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Word of mouth has always been powerful thanks to the trust consumers place in the opinions and experiences of their coworkers, friends, and family. And now that we find ourselves in the digital era, word of mouth has been extended to include online interactions and engagement via social media and social review sites.
These are places consumers go to learn about brands, products, and how other customers use and experience them. In fact, according to HubSpot, consumers typically have 90 conversations a week regarding various brands. They not only trust brand recommendations from their friends and families (90%), they also trust opinions they find online (70%).
While word of mouth strategies are powerful, and have certainly evolved over time, brands cannot simply rely on word of mouth alone to strengthen and grow the loyalty of your customer base, lift brand awareness, or improve sales. It’s a powerful tactic, but it has its limitations:
- Relying solely on word of mouth means there’s an array of touch points throughout the audience’s day where they simply aren’t interacting with your brand. It leaves them open to being influenced by other brands (Yes, this includes your competitors.)
- Even with more proactive and modern advertising tactics in play, the truth is that it takes time to raise awareness about your brand and educate customers about how you can alleviate pain points or add value to their lives. If you aren’t using other marketing techniques and leaning only on word of mouth, it will take even longer.
So, we know that relying on word of mouth recommendations will not be enough to effectively grow your business over time. So what are some modern and effective methods to adopt in order to help do this? Nick Rasmussen, Senior Account Manager, goes over some potential options in the video below:
3 Ways to Promote Your Brand Beyond Word-of-Mouth Strategies
1. Social Media Marketing
We live in a social media-saturated society, and if you are a business, it is simply not an opinion to opt-out from being on social media. Not only should your brand have business accounts on various platforms, but they should have a social media strategy within your overall marketing plan as well. When customers hear of a brand, one of their first instincts is to look them up on social media, so it is important to not only be actively promoting your brand on social media, but to give potential consumers a great first impression as well!
2. Inbound & Content Marketing
Consumers want to interact and purchase from a brand they can trust. Word-of-mouth recommendations can certainly help with this, but there are other modern marketing methods to help with this as well. By publishing quality content to your website in the form of blogs, resource pages, vlogs, and eBooks, you are positioning yourself as an expert in your field. Not only this, but you are giving consumers free resources that will help them, oftentimes at no cost to them, other than occasionally their basic contact information.
3. Streaming Services
There is no hiding the fact that society is moving toward on-demand television viewing and away from traditional television consumption, such as cable or satellite service. This being said, online video is hot right now and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down. Video consumption has grown and evolved over the last decade and one of the main changes we have seen is the dominance of streaming services. So, if your brand is looking to make an impact on potential consumers through video marketing, consider advertising using Connected TV. By taking advantage of CTV, you can target a specific audience with your brand's message in their natural environments.
In radio, listeners still tune in to their favorite radio stations through streaming. WHAT they are listening to hasn’t changed...How they listen has. While we no longer carry a jambox on our shoulders, we DO carry smartphones with us everywhere. Radio’s online streaming numbers have skyrocketed in recent years as listeners still demand current hits and local disc jockeys...but want to listen on-the-go. It’s about lifestyle listening...and if you’re not there, you’re missing a huge audience.
Put Simply…Word of Mouth Won’t Cut It
It’s true that word of mouth can have a huge impact on the success of your business. Remember, you can’t generate positive word of mouth if your customers aren’t having positive experiences. So if you are benefiting from word-of-mouth recommendations, you’re doing something right!
But the reality is that you can’t solely rely on word of mouth to thrive (or even survive) long-term. In our day and age, there are many different ways to showcase your brand in front of hundreds of targeted consumers through modern marketing methods -- So what is stopping you from doing so? Our team of digital marketing experts would love to get in touch to help you find the best strategy for your brand in order to gain maximum reach and brand recognition. Contact us today to start a conversation!
