Traffic Blaster

In many respects marketing by word of mouth can be said to be the “hidden statistic” for all programs, as it’s well near impossible to actually gauge the effectiveness of marketing done this way. It should be mentioned that every product in this digital age has relied on this marketing methodology to drive public awareness of a product or service.

A recent study exemplified that two thirds of online marketing is expected to be done this way next year, which when coupled with the advent in leaps of Web 2.0.0 social networking and social marketing sites point towards promoting your product by word of mouth may be both more cost effective, and have an increasingly better ROI than more “traditional” online advertising media.

Consider the business model of any of the current online social networking sites. There has yet to be a successful site of this type that charges monthly, relying instead as they do on ad generated income. While there is no metric that can be used to measure marketing by word of mouth, there is one method of knowing if your campaign is worth while – sales.

A company must know from their output exactly the difference between pre campaign, during a campaign and post campaign. This in itself gives businesses a measurable statistic to show effectiveness of this marketing methodology. It is true that not all businesses need or desire this form of sales technique, but is also through that not one business turns away prospects garnered from the by word of mouth method either.

Whatever you sell, a great study completed by Hill and Knowlton in February this year showed that decision makers are largely influenced by personal experience’s (58%), with recommendations and industry reports coming in at 51%. Coming in third was direct marketing at 21% with internet advertising at 17%. These figures may only reflect the purchasing habits of key decision makers, but a young lady in Oregon deciding to buy one car insurance or another IS the key decision maker for that purchase, and her buddy Becky telling her to go with this company over that company will have a greater influence than any gravel-voiced actor pushing the product in a TV advert.

In essence, this statistic may be calculated into any industry, any niche, if every person is classified as the key decision maker. This makes the re-appearance of the world’s oldest method of marketing a no brainer – so get talking or tweeting, but tell everyone!

There are thousands of viral marketing products and tools available on the internet. You should be really careful and do your research before you choose. You do not want your IP address to be tagged as one that sends out spam.  Here’s how to avoid that.

A questions you could ask yourself it do you have a great product or service? Will clients be completely satisfied and refer your service or product to friends and family? if not, then viral marketing campaigns will have little value. 

The dynamic operating behind this type of campaign is that when people have a great experience online, they “tell” up to twelve others about it.  That’s according to the Opinion Research Council. 
Do the math, if people have a terrible experience, they will still blab to 12 other people about it. Some people will also go the extra step and publish reviews online. In most cases, when consumers have a unpleasant experience, they often want everyone else to know about it, misery loves company.

First and foremost, you want to make sure that your clients are happy. You will never be able to make everyone happy, but you should try your best. 
If one person tries your product and tells 12 friends, they will tell 12 other friends and so on.  That’s how the virus spreads.  Some people say that you cannot make this virus happen, that the product must be good enough to create it.  That may be true, but viral marketing products are still useful.

Your goal may be to increase your database and make people aware of the scope of services that you have to offer, as opposed to sending out thousands of email messages every week. That is an example of one of the services that some of the better businesses will provide. They make keeping in contact with your existing clients a whole lot easier. They also encourage your clients to share this information with friends and associates. Effectively, they collect more email addresses and that’s what starts this type of virus.

It’s not spam, because the only people that get these emails are those that have opted-in or those whose friends have suggested it to them. There are many free services available, and like anything, the value is questionable at best. If the email is going to end up in someone’s spam filter, there is no point in even sending it at all?  If the service is free, it’s not a waste of money, but it is a waste of your time.

If you’re like most business owners, time is valuable, like they say, time is money.  There are some viral marketing products that are worth the money and save you time.

The implication of sales by word of mouth is that influence has been exerted on a decision making process to alter a previously held view, or to be made aware of a new position or product, on a specific subject matter, be it tangible or not. These types of statements are ambiguous, as nothing in anyone else’s mind can be taken as a fact. What does this determine?

An example of sales by word of mouth would be a personal experience relating to an event or an imparted understanding. John went to have his oil changed, but when he got to the service provider, he was alerted to other defects in his vehicle that needed to be rectified for the vehicle to be driven safely. Now, knowing that the service station took higher than normal care of their clients prompts John to recommend them to a co-worker, April, who uses that station as her service provider for the next time she needs a vehicle service. That’s a basic word of mouth sale, as far as the service station is concerned.

The ancillary products and services provided are also benefactors from this sale, as consumables are also used to complete April’s vehicle service, thereby continuing to bring an extension of consumption into a multi-level business transaction. From the illustration above, you can see how sales by word of mouth can snowball to other areas also, which is the main reason why all industries should take heed of this strategy and plan accordingly.

It’s worth noting here that almost all large, successful companies have at some time or another, usually at inception, relied on purely word of mouth sales to drive their business – and those that grew this way are shown to have a greater life span, and the accompanying ability to weather most if not all economic storms, successfully.

The ability to gather word of mouth sales frequently is a combination of exceeding customer's expectations with a high quality product or service which is offered at a reasonable price point, which then in turn translated into high consumer satisfaction.

Sales by word of mouth is probably the most influential of all types of sales, for the simplest of reasons – people do not recommend bad products or services. This in itself has been the downfall of many companies through the years, so it is definitely to be taken seriously for all types of marketing and sales.

Word of mouth sales are something that have been around ever since mankind discovered commerce.If someone was impressed by a product or a service, they would highly recommend it to their friends and family.  This phenomenon continues even today, despite the fact that we have other, more sophisticated advertising sources.Basically, if you learn how to utilize the simply concepts of word of mouth, you could actually create higher sales utilizing the same high-power advertising methods.

Let’s consider Kashi, an American company that prides itself on selling wholesome, all-natural food products.  Even though they already have an established brand, they decided they would create even more buzz using television and word of mouth, (the perfect combination).The television part would come through a commercial, while the word of mouth part came through a special give away or incentive.The incentive alternates according to what they promote, whether it’s for their cookies, health bars, or frozen dinners.In the end, they receive a ton of word of mouth sales because people see the commercial, buy the free product, and then tell people they know about how much they love the product.

Yet, what about businesses that can’t afford to run a television campaign?  How do they go about acquiring word of mouth sales?  Well, if they have no upfront capital, it is recommended that they embark on an Internet marketing campaign.  To do this, they should buy or create an e-book related to their business.At that point, they should to promote the e-book through a lead page.The lead page will capture the email addresses of anyone interested in registering for a subscription, as the subscription will be one requirement for receiving the desired information. 

Now, if the e-book is good, and you use it to advertise your services, you will get word of mouth sales through viral marketing.How does this method work?If effect, with viral marketing, readers are so interested in your information that they pass it along to other people they know.This creates a type of chain reaction, when the friend then promotes the e-book to another person.This pattern continues forever and it is not very often that people will lose interest. 

This method may be viewed as somewhat impersonal, which might not work as well if you’re trying to create buzz for a local target audience.So, in this situation, you may want to contemplate hosting a PR event.  Some companies choose to have an event where people sample their products.  Others plan more elaborate events, such as carnivals or golfing games.Ultimately, try to ensure, (if you can), to have the PR event relate to what your business specialty is.  This will make your business more memorable, since participants will link their experiences at the event with your company.