Marketing with Your Product: The Power of Word of Mouth

Brands, especially the bigger ones, spend a fortune on marketing—and why shouldn’t they? It doesn’t matter how great your product (or service) is, if no one knows about it, then there’s no way you’re making a sale, right? Unfortunately, marketing alone won’t get you very far if what you’re selling is not good to begin with. It may get you a lot of first-time users, but in the absence of a great product, there’s a big chance you won’t be getting any returning customers. In contrast, by perfecting what you are selling first, you’d need very little marketing to build a massive customer base.

So, how does it work? Well, having an awesome product gives you access to a great little marketing tool called “word of mouth.” It means that your consumers will do your marketing for you. The only requirement is that you wow them with your product first. Let’s take a look at what makes word of mouth marketing good for your brand:

It’s all about trust

The first people a happy customer will tell about your brand are those who are closest to them. This is perfect because these individuals will hear about you from someone they trust—and no amount of marketing can beat the recommendation of a relative or close friend.

Good news spreads fast(er)

Word of mouth marketing is even more valuable now that everyone is on social media. Just imagine how quickly word about your brand would spread after one satisfied customer posts something about you on Facebook or Twitter.

Gone are the days when “word of mouth” actually meant people talking about your brand in person. The word of mouth marketing of today has global reach and is much, much faster.

It’s free

Word of mouth marketing, in its purest form, does not cost anything. Again, all you need is a product that wows, and your customers will take care of the rest. You don’t even have to spend any time actively pushing for word about your brand to spread. It’ll do so on its own.

You can make it even more useful

This article from Forbes.com talks about the three E’s that you can use to supercharge your word of mouth marketing: Engage, Equip and Empower. Let’s go over each one briefly:

• Engage means establishing a meaningful connection. Marketing is not all about getting likes on social media. What matters is how many of your followers you get to talk to.
• Equip consists of anything you can give your customers to talk about. Aside from offering a great product, for instance, you can also provide exceptional customer service or all sorts of viral content like inspiring stories and surprising facts.
• Empower is all about giving your customers the power to easily talk about you. Put up easy-to-share content. Come up with promos that involve a strong social component. Craft unique and witty hashtags.

Check out Forbes.com’s article if you wish to know more.

Another great thing about word of mouth marketing is that it works well with any other campaign of which you can think. So, feel free also to advertise and actively market you brand to increase its visibility and build an even bigger following for it.

But remember that it all begins with an excellent product

The bottom line is that, again, you have to perfect your product first. Get that first step down and everything else will follow.

Do you know of any superior products that don’t need a whole lot of marketing? Share them with us in the comments!