A popular area of marketing is ‘Word of Mouth’ and how it can make or break your business. With such a big subject this is the first post in a series on “Word of Mouth’ marketing. We’ll start by looking at what it is.
What is Word of Mouth Marketing?
‘Word of Mouth’ is easily the most powerful form of marketing and is free. People speak about adverts they see, the experiences they have and the products they purchase. So if your business connects well with people they will spread the word about your new products or services in a superb way. And you’ll be able to attract the right clients who will support your business for a long time.
But as valuable as ‘Word of Mouth’ can be for your business, the other side of the coin is how damaging it can be as well. As bad news seems to travel faster than good news. So if you have a poor value product or customer service process, then your customers will tell everyone to avoid purchasing your products and services.
The growth in technology has opened up wonderful opportunities in the world of ‘Word of Mouth’ marketing. With blogs, podcasts, on-line marketing, forums, social networking and all the different on line mediums on hand and making it easier for shoppers to share their experiences. And, most importantly for businesses this is all free advertising and marketing.
Customer purchasing experience
Decision-making process
Let’s consider the significance of improving the customer purchasing experience. Firstly by shortening the decision-making process so that customers check out extra quickly and easily. There are three great benefits to increase sales by shortening the selection cycle. They are to:
- increase the typical amount clients spend on every purchase;
- increase your number of customers;
- increase the frequency of purchases.
Decision-making speed
Let’s take a deeper look at decision-making speed. Firstly, when you offer simplicity, ease and a fun purchasing atmosphere you’ll assist your customers to make their choices faster and with greater confidence. Then when this takes place your customers will buy more frequently, spend more cash than usual, refer friends and make the decision to buy more quickly. This can increase your market share by over a hundred times.
The time it takes your purchaser to figure out and purchase by far outweighs any other aspect of marketing. But when you focus on customer selection speed it forces you to review your business and company image, positioning, value, customer service, and guarantees of product quality.
Purchasing stress levels
The next area to consider is how to minimize the stress levels involved with selection making. Because no matter how calm we normally are there is a certain amount of anxiety we all experience when making a purchase. Especially when that purchase is from a new source or for a sizeable amount of money. So it stands to reason that when you help to reduce this emotional response, you will soothe your customers’ anxiety and they will make their selection faster and more confidently.
Here are a few techniques to speed up the customer’s decision-making process:
- Make your benefits, features, claims and guarantees, obvious, clear and concise.
- The information you provide ought to be complete, easy to understand, and credible.
- When using comparisons ensure that they reflect a marked difference.
- Ensure guarantees are clear and reliable, offering more than the consumer expects.
- Make access to trial periods or samples easy.
- You must have simple reviews of your products or services.
- Testimonials need to be relevant and positive.
- Your support, transport and other operating systems have to be perfect.
- Not least, ensure your website is as good as you can make it. By presenting clear information and experience which easily guides your clients gently through the decision-making process to make it easy for them to buy. And take it a step further by offering free access support or software program downloads to help with the procedure. Or offer different quality and informative ways to reassure your clients that you are there with them each and every step of the way and have nothing to hide.
This ends the first post on ‘Word of Mouth” marketing. And if you’d now like help to identify your target market or issues in customer decision-making times, try our FREE Discovery Call. Where you can put to the test our tips on the best way to improve your customer’s buying experience.
Next time we’ll move on and look at the strength of ‘Word of Mouth’ and what precisely this effective marketing tool is and how that can be used.