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How Company Reputation Can Be Bolstered Via Word-of-Mouth Marketing

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Word-of-mouth marketing is much more than someone talking to their neighbor when they’re out cutting the lawn. Word-of-mouth advertising consists of unpaid promotion in which satisfied customers tell their peers how much they like a business or its products. This form of promotion can take the shape of anything from casual, in-person conversation to positive reviews, feedback on social media, and more.

Various Forms of Word-of-Mouth Advertising

The marketing world has gone through many dramatic shifts in recent decades. For example, the arrival of the internet completely reshaped the marketing landscape. In 2018 advertisers were projected to spend a robust $40 billion more on internet ads than on television. However, on the other side of the coin, the Facebook marketing apocalypse that ensued early in the same year completely rearranged the paradigm, hindering businesses’ ability to use the social media giant to their advantage as much as they had in the past.

While other modes of internet advertising still abounded, the lesson of the year was not to rely entirely to any newfangled form of advertising. Spreading your eggs out into more than one basket is a far less risky approach. Over time one of the most dependable “baskets” has proven to be the age-old advertising form of word-of-mouth promotion. In fact, it’s the highest-rated form of advertising in terms of consumer trust.

Here are some of the primary ways that modern word-of-mouth advertising takes place:

Good Ol’ Conversations

Nothing beats the impact of a hearty endorsement from a happy customer. Whenever someone purchases your goods or uses your service and walks away happy and willing to talk about it, that’s a win. The incredible success of OnePlus’ first phone model, for example, was largely due to pure, unadulterated word-of-mouth marketing.

Google My Business Listing Reviews

One option that also comes free of charge is filling out your Google My Business listing. This is, in essence, a portal to your storefront that displays company information, contact info, and reviews. Tending to your listing is an excellent way to curate your company’s online presence, especially when it comes to responding to reviews.

Social Media Interaction

While Facebook’s fiasco did a number on many businesses, it didn’t change the fact that social media as a whole continues to be an excellent way to reach out, interact, and respond to both existing and potential customers with their various needs, questions, and concerns.

Employees Satisfaction

Happy employees make for positive buzz. Take, for example, the northeast grocery store Wegmans, a chain that has mastered the art of creating satisfied employees. While many of the supermarket chain’s fans are already loyal to the hilt, their immensely satisfied employees — they consistently rank in the top handful on Fortune’s 100 Best Employers list — also help spread the word about the quality of their establishment. Doing your best to keep your employees happy can foster a great deal of loyalty for your brand.

Network Connections (the B2B Option)

Another way to spread word-of-mouth influence is via your business connections. This doesn’t have to be purely through company-to-company communications, either. Stewart Butterfield and his team promoted their brand new work platform, Slack, to friends and family working at other companies, helping with both development as well as general promotion. From complementary companies within your niche to the corporations you do business with on a regular basis, curating your B2B influence is a great way to network and create buzz from within the market as well.

Finding Your Influencers

While word-of-mouth marketing can be a bit elusive to track and quantify, there are, indeed, ways to do so. For example, tracking the number of recommendations and discussions regarding certain products or your company, in general, can provide basic data pools from which to form marketing strategies. These reviews and feedback can be found on social media, your Google My Business Listing, and so on.

Another important factor is measuring the impact of each comment you find. The desires and priorities of your target demographic play a major role in determining this. For example, if you’re a luxury clothing company, comments on the design will be more important than the durability of your apparel. While both are important to some extent, resolving complaints about the former would be more urgent when managing your brand’s reputation in this example.

You’ll also want to consider both the person making the comment, as well as the channel in which they’re making it. Someone griping on their personal Facebook page about the quality of your ice cream store’s strawberry flavor is hardly as alarming as a local politician dropping a line on your Google My Business Listing about how half your ice cream machines were down when he last visited.

Bolstering Your Reputation via Word-of-Mouth Buzz

After you gather data, the next step is to decide what you do to begin to influence the reputation of your company. While each company’s situation is drastically different — depending on factors like size, geographic location, and product or service offered — here are a few suggestions to consider:

Volunteering as an Organization

Organizational volunteerism is an excellent way to bolster your business’ reputation. It gives an organization an opportunity to break from the everyday grind of business and put an effort into a cause that is wholly focussed on the benefit of others. This naturally creates a buzz that enhances the prestige of the company and improves their overall image.

Being Open and Honest

At the end of the day, treating both existing and potential customers honestly and openly is key to good word-of-mouth marketing for the long haul. One of the best examples of this isn’t even a promotional strategy; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. In the modern era data breaches are a regular occurrence and can happen any time, anywhere. If a company finds it has been a victim of a data breach, having a quick, honest response can ultimately get the best out of a horrible situation by maintaining the corporation’s integrity for the long haul. Further, data breach insurance can keep a business in the black even after a cybersecurity incident, ensuring you can form relationships with customers for the long haul.

Take the B2B Side Seriously

A whopping 90 percent of all B2B purchases are influenced by word of mouth. Therefore, it’s absolutely critical that we approach our interactions with fellow businesses as golden opportunities to leave a favorable impression in any way possible, from an organization’s professionalism to its dependability, customer loyalty, success, and values.

Word-of-mouth marketing is not only important, but it’s also a branch of advertising that businesses big and small can influence more than might be expected. The important thing is to take the time to gather the data and take meaningful, strategic steps to curate the reputation of your company as it’s discussed, whether that be via satisfied customers, happy employees, or partnering businesses.

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How Company Reputation Can Be Bolstered Via Word-of-Mouth Marketing was originally published in Marketing And Growth Hacking on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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