you do! Sometimes, the uniqueness of your product or services will be memorable on it’s own (Ex. The Rubik’s Cube).

2.  Your services, products or company must be reliable.

Word of mouth can make or break you! If you make a concerted effort to generate some word-of-mouth sales, you better have your customer services skill and procedures in order. A customer that feels that have received sub-par service or that your product is not all you said it was…. you may quickly see how negative word-of-mouth can spread twice as fast. People will give you bad ‘press’ with greater speed and quantity, because they have negative feelings about your company. Negative emotions are usually a greater motivator than positive emotions, in relation to marketing. People must feel that they can easily contact your company if there is a problem.

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Word-of-mouth recommendations can move consumers to make a purchase. Word-of-blog, on the other hand, is far less persuasive.

According to Mintel, 34% of US Internet users who bought a product or service based on a recommendation got that tip from a friend or relative, while one-quarter bought based on advice from a spouse or domestic partner.

Lower on the list were bloggers and chat rooms.

While bloggers may bring buzz to a product, converting the buzz to sales is another matter—unless, of course, the blogger is a friend.

eMarketer.com