This Is What Effective Word of Mouth Marketing Looks Like

By Ted Wright October 8, 2018

By Ted Wright

If Word of Mouth Marketing has always worked so well, why aren’t more business professionals using it?

Because it’s hard work. More time. More effort.

It’s also not as flashy as a Super Bowl commercial, or as glamorous as being on the set with a celebrity.

It’s easy to pay for an ad and wait for something to happen, or to purchase a mailing list and count on a small fraction of people to call you, but in the long-term, the most effective way to build relationships is through human, face-to-face connections.

If you’re on the fence about Word of Mouth Marketing, here are some relevant statistics:

• An average American spends about 30% of their day in conversation and 15% of those conversations mention a product or brand.
• 92% of Americans view word of mouth conversations as the best source for product recommendations.
• Nearly 20% of the people you know make product decisions ONLY based on word of mouth recommendations.
• More than 70% of these trusted conversations take place face-to-face.

In short, while trust in companies and advertising is on the decline, trust in friends, experts, and entrepreneurs is up. People trust people.

The opportunity is too big to ignore. There are thousands of people in your community who love to share stories about what is new and interesting. What are you doing to be part of their supply line of information? If your business can become part of the community conversation, that will certainly lead to business benefits over time!

Word of mouth marketing has always existed. This workbook will help you use this ancient method in today’s modern world, repeatedly, reliably, consistently, and effectively.

Process Overview

You may have seen me share this image in the past. It’s an important image because this is what effective Word of Mouth Marketing looks like.

It’s important to understand what this means in order to implement it correctly:

Goal: What is the goal you hope to accomplish? A goal might be awareness, consideration, referrals, loyalty, leads, and sales, for example.

Story: This is something about you, your business, your employees, and/or your company that is conversational. It is something that is Authentic, Interesting, and Relevant.

Focus audience: It’s improbable that the whole world will be interested in everything you have to say. More likely, a focus audience or community, might be more specific, like veterans, realtors, or fishing enthusiasts. In the old days, we used to classify our customers as “targets” that we would mail or broadcast to or even spam. But through WOMM, we will create stories and the focus audience just might come to us.

Activation: These three considerations guide us to the activation … what are you going to do to create these conversations?

There are thousands of people in your community who love to share stories about what is new and interesting. What are you doing to be part of their supply line of information?

Ted Wright is the founder of Fizz, the world’s leading word of mouth marketing (WOMM) agency. Ted is also an acclaimed WOMM keynote speaker and the author of Fizz: Harness the Power of Word of Mouth Marketing to Drive Brand Growth.