Do you currently do any WOM Marketing in your company? If you’re like most people carrying out digital marketing these days, the answer will probably be no. You might be concentrating on trying to get people commenting, liking and sharing your content online. As the general consensus is that you can get way more Word-of-Mouth (WOM) online that you ever could offline. But this just simply isn’t true — research has proven that only a dismal 7% of word-of-mouth actually takes place online. With the rest all occurring offline during everyday conversations that your target audience are having. This could be in coffee shops, bars, restaurants and other common social settings. In this post I examine how you can tap into this somewhat surprising phenomenon. And start using it to your advantage to drive more revenue for your company. Let’s dive right in now.
There’s been a huge expansion of social media in the past decade. Coupled with a mass of exciting new online social sharing, liking and commenting tools and software. So you’d be forgiven for presuming that most Word-of-Mouth is now pretty much all done firmly in the online digital domain. But that would be a huge WOM Marketing mistake.
Because it turns out that this is just simply not true. Even with all the digital tools and devices that we now have at our disposal that allow us to engage online at seemingly any hour of the day. Research has identified that only a very tiny proportion of Word-of-Mouth actually occurs online. In fact, the recognised figure from the research conducted is only around 7%! So what on earth is going on here?
Only 7% of Word-of-Mouth occurs online!
Yes, you read the above statistic correctly. Only about 7% of Word-of-Mouth occurs online, with a huge majority of it actually occurring offline. This is in the form of general ‘everyday’ conversations that organically happen in a range of common social situations.
Let’s examine the specifics of this more, so you can really start to see how this works and how you can use it to your advantage. The following should enable you to start really tapping into the power of WOM Marketing.
So where is most Word-of-Mouth occurring?
So, if so little word-of-mouth is taking place online, then where is it taking place? And how can you use the dynamics of what’s happening with word-of-mouth to pro-actively start generating more revenue for your company?
The fact is that if you really want to generate huge amounts of Word-of-Mouth, then you have to get people talking about what you’re doing offline. This is the true secret to WOM Marketing.
Something like a staggering 90% of all word–of-mouth occurs during simple everyday conversations that people have in common social settings with friends, family and other associates. Such as over coffee, whilst dining out at restaurants, or perhaps discussions with work colleagues within the office environment.
only a dismal 7% of word-of-mouth actually takes place online — with the rest all occurring offline
The list of places where these types of conversations might take place is literally endless. But the basic rule is that you can be certain that whenever people are talking offline to others, they are continually mentioning companies, brands and products. As this is the way that people structure their conversations whilst in these kinds of social situations. This is just the way people talk to each other. They constantly mention products and services during everyday conversations. You need to get your products and services into these conversations.
WOM Marketing Key Question – Why people would talk about your company and your products
There is a very specific reason that so much word-of-mouth occurs offline. And it’s to do with the fact that when people are talking to others in social situations, they constantly feel a need to try and impress others and make themselves look good. This is a really key concept to understand about WOM Marketing.
They often attempt to achieve this by referencing valuable and insightful information. Things that they have discovered and engaged with, that are interesting and intriguing. People actively seek out ways to help others and add value to them through the conversations they are having with them.
You can see how this provides a marvellous opportunity for you to strategically insert your company messaging into peoples everyday conversations. If you can give people something of real value to pass along to others, then they’ll talk about your company and your products.
How specifically can I get people talking about my company and products and delivering better WOM Marketing?
There are various ways in which you can give yourself a much better chance of being mentioned in as many of these offline conversations as possible. So let’s run through a few key areas of focus for you, so you can start to get a really clear picture of exactly the kind of content that you’ll have to start producing. There are some general rules to follow that should ensure you have success with this approach. Let’s look at what some of them are right now.
The Power of Storytelling in Word-of-Mouth Marketing
One of the most effective ways in which you can get more people talking about your company and products, is to wrap up your key marketing and promotional messages in stories. Stories are incredibly powerful when it comes to word of mouth. They can make all the difference to your marketing efforts. Harness the power of stories and you could get massive exposure without spending any money. Now that’s smart marketing. That’s marketing that can have an extraordinary ROI.
Stories work because people like to impress others in group social situations by sounding interesting and entertaining. One of the most effective ways for people to do this is by re-telling interesting and entertaining stories.
In a nutshell, people are more likely to talk about you and your company if you provide them with a strong narrative in the form of a story to pass along to others during conversation. But there is a very specific way that you have to do this if you want to get the most possible benefit from word-of-mouth. Let’s look at what that one key thing is right now.
Make your product central to the narrative of the story
The really effective way to do this, is to ensure that people cannot re-tell the story without mentioning your company and/or product. You have to ensure that there is an unbreakable link between the narrative of the story and your company and products. So that they have to mention you at some point, otherwise the story doesn’t make sense. And this is where the word-of-mouth awareness and marketing buzz comes from with this specific form of offline promotion. Every-time the story is told, you get mentioned. Because people can’t tell the story without mentioning your company or product. You can imagine how powerful this form of marketing can be. Get it right, and it can take your marketing efforts to stratospheric levels. All without spending any of your marketing budget.
Creating these stories might of course involve a certain amount of time, effort and resources. But the payback should be off the charts. A successful word-of-mouth campaign can end up generating millions of interactions, views, comments and engagements. Don’t forget that although most of the discussion and word-of-mouth will take place offline, this drives people to then seek out and view the content you have produced online. And this is what creates the real value. Once these potential customers that you have not even paid to reach are on your online marketing and sales channels, there’s a decent chance that a certain percentage of them might convert to paying customers at some stage.
Particularly when you consider that prospects and leads acquired for free through this kind of word-of-mouth campaign tend to convert better than paid leads. They have come to your site or other marketing channels based on some kind of recommendation from a friend. And that always tends to lead to a better overall quality of lead. One that is more likely to transition into a paid customer. Yet another fantastic bonus that comes with word-of-mouth marketing! Hopefully by now you can see why this can be a killer marketing strategy. Get it right, and the results can be amazing.
Make your stories inspire the right emotions!
You can also give your stories the best possible chance of getting widely talked about offline by making them inspire a very specific set of emotions. There are a few specific emotions that have been proven to maximise the amount of word-of-mouth that any given piece of content might receive. Here’s a quick run-down of what they are:
Make your content Awe-inspiring
The number-one positive emotion for getting your content and stories talked about and engaged with is Awe. Awe is defined as a feeling of great respect sometimes mixed with fear or surprise. Focus on this emotion, and you increase your chances of success.
Try and find those stories from within your company where your customers or users are doing awe-inspiring things. How are people using your products to change people’s lives? What are they doing with your products that is truly amazing and would shock and thrill people?
This is what is proven to get people sharing and talking about your content and what you are doing the most. So it’s basically the holy-grail of word-of-mouth! Which is why you should focus on this emotion when putting together your content.
Make your prospects and customers angry!
Another emotion that is key is Anger. If you can make your target audience angry, this is proven to massively increase word of mouth.
This seems like a very strange piece of advice to include in a post about marketing. But let me explain. Research has indicated that it’s not just positive emotions that make people share the most. There are also some key negative emotions that massively increase word-of-mouth and social sharing. And the number one negative emotion of them all is anger.
But not anger at you as a company or individual of course. You need to make them angry about something that’s going on in the world right now. But something that does not reflect badly on your company. It could be a social issue that really gets people mad and frustrated. Or perhaps a story of someone being ripped off by a huge company which had disastrous consequences on their life. This is likely to make people super angry. And this means they will share and talk about it to others. Wrap this up in your company and brand, so they can’t tell the story without mentioning you. This can lead to massive word of mouth, and huge exposure for your company. All without paying for any of it. That’s the real beauty of WOM Marketing.
Make your prospects and customers laugh for better WOM Marketing!
Here’s a final, more light-hearted note to end on. It’s pretty common knowledge that many examples of content that have gone viral have included lots of humour. The classic example of course being funny cat videos. These have racked up some truly astonishing numbers of views, shares and likes over the years. Of course I’m not suggesting you purchase an office cat and start making some videos! But I am suggesting that you incorporate humour into your content. This is another emotion that is proven to increase word of mouth the most.
The reason for this is quite simple of course. Remember that people tend to share and talk about content because they want to impress others and make themselves look good. And by far one of the best ways for anyone to achieve this is by making others laugh.
So provide your prospects, leads and customers with content and stories that they can pass onto others that are funny. Content that will make others laugh. You’ll stand a much better chance of getting people talking about your company and your products and services.
It’s this type of offline word-of-mouth that is going to make the real difference. This is the way to generate huge amounts of engagement without spending lots of money on marketing. So this is what you should be firmly focused on if you want to do marketing the really smart way. This is what can take your WOM Marketing to the next level.
Bonus Tip — Create Triggers to really get people talking about you and start delivering better WOM Marketing
Here’s a final thought on this, in the form of a bonus tip for you. There’s another key component that you should always focus on when generating word of mouth.
And that component is Triggers. Remember that the aim of the game here is to get people to talk about your company offline. As this is where pretty much all word-of-mouth takes place. And one thing that massively helps to achieve this is if you can link your content and story to some kind of trigger. A trigger within the environment of the target audience.
There are some fairly clever and sophisticated ways to do this which are beyond the scope of this article. (We’ll discuss them in a future blog post). But as a general overview, there are physical triggers that you can incorporate into the messaging and the overall campaign itself.
If you inextricably link these to the content and story that you are telling, then you have a powerful trigger. When people within your target audience see the physical trigger, it will remind them of your content and/or story. This makes it much more likely that they will then talk about your company and your content during their conversations with others.
As mentioned previously, I’m going to be talking about triggers a lot more in future articles. As they are an essential component to many of the most intelligent and cost-effective marketing campaigns that have ever been put into action.
But the important thing for you to note right now is this. If you can incorporate triggers into your word of mouth marketing, chances are the campaign will be way more successful. So think about how you can link your marketing messages with naturally occurring things within your target audiences environment? What items and objects are always around people that make up your target audience?
This does require some thought and intelligent understanding of the basic concepts. But the time spent on this will most likely be repaid many times over. Get your word of mouth campaign right, and the results could be astonishing.
That’s the immense power of off-line word-of-mouth. And it’s something that you should most definitely understand and be harnessing as a small business owner. It’s one great way to level the playing field with much bigger competitors. And that’s what we love here at Plasmic Marketing. Really smart marketing that doesn’t require massive budgets and spending. Sound good?
Want more information on WOM Marketing? Check out this excellent post from the Social Media Today website.
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