How’s Word of Mouth Marketing an Imperative Tool and How a Brand can Boost it with a Loyalty Program?
November 30, 2021
Customers having a positive experience with a brand are always willing to convey their experience to their friends and family, and this little fact can get your brand more customers onboarded and a way better visibility as well. Nowadays, customers are much influenced by positive reviews and are always ready to give a try t the brands having customer’s trust!
Explaining further, companies today are highly dependent on customer satisfaction and majorly looking for better ways to make them feel happy. As happier and engaged customers become an effective medium to market any business. So, we have a basic goal to make customers feel happy and that can be done through providing them rewards & perks either on their purchases or referrals. Here, word of mouth marketing can play a vital role in letting a brand reach more customers. As a brand, if you’re offering rewards even on referrals, you can see your customers sharing their positive brad experiences with others more enthusiastically. Let’s decode each aspect and explain the meaning and importance of work of mouth marketing.
What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?
As an individual, ever shared a positive experience with any product, service or brand with your friends and family? We’re sure you would! The process of spreading the word or sharing the right information about anything you encountered with is word of mouth marketing. In other words, it is basically the organic spread of information about one’s brand, product or service. Now how is it such a benefit for the leading brands? Customers with a positive experience always share and that builds up to an authentic way of influencing new customers to join your brand. As a matter of fact, value of a single word-of-mouth impression is anywhere from 5 to 100+ times more valuable than a paid media impression and that could be a major reason for a brand to rely on this aspect!
How Word-of-Mouth Advertising Works?
Being considered as the most loved aspect for brand advertising, word-of-mouth marketing enables one to spread good reviews to a larger chunk of audience without investing in any paid advertising mediums. It is therefore an effective and efficient means to reach more customers in relatively less time. A stat says that 71% people are more likely to purchase based on social media referrals and believe recommendations from friends and family. The most influenced community in these cases are millennials, as they’re 115% more influenced than through a classic marketing medium. What’s more? People are five times more likely to recommend your product to their friends and family when they have a great customer experience.
How’s Loyalty Program playing a vital role here?
As we discussed above, customers spread the word of their positive experience once they’re completely satisfied and happy with a brand’s services. To make them satisfied, one must have a loyalty program to value and reward their customers. Companies around the globe are utilizing loyalty programs to grow and enhance their organizations. Playing a major role in retaining existing customers and paving a path to bring in new customers onboarded, loyalty programs are more than what to you think!
Though you may think it’s an expensive affair to implement but, firstly it’s not taking all your capital and secondly, it’s an investment worthwhile! The expenses occurred in implementing a customized loyalty program for your brand will be soon covered in the profits you’ve received in your business. Furthermore, it can boost a brand’s reputation and increase sales by including right rewards at the right time, targeted to a specific customer base. For a better usability, your loyalty program must fulfill the following criteria-
- Providing seamless customer experience
- Being easy to use
- Simplified approach to target customers
- Being user-friendly
Remember, a loyalty program isn’t about your brand, it’s about the customers. Surely, it must have an identity of the brand but, the basic aspect to be covered should always be about benefitting the customers.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategies to Consider
Being a brand willing to enlarge their user base it’s imperative to look out for the right strategies that leads to positive word-of-mouth marketing. Social media is an effective medium wherein people love to share their brand experiences and look around for better ideas to promote a brand. Let’s checkout a few strategies to encourage word-of-mouth marketing –
- Incentivize customers to share about your brand
As social media is a real powerful tool to not just connect with people but, to highlight and promote your brand too! If a customer shares their views on a brand/product/service through their social media account, it seems authentic and effective at the same time. As a brand, you can incentivize your customers on each review shared. This can be easily done with the help of loyalty programs.
- Encourage customers to share testimonials
Customer reviews are the purest form of marketing and the most organic & authentic too! Once you get to know that a customer is quite happy with your services or products, you can encourage them to add testimonials, leave reviews and provide product ratings as well. Customer testimonials and personal recommendations make customers believe in a brand more firmly than ever!
- Value customers by offering unique rewards
Not every customer would like to have a cashback or a discount voucher on next purchase, some might be interested in offers on specific brands or require some other rewards which could serve a purpose for them. You need to simply understand a customer and provide them exactly what they need. These unique rewards can be given in exchange of putting out positive customer reviews for a brand.
- Develop an emotional connect
Whenever a brand builds an emotional connect with the customers, there are relatively better chances of having them stick to you for a longer run. If customers strongly recommend and believe in your brand they are less likely to turn to your competitors. Focus on creating meaningful experiences that result in positive emotions, so that the customers instinctively choose you over others.
Turning your Loyal Customers into Brand Advocates
How can you encourage a customer to spread a word about your brand? As a brand, you can foster word-of-mouth marketing through incentivizing customer’s purchases, reviews etc. with a smart loyalty program in place. Have a look at the following aspects wherein you can reward your customers and encourage them to stay loyal with your brand.
- Offer points for writing reviews and encourage customers to share about their product experience post purchase.
- Make customers engage in social media contests and offer prizes to the winners.
- Provide new options for friend referrals programs and reward the customer referring with varied discounts and extra gifts.
- Create tier programs and special perks for the customers.
- Incentivize social media activity by offering multiple benefits to the customers.
Wrapping Up
It’s imperative for your brand to have better visibility and a larger customer base. To fulfill this, you might have a variety of paid marketing options but, word-of-mouth marketing can be considered as the most effective way to connect with your customers and have new ones trusting your brand as well. Get a smart, customer-oriented loyalty program to work for your brand and encourage your customers to showcase their positive experience to others in their friend list.
Reward customers to make them your regulars!