Simple ways of doing Word Of Mouth Marketing……

Why WOMM is a must for every company..

As an individual, I am pretty vocal about my views. I make sure, I  share my likes and dislikes about various things with my family and friends and within my circle of influence. My personal opinions could be biased but are based on my personal experiences and hence carry my personal conviction, which is why people who value my opinion pay heed to my advice.

I guess its the same with many of you as well. Our experiences help us form impressions and our impressions form the base of our beliefs and convictions. Before the social media revolution, we used to heavily rely on the experience and opinions of experts, news journalists and other information providers, but today with blogging and social networks becoming an important part of our lives, each one of us can claim to be an expert in our own right.

Your blog on your wonderful experience buying a television set online can send many of your friends hunting for a great deal on the same online store. They go to the store because they believe your word, you on the other hand have unknowingly lent your personal credibility to the online store by sharing your buying experience with your friends.  This is the power of word of mouth marketing or WOMM. No advertisement, no PR effort by this online store can ever match the extent of leverage they got from you – a real customer advocating his shopping experience.

WOMM why it works.....

Today companies are slowly realizing the immense power of this age old marketing tool. Surprisingly it still works and much better as social media makes it possible to increase the reach of your credible word to a larger audience or circle of influence.

Implementing WOMM as part of your company’s marketing and PR strategy is important since it is one of the most effective, simple and cheap marketing solutions currently available.  To begin with, you need to take care of two things – firstly, ensure your product or service offering delivers what it promises and secondly, you have adequately empowered your satisfied customers with  some simple tools which enable them to  easily share their experiences with others.

WOMM tool is  most useful for start-ups and companies who have a shoe-string budget for marketing their products. I recently came across a blog post by Vijay Pullur, President of SocialTwist the makers of the social media sharing widget called Tell-a-Friend on www.bootstrappingblog.com. The post talks in detail about how in a very simple and easy way you can build visibility for your product or service through word of mouth marketing. For those Marketing and PR professionals who are planning to add WOMM to their service portfolio, its a good read.

As for me, the more I learn about how effective WOMM is , the more I am convinced – maybe you don’t need loads of money or need to own the best advertising real estate to ensure, a lot of people talk about you and your brand. Maybe its just about giving that terrific user experience to everyone who visits your site, who buys or uses your products or service………so that they just cant stop telling their friends how great your offerings are.

Maybe its not so much about getting your money’s worth but giving their money’s worth.

Tags: marketing strategy, PR strategy, Public Relation Methods, Public Relation tricks, Social Media, social media marketing, viral marketing, WOMM strategy, Word of mouth Marketing