Achieving positive results when marketing your local business requires tremendous consistency and effort.
Moreover, while digital strategies can yield excellent results, personal referrals and recommendations represent the holy grail of local business marketing.
With this in mind, word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) is fundamental for fostering the trust that takes your company to the next level.
Nonetheless, earning word-of-mouth referrals can prove difficult and a bit tricky.
Be that as it may, there are multiple techniques you can implement to expedite results.
Considering the above, in this post, we'll cover six ways to nurture word-of-mouth marketing to help spread the word about your local business and brand.
Read on.
1. Ensure Quality Products and Excellent Customer Service
Ensuring superior customer service encourages people to spread the word about your business and brand.
Likewise, ensuring that your products are of excellent quality encourages satisfied customers to recommend you to others.
On the other hand, customers won't recommend your local business if your service or offers are subpar.
2. Encourage Your Customers to Leave Reviews
Most consumers read online reviews before purchasing.
Accordingly, the more positive customer reviews you accumulate, the more word-of-mouth referrals you will receive.
So, encouraging your customers to leave positive reviews will regularly generate more referrals for your business.
3. Share Your Reviews and Testimonials
Again, obtaining reviews and testimonials is the first step to attracting new customers.
Nonetheless, you must ensure prospects can easily find them online.
Therefore, sharing your reviews and testimonials via your website, emails, and social media platforms is beneficial for gaining additional exposure that yields increased sales for your business and brand.
With this in mind, remember to select the most positive and highlight them wherever possible.
4. Offering an Incentive Encourages Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Offering incentives is a fantastic way to encourage word-of-mouth referrals.
Hence, many large companies do this under a referral scheme.
For example, customers can receive rewards to spend on your products or services or a voucher redeemable in-store when referring friends or family.
By all means, choosing the right incentive can lead to many referrals.
5. Connect With Influencers
Influencers are highly sought after within their niche and often have a large social media following.
Accordingly, leading influencers in your niche can easily market your products and services since their audience trusts them and often purchases things they recommend.
For this reason, you'd be amazed by how much an influencer can help fuel an uptick in sales.
Hence, consider setting aside time to research and connect with an influencer to promote your brand if you haven't already done so.
However, it is essential to understand that the more influential the person is, the greater the cost of working with them.
6. Ensure You Are Transparent When Presenting Your Offer
Being transparent when delivering your products and services is a simple way to nurture word-of-mouth referrals.
That is to say, today, consumers expect businesses to be honest and upfront about their offers and pricing.
So, avoid hidden fees or restrictions.
Additionally, consider ways to improve your business transparency and incorporate that into your website, email marketing campaigns, and social media channels.
In Conclusion
In the final analysis, following the above tips will increase consumer confidence in your business and their tendency to recommend it to others.
That is to say, word-of-mouth marketing helps acquire new customers by turning your current buyers into marketers while reducing your time, commitment, and effort.
Yet, creating a successful word-of-mouth marketing strategy can be challenging since fostering relationships, experiences, and connections takes time.
Nonetheless, the effort is worthwhile.
So, get started today!
Hope this helps,
Erik
We implement creative, results-based digital and hybrid marketing strategies for local business clients.
You can visit our home page and view our service plan options by clicking the button below.
