3 Word-of-Mouth Marketing Ideas to Jumpstart Your Strategy

In digital marketing, where the landscape is changing at the drop of a dime, it's important for marketers to lean on proven strategies - like word-of-mouth marketing - rather than wasting time on the latest fad that might negatively impact your bottom line and eat up resources.

Let’s face it: There are certainly plenty of options available to marketers when developing an online marketing strategy, but none of these options are as powerful and effective as word-of-mouth. Happy customers that love your product or service enough and are willing to spread the word about your brand are much more likely to be repeat customers.

It goes beyond that, though.

A good word-of-mouth marketing strategy has the opportunity to deliver something that resonates with your brand and customers, remains evergreen, and grows more valuable over time.

The buyers that brand ambassadors influence also tend to be more loyal, long-term customers. In turn, as these customers strap in for the long haul, many of them will also take up the cause and become an advocate for your company.

3 Word-of-Mouth Marketing Ideas to Attract More Customers

The more awareness you can generate about your brand, the more success and growth you will continue to realize in this self-perpetuating cycle.

Here are 3 ways to jump-start your word-of-mouth marketing efforts:

1. Target online influencers to spread positive messages about your product
Celebrities, gurus, experts, and organizations that have legions of social media followers often partner with brands to market the brand’s products or services for an agreed-upon fee. The brand benefits from the influencer’s implicit endorsement and the exposure to the influencer’s faithful fans and followers.

2. Incentivize your customer base to make referrals
You already have superstar brand advocates in your customer base. Relationship marketing engages your customers and motivates them to recommend you to family and friends. If you incentivize your customers to spread the word with rewards, monetary or otherwise, you create a pipeline to receive leads that have been warmed up by your customers!

3. Create relationships with affiliates who earn a kickback every time they send a potential customer or conversion your way
Affiliates that link to your product, write about your product, run your display ads, or otherwise promote your product in exchange for a fee or for a percentage of the resulting sales can lead to a steady stream of converting traffic. There’s a reason why companies that are already at the top of their game, like Amazon and Netflix, execute affiliate marketing campaigns.

From sponsored influencer posts to refer-a-friend campaigns, there are many word-of-mouth marketing strategies that marketers should test in order to expand brand awareness and drive sales.

At their core, all of these word-of-mouth marketing sources and lead acquisition channels can be tracked, monitored, and managed in practically the same way.

Sure, affiliates certainly require different treatment than customers, and the incentives that resonate with each will vary.

Similarly, influencers will obviously be evaluated against different metrics than customers referring for free, and they’ll cost a lot more to engage. Still, the ways in which all of those different parties are tracked and managed are congruent.

But it’s near impossible to scale your efforts without technology. Simply put: It would be difficult to harness the sheer volume of strategic partners, affiliates, and top referrers without a system that facilitates and streamlines the word-of-mouth marketing process.

To truly scale your efforts, dive into our latest eBook and learn how to leverage word-of-mouth marketing to maximize engagement and revenue every step of the way.