Word-of-mouth Marketing
Consulting, coaching and individual tuition for your self-marketing and branding

Overview

• Word-of-mouth Marketing

Word-of-mouth Marketing

Have you experienced someone who talked so enthusiastically and convincingly about a fantastic vacation spot, an exotic restaurant, their new mp3-player, an excellent service or an unique empathetic dentist that you were immediately keen to follow the recommendation?

A credible recommendation is invaluable in comparison to even the most extensive advertisement.

Conventional marketing and advertisement is losing more and more credibility and effectiveness.
Customers are increasingly taking recommendations from friends and accepted experts more seriously into account.
This is called word-of-mouth marketing, word-of-mouth advertising, word-of-mouth recommendation or simply word of mouth.

Word of mouth marketing is a way to get the word out about the product or service being offered.

This type of marketing is defined as orally passing negative or positive information to a person’s social network.
While it is defined as oral communication, text and email are also ways to promote word of mouth marketing.

There are several basic elements of word-of-mouth marketing.
The key elements are explaining to people about the product or service being offered, pinpointing the audience that would most likely share opinions, supplying the tools to make it simple to share information, analyzing how and when opinions are being shared and paying attention to both positive and negative feedback.
 

Credibility

Word of mouth marketing is a highly valued and more authentic type of marketing that builds trust.
When one is spreading positive feedback it is more credible than other types of marketing thereby generating more interest in the product or service being talked about.
In order for this type of marketing to work, the marketeer must provide complete satisfaction with their product or service.
There are several different types of word-of-mouth marketing: buzz marketing, grassroots marketing and referral programs are just a few.
 

Quality

Be careful with your reputation. Maintaining quality is essential or you will loose your investment in positive word-of-mouth marketing. You want all your stakeholders and customers to trust you.
This trust must be earned continuously. It takes time to develop, but can be lost in an instant. Customer and client complaints must be addressed and solved quickly.
 

Risks

There are some drawbacks to word-of-mouth marketing.
If a customer is dissatisfied they can also use word of mouth to spread negative feedback, which seems to get around much quicker than positive feedback does.
Word of mouth marketing can’t be relied upon as the primary form of marketing.
If attentiveness is not being generated about the product or service being offered the interest in the product or service virtually stops, meaning there must be also another type of marketing in use to drive interest in the product or service.
 

Integration

Good word-of-mouth marketing is to be integrated in the marketing strategy and needs preparation.
Each element of the marketing mix has to be aligned with the others.
And there are some decisions you need to make to successfully achieve it.

One of the questions is; what do you want others to talk about related to you and your offer?
 

Personality

When your target market knows you, you are part of the word-of mouth marketing. Whatever you do in public has to be aligned with the overall strategy.
Present your personality concisely, state your position clearly and define your self-marketing strategy.

Support

External help makes it easier and more successful. There are some different perspectives and experts related with a good word-of-mouth marketing.
Experts for the marketing plan, for the financial part and for the coordination with the classical advertising.

My team and I are experts for the personal elements of word-of-mouth marketing.
We show and train you how to present yourself and your offer successfully, how to "tell" the story that is spread by others.

Keywords

Consulting, mouth-of-word marketing, word of mouth coaching, reputation, be known, advertisement, marketing, self-marketing, freelancer, marketing mix, risks, tenability, plausibility, brand, branding, product, service, idea, personality, self-management, clients, marketing, reputation, marketing-strategy

Copyright

© 1998 - 2012 Karsten Noack: Consulting, Coaching & Training Berlin
How to present yourself and your offer successfully
Updated 05/10/12