Word of Mouth Marketing should not be neglected as word of mouth marketing building strategy!

Word of mouth marketing or word of mouth advertising has been a technique that has been used for a very long time, long before we had social media or electronic means to communicate with one another. Even though the internet has infiltrated our society today, it is amazing to see how powerful and applicable this method of word of mouth marketing building strategy is even now.

The kind of marketing we see via technology is treated separately compared to word of mouth marketing, the difference has its strengths to a marketer or brand. The trick is to leverage both avenues to bring revenue and popularity to your brand.

Defining word of mouth marketing building strategy

Word of mouth marketing is an active method of influence and encouragement in a very organic fashion. Usually, a service, brand, or product is so widely discussed by the stakeholders or participants of the business within their circles or via an official event or gathering that it leads to employees and guests (customers, family) end up spreading the details and information about the product, service or brand to others. This method is also popularly called the ‘viral marketing’ technique.

The secret behind the success of this technique

Marketing strategy aiming at customers usually requires a very strong selling point or pitch to impress the listeners. But when we speak of word of mouth marketing, all you have to convince your audience about why what you are pitching is relevant and lucrative and that should do the trick because this is a very powerful way of getting your message across. It has a lot to do with the level of trust you can establish with your audience.

Once you successfully sell your idea to someone, you can be sure they will recommend it to someone else and those people will trust their source and the chain reaction continues. So, in simple terms, even you will be willing to buy a product if a close friend or family member strongly vouches for it. There will be no question of second-guessing or doubt.

Driving factors for word of mouth marketing

There are about two factors you can keep in mind when it comes to this method of marketing. First comes the concept of social currency. This concept operates behind the natural want for all human beings to want to be and feel special.

So, if you sell something in the form of it is exclusive, then you can be sure that word will reach a bunch of people wanting to get their hands on that. Another concept worth exploring is social triggers, hearing of these exclusive services or products will make us want to be a part of that experience or invest in it too.

Now that some of the concepts related to the word of mouth marketing have been explained, you could use this to include it in your marketing strategy. You could offer some exclusive info or inside secrets to your audience so they remain interested. This manner of marketing essentially does not call for aggressive marketing because people tend to remember what they heard or saw for a while without the need to even constantly advertise.

There are several ways of doing word of mouth marketing as we will discuss further, you can choose to implement whichever based on what your brand positioning is and what kind of audience you would like to target. And each of these techniques is different and how they need to be handled also varies.

Influencer marketing

Perhaps the most famous way of marketing today, this is a modern method wherein individuals who are essentially influential (outspoken, have large social circles, enterprising) are selected. An additional perk is if they also have a large social media following. However, this mostly depends on how many people these individuals know.

Brands approach such individuals and propose a partnership of sorts where these influencers speak highly of the brand they are associated with to their following and to their circle which in turn influences and creates interest in others to check that brand out. This particular method has seen a grand success and brands are more than happy to engage with influencers because there is not much expenditure involved on their part.

Affiliate marketing

You could call influencer marketing the child of affiliate marketing in a sense. In this method, a company will receive leads for incentives that are mostly financial in nature. With this type of marketing, success is based on brand recognition more than anything.

Partner with word of mouth marketing building strategy

In this method, two different companies work together. They each have their own separate identities and expertise and they will play to their strengths to make an alliance, thereby, helping each other build name. This is also an effective pathway to building new partnerships and acquiring new and more business.

It depends a lot on the relationship between brands. This is usually done within the company itself, but there is a good amount of effort put into getting into valuable contracts and partnerships.

Referral marketing

This will only be possible if you have customers who are as passionate about your brand and its services/products as you are. Because here, it largely depends on how your existing customers speak and act as advocates for your brand. Referrals are very effective because not only do people trust such recommendations, they also act on these suggestions made by people they trust. So, you can look at this as a means of obtaining organic customers. This type of marketing only gets stronger as you begin to incentivize referrals.

Building word of mouth marketing building strategy

Establishing word of mouth is a creative process, brands need to be tactful and innovative when they approach people and come up with a marketing strategy that has word of mouth in it. This approach needs to be unique to each brand based on the brand’s needs. The information you put out needs to be worth the buzz, people need to want to talk about it. Once they do, you as a brand must encourage this. Ideally, the buzz needs to be organic in nature, you can look at other brands for inspiration and see how they are doing this.