How to Enhance Your Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Using a Successful Influencer Strategy
How to Enhance Your Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Using a Successful Influencer Strategy
What is Word-of-Mouth Marketing?
Word- of- mouth marketing is when a consumer talks about and shows interest in a company’s product or service in their daily conversations. Essentially, it is free advertising triggered by customer experience.
Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth marketing. This is where one person tells others a story about a real event or something related to the product or services.
What are influencers?
An influencer is a person with the ability to influence potential buyers of a product or service by promoting or recommending the items on social media. An influencer establishes trust with their followers, builds credibility in a certain industry and attracts many viewers while motivating them to make purchases.
Benefits of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
92% of people around the world say they trust recommendations from family and friends over any other form of advertising. Customers are more attached to a company when they feel that their voices are being heard which is why word-of-mouth marketing works so well.
It creates a loyal fanbase. Because of this customer’s won’t just buy or use your service and forget, they will engage with the brand. Loyalty = conversions. When customers are loyal to you, they are likely to make repeat purchases and they’ll spread the word about your brand, influencing people's decisions.
The Importance of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Word –of- mouth marketing is estimated to account for 13% of consumer sales. Word- of- mouth marketing doesn’t just stop after one interaction. One person will tell someone about a product and then that person will spread the information and so on, making it a great vehicle for exposure.
Recommendations based on word-of-mouth marketing are a great tool for any business. This is because they come from a source that is already familiar to us and due to the “buzz” worthy user-generated content can induce, they’re more trustworthy and valuable.
This is how you increase sales. Do you use word-of-mouth marketing?
Why is influencer Marketing important?
It can be difficult for brands to get attention on social media. This is largely because, businesses, no matter the size, have created a large amount of noise online making it hard to penetrate to stand out from the crowd.
Influencer marketing involves collaborating with popular and relevant influencers in your industry to promote your brand and increase sales.
Influencer marketing is important because it:
- Amplifies brand awareness by having a massive reach online to loyal followers.
- It has precise targeting, hitting your niche or industry right away without going through multiple channels.
- It has enhanced credibility and trust. The biggest power of influencers is the trust their followers have in them.
- They have increased audience engagement. This will increase the number of likes and comments on your brand.
- improved website traffic. Because influencer marketing increases brand awareness this ultimately drives more visitors to your website.
- Lastly, increased conversions (leads/sales). Influencers have the power to drive more people towards your product or services.
Now that we know how word-of-mouth marketing works and the importance of the influencer, how exactly do these things work together to drive sales and expand your business reach?
How to Get Influencers to Drive Your Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy?
There are three things that form a successful word-of-mouth marketing campaign.
- Understanding influencers
- Finding the right influencers
- Giving them a talkable story (storytelling)
Understanding Influencers
Influencers are the key to word-of-mouth marketing. They are essential people who share stories 24/7. The tricky but crucial part is getting them to tell stories about your brand or product.
Influencers share stories to bond. They like to try new things and share stories about their experience with it. They are also wanting to feel like they are sharing more than they are selling a product or service, which is why storytelling is extremely important. You want to avoid the sales pitch with them.
Finding Influencers
Most influencers will come to you. If you set the bait correctly, they will come. Influencers are looking around for information about products and services all the time. They are looking for new stories to consume. Make sure your brand has a good story behind it and is worth talking about.
Giving them a talkable story
You must figure out what story to use for your industry and preferred niche of influencers. Your story must be interesting, relevant and authentic to catch their attention.
Once you know and follow these three key steps you are on your way to enhancing your word-of-mouth strategy using influencers!
How Does this Work for Your Industry?
There are influencers for every industry and every niche out there, you just need to find them! For example, if you are in the home building industry, there are many influencers that transform houses and document their experience with contractors etc. Maybe this is something that you investigate?
If you feel that you are not utilizing your word-of-mouth marketing to its fullest effects, contact us at [email protected]
Influencer marketing can change your business for the better. Chat with us today to learn more!
Sources:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/w/word-of-mouth-marketing.asp
https://www.invespcro.com/blog/word-of-mouth-marketing/
https://blog.globalwebindex.com/chart-of-the-week/word-of-mouth-marketing/
https://powerdigitalmarketing.com/blog/benefits-of-word-of-mouth-marketing/#gref
