In the age of digital advertising and social media influencers, it’s easy to overlook one of the oldest and most effective forms of marketing – word of mouth. But make no mistake, word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) remains a potent force in shaping consumer and business opinions and driving purchasing decisions.
What Is WOMM?
Let’s face it, people love to talk.
Word-of-mouth marketing is exactly what it sounds like: the act of people telling others in their social and business circles about a product, service, or brand that has left an impression on them, whether it be good or bad. It can take many forms, from casual conversations between friends to online reviews and recommendations on social media platforms. At its core, word-of-mouth marketing relies on the trust and credibility that comes from personal recommendations.
As Andy Sernovitz states, “Nobody talks about boring companies, boring products, or boring ads.” In fact, Sernovitz breaks down the four rules of WOMM as being:
- Rule #1: Be Interesting
- Rule #2: Make People Happy
- Rule #3: Earn Trust and Respect
- Rule #4: Make It Easy
The foundation of successful WOMM is delivering exceptional customer experiences. When customers are delighted with a product or service, they’re more likely to share their positive experiences with others. With the power of social media at our fingertips, companies are now easily able to identify their most loyal customers and turn them into brand advocates.
A single recommendation from a satisfied customer can reach a wide audience thanks to the power of social media and online communities. This recommendation can have a lasting impact on your brand’s reputation and credibility. And now, positive recommendations can continue to influence potential customers long after the initial conversation or social media post.
The Four Main Types of WOMM Are…
Buzz Marketing
The cream of the crop when it comes to WOMM is buzz marketing. This is the act of getting your current customers and prospective customers excited and talking about your product(s), services, or brand.
Toward the end of 2019, Tesla revealed the idea of the Cybertruck. For days following the big reveal, memes and opinions of the new futuristic vehicle were taking social media by storm.
While not everyone was a fan of the concept, Tesla ensured they came up with a product that generated the buzz they were looking for.
Content Marketing
Content can be the buffer to build the bridge between a brand and its prospective customers. The best way to get started is to create content that starts the conversation instead of hoping your customers create it.
Sharing as much information as possible by becoming the go-to resource for guides, tutorials, and other sought-after content is a great example of this. Hubspot excels at content marketing with its social media approach, blog strategy, and more. I mean, who else to lead the charge other than a CRM platform with all the resources you need to connect marketing, sales, content management, and customer service?
Referral Marketing
Sometimes it is tough to get the conversation going, and that’s where referral marketing can take a role. Everyone loves incentives. One of the best ways to get people to start talking and sharing a brand is by offering an incentivized referral program.
Uber is one company that excels at referral marketing. Uber offers both the referrer and the person they refer a $20 ride credit once the new user signs up.
Social Media Marketing
By 2025, 56.7% of the world’s population will be active on at least one social network. WOMM, through social media, comes in many shapes and sizes, including follower engagement, online reviews, sharable content, user-generated content, influencer marketing, and so much more.
Wendy’s thrives on Twitter and getting their customers to talk. Not only do they roast competitors, but they also have sassy comments back to their followers and generate content that is consistently shared with hundreds of thousands of their followers’ followers and talked about for years to come.
So, How Does This Tie Into the Digital Era?
WOMM continues to be one of the most effective forms of marketing, especially as social media continues to be on the rise as one of the fastest-growing ways to get a message out into the world. People trust what others have to say about a brand and its products or services, and the best way to get the message across is through the internet.
Communication is no longer just a face-to-face interaction. The WOMM map has grown from one person telling another to that person telling two more friends, and so on. Now, that person can go online and tell hundreds of people about their experience with a brand with one tweet, one Google review, or one viral TikTok video.
While information overload and distrust of traditional advertising is rampant throughout advertising channels, WOMM offers a refreshing alternative. However, for companies to be truly successful with WOMM in the digital era, they need to coherently combine their digital marketing strategy with social media, and PR.
Taking advantage of personal recommendations and social networks can help businesses build trust, credibility, and long-term relationships with their customers. So, don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing—embrace it and watch your business thrive.
If you’re ready to take the next step in accelerating and expanding your online presence as a thought leader, 0to5 can help. Contact us today.
Resources:
- Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz
- https://blog.hubspot.com/agency/how-online-word-of-mouth-marketing-is-changing
- https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/word-mouth-marketing-digital-age
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimberlywhitler/2014/07/17/why-word-of-mouth-marketing-is-the-most-important-social-media/?sh=4d89992854a8
By Maria Koblish
It’s no secret that launching a startup is a considerable risk that requires a lot of work. From product development to marketing to sales, executives have their hands full. In an ever-expanding tech-savvy industry, startup businesses must understand the vital role digital marketing plays in their success.
Digital marketing is essential for any tech startup to get off the ground. Digital marketing efforts can have a direct impact on the following actions:
- Increasing Brand Awareness
- Product Promotion
- Building an Audience
- Capturing Leads
- Acquiring Customers
- Sales
We have looked back on our work with leading tech companies and startups to ease this impending workload. Here are seven essential tips to help any tech startup with its digital marketing strategy.
1. Identify the Target Audience
There’s no better way to begin a list of digital marketing tips than here: defining the target audience. Step one of any business plan, marketing strategy, or PR activity starts with understanding who you’re speaking to. Start with generally defining — who is your audience? What are their demographics? Then you can get business-specific. How would this group benefit from your business? How would they research products online? How do they use social media?
Marketing connects a business to its intended audience and entices them to interact with its product or service. Once you define that audience, the actual campaign can begin.
2. SEO Optimization is Key
Keywords aid in search engine optimization (SEO) to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising; they act as the first step to bringing in target audiences and awareness to your startup. The more relevant the keywords are, the better your chance of bringing in that awareness and desired audience.
How do you determine those keywords? Google is a handy and free tool that many marketers use. Put yourself in the shoes of your target audience and search away, but pay attention to Google’s predictive text suggestions, aka the “people also ask” and the “related search” features.
Along with gathering the correct keywords to use, be sure to:
- Identify the funnel stage: Your keywords must differ for each potential customer at different sales funnel stages.
- Track existing similar content and keep your keywords organized: Don’t let two or more pages on your website target the same keyword because you will be competing against yourself, hurting your rankings.
- Collect branded keywords: This is geared toward PPC ads: target branded keywords in your marketing campaign to differentiate yourself in the digital landscape.
3. Monitor Competitors
While your competitors may seem like enemies, they can be your greatest asset. Here’s how to leverage their strategies for your benefit:
- Differentiate from competitors via messaging and content
- Review competitor case studies and learn what works for them
- Check their social media accounts to see what’s resonating with their audience
- Review the content they are publishing
- Identify their rank in terms of SEO, content, media coverage, and more
Everyone’s information is out there. You can use it to your advantage while maintaining the integrity of your business.
4. Maintain an Optimized Website
Google is the driving force behind website optimization. It works off of algorithmic scanning to assess the quality of content to provide the most relevant content to the user.
Google’s ranking system is activated by how long people stay on your site — the higher the quality, the higher the engagement, and the more optimized your site ranks in a keyword search. Knowing that makes it all the more important to play Google’s game and use the algorithm to your advantage. If you want to learn more about how SEO works, check out this blog post.
Maintaining a quality website not only makes your business look better to the customer, but to the search engine as well.
5. The Importance of Social Media
Today, globally, more than 4.74 billion people use social media. Your potential customers go on social media daily to interact with peers and favorite brands. It’s essential to position yourself through organic and paid social media as a key part of your audience’s online life. It will drive lead generation and create a sense of community.
6. Keep an Active Blog
Prioritize keeping an active blog on your company website. Offer personal findings oriented towards your business, tips and tricks, and general content to support your audience during their time on your site. Demand Gen Report revealed that 47% of buyers viewed at least three to five pieces of content before they engaged with a sales rep, making the content you post essential.
These blogs are a great asset on social media channels. Sharing blogs on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., increases traffic to your website and creates a community within your audience. Blogs can also help you to rank for more keywords on search engines, garnering more activity and lead generation.
Staying on top of a blog on top of everything else that comes with launching a startup can be challenging, so getting all team members involved keeps the work dispersed and consistent.
7. Have a System to Track Results
It doesn’t matter how much work you put into your digital marketing strategy without one thing: analyzing the results. All the planning and execution in the world mean nothing without it. Ensure that you can measure the impact of your efforts on marketing channels like social media, email, search engines, and your website to track your startup’s growth. In another blog post, you can learn more about how UTM codes can help track results.
The complexity of launching a startup continues after digital marketing. But prioritizing these practices can simplify the process, setting your business up to welcome impressive success and growth.
By Andie Levine
It’s 2022 and ICYMI – social media is not just for consumer brands anymore.
If you’re reading this, you’re ready for, or at least curious about, including social media in your organization’s marketing strategy. B2B has been often left out of the conversation about social media marketing, but not anymore. Social media is a worthwhile marketing channel for your business because even though you are selling to other businesses, you’re still selling to people!
The Hootsuite & We Are Social, Digital 2022 Global Statshot Report found that 38% of B2B decision-makers say they discover new products and services relevant to their work via social media. And they aren’t just using social media for discovery – about 8 in 10 B2B decision-makers also say that social media plays an influential role in their research, putting it ahead of trade press outlets like online and print trade magazines. That’s huge.
Now that you’ve seen the potential for using social media to reach your audience, here are a few steps you can take to get started.
Identify & Find Your Audience
The data tells us that your audience is on social media – but who are they and how can you find them? Let’s start with who they are. Your audience has a unique challenge that leads them to find a solution. You should already have a good idea of who your buyer personas are through research, surveys, and customer pain points.
Once you’ve clearly identified two or three personas, determine where they“live” online. Twitter and LinkedIn are the most popular platforms for B2B audiences but don’t rule out other channels. 62% of active users aged 16-64 say that they use Instagram to research brands or products.
When it comes to social media, you shouldn’t put all of your eggs in one basket, or rely on just one channel to reach your audience. Every social media channel has advantages and drawbacks and can be used differently to reach different audiences or meet unique business goals.
Develop Content
Now that your social media channels are set up and audiences are identified, it’s time to start posting. Providing free value to your audience builds trust, reputation – and even sales. Valuable content includes, but is not limited to, white papers, case studies, on-demand webinars, e-books, factoids, graphics and even blogs – we have a great blog post about the importance of blogs for social media.
It’s also important to diversify content – each post shouldn’t be about your organization. Valuable content can also include credible and relevant industry articles. And speaking of diversifying, build a content plan to include visuals, such as infographics and videos. Video posts typically receive high engagement. Uploading videos natively can earn four times the views and two times the engagement!
User-generated content (UGC) is also great for boosting engagement. Tap into UGC by highlighting the exciting things your employees or customers are doing or achieving with your product or service. Use social media to feature the work your key leaders and innovators are producing.
To learn more about how to develop engaging content for social media, check out this blog post.
Listen, Adapt, Grow
So now you’re on social media and posting engaging content – let’s keep the momentum going!
An important way to stay connected with your B2B audience is to listen to your audience. Listening is an important skill in social media and one that’s easy to forget. What are your customers saying? What are your competitors saying? What are the media and analysts saying?
There are many free and paid tools to help keep your ear to the door: Google Alerts, Social Mention, or Hootsuite. Pick out five, or more, keywords or phrases people may use to identify themselves as potential customers and conduct searches on your top social accounts; then use what you’re hearing to help shape your content and join the conversation.
Social media can play an important role in your B2B marketing plan and is worth your time and energy. Whether you’re at the beginning of your social media journey or looking for an experienced partner to help accelerate your reach, our team can help effectively integrate social media into your existing strategy. Contact us to learn more.
There can be no doubt that Matthew Luhn is a master of visual storytelling. At only 19, he became the youngest animator to join The Simpsons while in its third season. Luhn later joined Pixar Animation Studios and collaborated on the most commercially successful and well loved movies of our time: Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, Up, Cars, Toy Story II and Toy Story III.
From Hollywood to the boardroom, Luhn now advises Fortune 500 companies on how to successfully narrate their brand and connect to an audience through visual storytelling. On September 13th, the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia hosted a seminar on digital storytelling and invited Luhn to be the keynote speaker. Mixing popular examples with his own experience, Luhn outlined how today’s brands can craft their own powerful stories that resonate.
Visual Storytelling Makes a Brand
Memorable, Impactful and Personal.
Statistics show that when you wrap a story around something, people remember it. Given the age of short attention spans and media oversaturation, how do we make a story wrapper that sticks?
BE CONCISE
Use as few words as possible. If you can’t explain something simply, you have to go back to the drawing board.
HAVE A GREAT HOOK
What if a rat dreamed of being a French chef?
Sound familiar? Pixar writers knew that people don’t like rats and especially don’t like them around food. What’s more, they don’t like uppity Parisians dictating good taste. Add this up, and you get the unexpected hook of Ratatouille.
What if you could fit 1,000 songs in your pocket?
Steve Jobs knew the importance of storytelling. Before unveiling the first generation iPod, he described the disappointments and drawbacks of his competition’s current technology. With the stage set, he gave his hook to create anticipation for Apple’s revolutionary products.
BE AUTHENTIC
Don’t be clever or snarky. Be vulnerable and honest. Come from a place of truth and passion. Don’t be afraid to be bold because if you try to please everyone, the message will get weaker until no one is affected.
Never state the theme in your story. Make people feel it. This comes down to the old adage, “Show. Don’t tell.” The theme of Finding Nemo was: Being overprotective won’t lead your loved ones to a better life, letting them go will. However, no character beats us over the head by overstating it. Great storytelling has to be subtle. Dory the fish says, “Well, you can’t never let anything happen to him. Then nothing would ever happen to him.”
USE UNIVERSAL THEMES ABOUT CHANGE
Once you’ve hooked an audience, take them on a journey of change, be it striving towards impossible dreams, facing fear of abandonment and learning about love and sacrifice. Your consumer/user needs to play the role of the hero; not your product or company founders.
The Always #LikeAGirl campaign used video interviews where young girls, both before and after puberty, were asked, “What does it mean to do something ‘like a girl?’ How would you run ‘like a girl’ and fight ‘like a girl?’” The videos demonstrate that somewhere in puberty, girls learn that “like a girl” translates to weakness and is meant as an insult. If this was something learned, then it could be unlearned. So campaign creators set out to transform “like a girl” and make it a call for confidence, as in “try, fail, learn & Keep Going #LikeAGirl.”
Stories that are memorable, impactful and personal are about the kind of transformation that inspires us to make decisions towards our own change.
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