You just found a 75% off sale at your favorite clothing store. What do you do now? Hoard all of the clothes, speed home and lock yourself inside your house until the sale is over?
No way! Before you know it, you are on the phone with ten of your closest friends and they are on their way over to shop with you. Here are a few different ways to create a word of mouth campaign that will effectively work for your business.
- Give them a reason to talk about your products and services. Make it easier for their conversations to take place and make them want to share their experiences with others.
- Be honest. Let them know what the real purpose of your word of mouth campaign is. They are smart enough to tell anyway and feel as though they are being lied to otherwise.
- Treat your customers well and commit to providing superior customer experiences in order to improve credibility.
- Honor your word. After all, this is a word of mouth campaign and if your word means nothing, neither does your campaign.
- Offer incentives to customers to help spread the word either by a percent off of their next purchase or by a percentage of the sales earned through their networks. People know people and you want everyone to know about your business.
- Get organized. While you may already be doing all or most of these things, a campaign is an organized set of activities designed with a specific purpose and desired outcome in mind.
Businesses know word of mouth advertising is the most cost effective, fastest spreading and best way to advertise on the planet.
Think about it; if your friend tells you a movie is good, how often will you actually take their advice and either go see the movie in theaters or at least rent it when it comes out on DVD? Word of mouth advertising worked!