First of all, congratulations on your decision to expand to a new location! Having multiple locations allows you to expand your brand’s reach and reach new customers.
As much as you’d love to see customers swarming your location the moment you open your doors, you must also put in the effort to get the word out and increase foot traffic.
Brands and retailers both want the same thing: to increase brand loyalty and sales. However, this is not a simple task. Most retailers and brands spend a lot of money on various types of promotions in order to increase brand awareness and sales.
Word-of-mouth marketing proves to be a much easier and less expensive tool of marketing that helps you connect with customers.
An introduction to word-of-mouth marketing
Word-of-mouth is a type of marketing technique wherein your customers promote your products to their friends and family, hence helping you reach out to more customers. Whenever your customers recommend your products or happily become your brand’s advocates, this is where word-of-mouth comes into action.
Word-of-mouth marketing is done naturally through a variety of channels and methods. It is based on the stories and experiences of customers. In some cases, customers may share their experiences, which further helps other buyers to make a sound decision.
Word-of-mouth Marketing Examples
Word-of-mouth can be witnessed in many instances, like the ones shown below:
Shout-outs: Tagged posts, brand mentions, and engagement on Instagram or Facebook, along with affiliate content, are the strongest contenders for word-of-mouth marketing in terms of social media.
User-generated content: Different customers have different reviews after trying your product. Those who have received positive reviews may be motivated to write about your product or service in one of their blogs, perhaps mentioning how you helped them amplify their experience. They may also recommend your brand on social media by mentioning it in a group or chat, or directly when your customers share more about their most recent purchase with family and friends.
Reviews: These assets are critical for brands selling their products online as well as eCommerce platforms. In fact, 93% of customers read online product reviews before purchasing a product. With more 5-star ratings, you can get people to buy your products. Excellent reviews can also help your brand stand out.
Press releases: Many top brands and retailers choose to go with press releases, which garner a lot of praise and resultantly draw customers’ attention while increasing brand awareness.
Employee advocacy: If your employees are happy and believe in your brand’s mission, they can be your best advocates.
Brand ambassadors or influencers: This type of advocate’s content is rarely organic. However, you should keep in mind that influencer marketing is a powerful tool. According to statistics, 49% of customers rely on the recommendations of influencers.
Advantages of word-of-mouth marketing
1. Increased brand recognition
We’re sure they’re people who wish well for your brand and have no intention to switch to your competitor any time soon. These people are an asset for your business, as they make your brand known without your involvement. This raises your brand’s awareness and attracts new customers.
2. It increases brand trust and loyalty
You may not believe this, but 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family. While they may not buy your products right away, receiving positive recommendations on a regular basis will increase their trust in your brand and make them more likely to choose your products over competitors’.
3. Introducing you to your customers
You engage with your customers by sharing their photos and responding to their reviews and social media comments. You also demonstrate that you value their opinion and understand their needs and desires. This enables you to connect with your buyers more effectively.
4. Assists you in increasing sales
At last, word-of-mouth proves to be a massive sales driver. This is because people who intermittently come across your products and services through their kith and kin are more inclined to get curious and and believe in you.
Word-of-mouth generates $6 trillion in annual global spending and accounts for 13% of total sales. Excellent figures for organic marketing, don’t you think?
All good things, however, come to those who wait and invest in their brand. Following that, we’ll show you how to encourage your customers to provide more recommendations and user-generated content.
How to Promote Word-of-Mouth Marketing
1. Offer excellent products and customer service
This is an obvious choice. Of course, the better your product, the more you can expect people to buy (and recommend it to others). If customers enjoy your products, they will recommend them to their friends and family.
Furthermore, even if your products are the best on the market, if you provide poor customer service, your customers will never recommend your brand. Retail competition is fierce, so you must be at the top of your game.
2. Provide an exceptional in-store shopping experience
Shoppers are more likely to share unusual experiences, which means you must alter how customers interact with your products in-store. While eCommerce platforms make shopping easy and fun, most in-store marketing campaigns for shoppers go unnoticed.
You can provide an amazing experience to your customers by utilising an innovative solution such as Tokinomo. Consider one of the most engaging brand activations created with Tokinomo:
3. Curate and distribute user-generated content
Remember the Coca-Cola “Share a Coke with…” campaign? The brand received a positive response from users simply by writing different names on a can of Coke. The majority of people bought a can of soda and posted a picture on their social media accounts. Customers’ posts were commented on by brand representatives. Some of the content made by the users was also generously shared on the brand’s social media pages.
Engaging with customers and sharing their content encourages them to post more about your brand, resulting in a strong relationship.
4. Use incentives to encourage referrals
Why stop at word-of-mouth marketing if you want to take it a step further? Incentives can also be used to increase referrals. Because shoppers trust their friends and family, they are more likely to make a purchase when they receive a discount code from them. To get people to buy, you can offer discounts to both the person who referred the person and the person who was referred.
At the end of the day, word-of-mouth marketing is an effective way to boost customer loyalty and sales. If you want your customers to tell their friends and family about your products, you should interact with your current customers, give them great service in-store, and make sure they have a memorable shopping experience.
Conclusion
Opening a new store does not ensure more foot traffic. As we discussed before in this post, you will need to put in a lot of effort to raise awareness and attract traffic to your new site. Start putting the suggestions above into action, and see how you can garner more customers.
