Generate Word of Mouth in Six Steps

In this blog post, I'm going to talk about a series of six steps that you can use to effectively create word-of-mouth marketing. Online and offline marketing is essential to the success of any business, and it can be tough at times. Word-of-mouth is one great way to generate organic demand for your product or service without spending too much on traditional advertising. When done right, word-of-mouth can help achieve return on investment up to 16x that of traditional marketing methods. But it is not an easy task. That's why we developed this series of blog posts to help you learn how to attract and engage customers through word-of-mouth marketing.

Step 1: Define your target customer

The first step to generating word-of-mouth marketing is to determine who your target customers are. If you do not know who your market is, then you cannot effectively attract them, and you cannot effectively convert them into advocates. Your target customer is defined by who they are and what they do. You do not provide them the products they need, so you have to figure out what those needs are before you can begin marketing to them.

To define your ideal customers, answer these three questions:

1. Who will buy my product or service?

2. Why will they buy it?

3. Where can I find them?

For a local business, the answers to these questions may be as simple as defining your market territory and your ideal customer type (based on demographics such as age, gender, income bracket etc.). However for a global or national business this may not be as simple. If your business is targeted at a global market, then you have to define the differences in customer needs across different geographies. For example, if you have designed a new app for the smart phone market you might find that your customers in India and China may differ from those in the United States and Germany (and so on). The commonality between these customer segments will guide you but only if you clarify what makes them unique to each other.

For an online business there's an additional challenge for defining customer needs: targeting the "real" customer. It's tough because it's tough dealing with anonymous people online. It's like shooting vague fish in a barrel. Instead, you have to connect with your customers on a personal level. Use common sense and apply the 80/20 rule to evaluate which of your marketing activities are the most successful. This will help you know who your market is, what they like and what they do not like.

Step 2: Identify your brand advocates

So now that we have defined our ideal customer segment and what they need, it's time to find them! Marketing on social media has been termed as "word-of-mouth 2.0". Social media is one of the best ways to engage in word-of-mouth marketing because it helps us reach out to people who share similar interests and demographics with our target segment. Once you've identified your potential target customer, the next step is to determine which people in that segment have demonstrated a consistent pattern of positive brand advocacy.

The key to finding your brand advocates is to identify them by their language and their interactions with other people. Here are some of the ways that you can do it:

1. Look for people who are more likely to share your brand than others

For example, an e-commerce website will be more likely to generate word-of-mouth buzz if it's popular among users who are primarily interested in shopping at e-commerce sites like Amazon and eBay (e.g., customer who frequently shops from home). Conversely, a restaurant or clothing store would be less likely. 

2. Identify common interests or traits among your brand advocates

For example, if you own a local gym & fitness apparel business, you may be most likely to generate word-of-mouth buzz from people who concurrently exercise. Why? Because the fit and healthy people in your market are exuberant about health and fitness, so they're likely to be both excited about your product and willing to talk about it with their friends.

3. Identify other potential influencers in your market segment

For example, if you're an online education company, certain demographic groups like students are more likely to share their opinion of the company because they enjoy using its products. One way is by interacting with the company's users (e.g. reading customer feedback and blogs). 

4. Filter out the noise

It's not enough to look for your brand advocates online: you need to know who they are on a more personal level. So you could look at the Facebook pages of their friends and family members, read the comments on their posts, or even reach out directly to them via message or email. You could also search for niche forums where your customer base is likely to congregate (such as a subreddit about health, fitness, exercise or food).

You can also focus on specific locations by searching for keywords like "Toronto coffee shop" and searching for comments related in terms of location, price/value and choice of coffee shop.

In the end, your target customer should be someone who is: interested in your product, willing to spend money on it, and willing to talk about it with their friends.

Step 3: Develop an effective word-of-mouth marketing strategy

The most important part of your marketing strategy is that it has to be authentic . It has to come from you and from your customers, not from an automated system. You need a plan that helps you identify the right people and then makes it easy for them to share a recommendation with their friends.

Here are some examples of things that you can do to help your customers talk about your brand:

1. Encourage them to share their opinions with their friends and family members. For example, if you're a clothing store, you could send an email to all of your existing customers asking them to list the types of clothes they like best and why.

2. Offer discounts or loyalty points as incentives for sharing word-of-mouth with new people in your market segment.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Three simple steps for generating word-of-mouth online: define your market segment, find their brand advocates and develop an effective marketing strategy. Most importantly, be authentic and encourage your customers to talk to each other. People are more likely to talk when they feel like they're part of an exclusive club.

Let me know in the comments how you plan on developing word-of-mouth marketing or share any questions or concerns that you might have had while following this guide!

If you found this article helpful and would like to receive future updates and posts directly into your inbox, please subscribe to my mailing list using the form on the right side of my blog:  http://www.