Thousands of small business owners still rely on the power of “word of mouth” or the idea that their satisfied customers will drive new potential customers to them through telling people they know. They have no interest in the new techniques of modern marketing, specifically social media, because they’ve always relied on word of mouth.
They’re making a huge mistake, because social media isn’t just a place where you can see your weird uncle rant about politics, or what your high school buddies are up to now. Social media is the modern word of mouth. In the past, if a customer loved your service they may tell 2-3 people max, but now all it takes is one Facebook post and they are telling everyone on their friends list. Considering the average user has 338 Facebook friends, just one recommendation can prove to be very valuable for any type of small business.
Leveraging social platforms for word of mouth begins with the same process as stirring up regular word of mouth referrals: with great service/product that gives customers a reason to talk about it. Everyday people don’t wish to be a sales person to their friends unless your product or service elicits one of two responses: Love or Hate. No one tells others about a product thats “meh” or a service that “got the job done”. They tell of the horror stories that came with the worst lawn care company ever or how the local coffee shop has the best espresso they’ve ever tasted. Understand word of mouth goes both ways, so if you regularly disappoint and receive tons of complaints don’t be surprised when people are talking, but not in a good way.
The next step in leveraging social media is to make sure you have you online platform set up. I personally recommend Facebook when attempting to drum up word of mouth referrals because of the demographic is a bit older and it’s seen as a more common practice. Without a page for your business, you leave little reason for a customer to post about you, and even if they did no one would be able to easily learn more about your business without a page for them to visit. When setting up a business page, remember to add relevant contact information and a little bit about the work you do.
Most TV or internet service providers offer deals like a free iPad, a percentage off of a bill, or even straight up cash when you refer a friend. They are incentivizing you to bring them more business with freebies. It only makes sense to do the same except for a simple post on their Facebook. Offer a small discount for their next purchase, a free appetizer, drinks, whatever it may be understand that while it’s not always directly measurable results will ensue.
A great example of this type of advertising recently occurred when the swim suit company, Sunny Co Clothing offered a free swimsuit to those everyone who posted This picture below and tagged the company. The result: Sunny Co Clothing’s Instagram followers skyrocketed from 7000 to over 750,000 in just a few days and thousands of participants flooding Instagram with the picture of the “red swimsuit girl”. Even Sunny Co did not expect the extremely viral response to their promotion as evident when they added the following stipulation: “reserves the right to cap the promotion … due to the viral volume of participants.” in addition, Sunny Co warned that processing and shipping orders would most likely be delayed due to the “overwhelming volume of orders.”
If you don’t like the idea of offering a deal to each customer individually, then perhaps a single contest/giveaway is the way to go. Running a contest is a great way to get more page likes, referrals, reviews, basically anything imaginable for your online platform. Setting up a contest is easy. Just choose an item your fans and their friends will find valuable, take a free meal for two for example, and offer an entrance in a drawing to win in exchange for them tagging a few of their friends in the comments. This can create a viral cycle of more and more people seeing your contest and your business.
The most obvious and maybe overlooked way of generating word of mouth advertising on social media is directly reaching out to your fans. Look for those who have recently left beaming reviews on your page or posted about a good experience they had on your wall.
Reply to these customers and tell them how much you appreciate them, and ask them if they would like to make a short post on their page so new customers may be able to find your business. The adage goes “ask and you shall receive”.
There are tons of other subtle ways to leverage word of mouth advertising on social. Think about a restaurant or building that has a unique or popular display that customers will be attracted to take a picture with. The first thought that comes to my mind is the BackPorch, a restaurant found in popular beach destinations such as Panama City, and Destin. They have a rather large chair that tourist flock to for pictures with their family.
Getting customers to talk about you on social media is all about providing value. Whether that value is provided solely from your product or service, a nice offer or deal, or even a cool spectacle at your premises doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you give your customers a reason to talk about you. Incentivize a platform to do it, have business pages set up, and reward those that do with at MINIMUM a response of how much you appreciate them as a customer.
