What is word-of-mouth marketing

Word of mouth (WOM of word of mouth) originated from communication. Because of its wide application in marketing, WOM marketing came into being.

Traditional word-of-mouth marketing: refers to an enterprise spreading its product information or brand through mutual communication between relatives and friends.

Nowadays, word-of-mouth marketing: under the condition of investigating the market demand, enterprises provide consumers with the products and services they need, and at the same time make certain word-of-mouth promotion plans, so that consumers can automatically spread good comments on the company's products and services, so that people can understand products, establish brands and strengthen market awareness through word-of-mouth, and finally achieve the purpose of selling products and providing services.

Both of them have one thing in common: the marketing method has high success rate and strong credibility.

According to the survey of eight companies, word-of-mouth marketing is called "viral marketing" by people in the industry, and marketing person Ao Chunhua explained that it is because of its great communication influence. Many entrepreneurs will find that products with good reputation will produce greater profit value. Abroad, there are also many marketers who study it. The new business of SNS and Weibo will also package the whole market more completely.

[Edit this paragraph] Three steps

The first step of word-of-mouth marketing-encouragement

Trendy people, the mainstream people who consume products, even the first audience who experience the reliability and superiority of products, will spread the texture, raw materials and efficacy of products to the circle of friends around them at the first time, or tell people around them about the 5S system and meticulous service experience of product enterprises and businesses, thus attracting others' attention to a new product, a popular song or a new business.

For example, Heshibi Media made a ban advertisement for a famous herbal tea brand, which attracted the attention of netizens on a large scale and effectively improved the brand's attention.

Another example is Procter & Gamble's tremor advertising campaign, which has recently attracted the attention and discussion of all parties. We feel that Tremor advertising has done enough in word-of-mouth marketing. With everyone's encouragement and sensational promotion, P&G invested a certain amount of time and energy, but realized the low-cost strategy of word-of-mouth marketing.

We firmly believe that encouraging elite consumer groups, combining and expanding word of mouth can stimulate consumption and make products extremely influential. Indeed, brand companies such as Procter & Gamble, Amway and Wuliangye have been working hard on word-of-mouth marketing. On the one hand, they mobilized all resources to encourage consumers to buy; On the other hand, we should work hard on word-of-mouth marketing combination boxing, do everything possible to expand the audience, and carry out word-of-mouth marketing tactics combining "one-on-one" and "individual" to reduce operating costs and expand consumption.

The second step of word-of-mouth marketing-value

Without sincerity, word-of-mouth marketing is ineffective and loses the meaning of word-of-mouth communication. Any company that wants to achieve brand promotion through word-of-mouth communication must try its best to decorate its products carefully and improve its sound and efficient service value concept, so as to achieve the best effect of word-of-mouth marketing.

When a consumer comes into contact with a new product for the first time, he will first ask himself,' Is this product worthy of my publicity?' Validity is their passport to gain a foothold in the market, so what they have a "word of mouth" must be something they can trust and value. "

When the information or experience of a product is easily talked about by people, and the product can naturally enter people's talk after dinner, we think that this product is very valuable, so it is easy to form a word of mouth.

The third step of word-of-mouth marketing-return

When consumers get product information and make purchases through the media and word of mouth, they hope to get corresponding returns. If the products or services provided by for-profit enterprises and institutions really make the audience feel that they are worth the money, they will successfully push the product or service concept to the market in a short time and achieve the goal of low cost and profit.

[Edit this paragraph] Four Laws

Rule number one: be interesting.

Before advertising, before launching products, before adding new dishes to the menu, ask for other people's opinions.

Rule number two: Make people happy.

Happy customers are the best advertisers. Get them excited.

Make people happy by making really good things, and introduce products that can play their due functions and be handy to use.

Rule 3: Win trust and respect.

Be a decent company. Be ethical in everything, be kind to customers, communicate with consumers and meet their needs.

Rule 4: Keep it simple.

Word of mouth is laziness. In order to play its role, we must help it. We must do two things: find a super simple news and help everyone share it.

Five necessary conditions for the success of word-of-mouth marketing

Every step of word-of-mouth marketing is a place where marketers can play and show. Any defects in products and services may cause word-of-mouth storm in the market. A good user experience will stimulate user comments, which is the cornerstone of word-of-mouth marketing. Advertisers want to carry out word-of-mouth marketing, first of all, they must do their homework and provide consumers with very good products and services. Research shows that if consumers are dissatisfied with products and services, only 4% will complain to manufacturers, while as many as 80% will choose to talk to relatives and friends. Any defects in products and services may cause word-of-mouth storm in the market.

In addition to providing good products and services, marketers can also help consumers to obtain goods conveniently and quickly, post comments, spread opinions, amplify the influence of good word of mouth, and make word of mouth stimulate the purchase of services as much as possible. Word-of-mouth marketing is a necessary step for marketers to give full play to their talents and potential.

The following five points are necessary for the success of word-of-mouth marketing. Mastering these, you may not get a breakthrough in marketing, but if you don't pay attention to these, your word-of-mouth marketing practice will certainly not achieve anything.

Looking for opinion leaders

If you sell computers, invite reporters from computer professional media to test drive, spread product information through their wonderful pens, and conquer consumers with high credibility; If the consumers of products are mainly young students, it is a good way to find the students with the best academic performance in the class or the monitor and head teacher to experience your products and provide communication channels to help them publish their experiences and experiences. If your enterprise mainly produces crop seeds, it is a good idea to ask agricultural technicians and village heads to tell your brand story and product quality. In the era of Web2.0, everyone may be an opinion leader in a small circle. The key is whether marketers can see this pearl and find these opinion leaders.

The opinion leader is an authority in a small circle, his views can be widely accepted by fans, and his consumption behavior can be enthusiastically imitated by fans. SethGodin, the world's first marketing blog and former vice president of Yahoo's marketing, believes that word-of-mouth communicators can be divided into two types: strong dominant dissemination of core values and random expansion of communication scope. To succeed in word-of-mouth marketing, powerful word-of-mouth communicators and casual word-of-mouth communicators are indispensable.

Create "scarcity" and produce "virus"

The "virus" in virus marketing is not necessarily the information about the brand itself, but the word-of-mouth based on the product itself can be a "virus", which requires your product to be cool enough and sticky, so that it is easy to detonate popularity and set off a storm of word-of-mouth marketing.

Is there any company that is better at "virus" manufacturing and word-of-mouth communication than Apple? When it comes to the name of iPhone3G, it can drive countless apples crazy, which makes people in the marketing circle envious. Such products not only provide many personalized designs, but also are surprisingly low in price. It seems hard not to let its consumers discuss it. Here, the word-of-mouth of consumers is not only about the product itself, but also a "virus" that spreads very fast. It is important to always limit the supply and buy it as soon as possible. People who own it are fashionistas, as if they had become individuals overnight, and their value doubled. Of course, they prefer to show off and talk among friends and family.

Integrated marketing communication

Word of mouth marketing is not a new thing in the field of marketing communication, nor is it a great innovation or revolution. It is just one of many marketing methods in the new media era. Although word-of-mouth marketing has the advantages of low publicity cost, high credibility and strong pertinence, it is also full of prejudice and emotional remarks of ordinary citizens. The birth and spread of word-of-mouth among consumers is unplanned information for marketers and is highly uncontrollable. Therefore, word-of-mouth marketing is not a life-saving straw to solve the poor communication effect and low return on investment. It just adds a new object to the treasure chest of communication tools for marketers.

Undoubtedly, the progress of communication technology has changed the whole process of consumers' obtaining consumption information and finally forming purchase decisions. According to the traditional advertising theory, when consumers buy a product, they have to go through five stages: paying attention, arousing interest, eager to get further information about the product, remembering a product and finally buying it. The whole communication process is an inverted pyramid model from easy to difficult, from more to less. Internet provides convenience and unlimited time and space for word-of-mouth communication of consumers. If consumers pay attention to a product and are interested in it, they will generally search for all kinds of information about this product online, and then enter the process of purchasing decision and product experience sharing after some self-analysis. In this process, word-of-mouth with high credibility plays a key role in consumers' purchase decision, which makes up for the deficiency of traditional marketing communication methods in promoting consumers' purchase decision to some extent. However, to make many consumers pay attention to a product, the power of traditional advertising is still very great.

Therefore, word-of-mouth marketing must be supplemented by advertising, accessories, direct marketing, public relations and other integrated marketing methods, learn from each other's strengths and play a synergistic effect, in order to maximize the communication effect.

Implement various incentive plans.

Nothing for nothing. Maybe everyone knows this truth, but the weakness of human nature makes many people always unable to refuse free items. Give consumers coupons, vouchers, discounts and other consumption incentives to help you complete a word-of-mouth communication process, and your word-of-mouth marketing process will be greatly accelerated. E-commerce companies selling ready-made clothes are familiar with this set. As long as consumers buy products, it is possible to get coupons. If you recommend the website to your friends and share your experience in buying clothes with them, you will certainly get more unexpected gains. Let everyone tell you that consumers have to become propagandists and word-of-mouth disseminators of businesses.

Bend down and listen carefully.

Good things stay indoors while bad things will go far away. Dell's performance in 2005 was hit because it didn't respond to a consumer's blog post about computer quality defects in time. This is not a fabrication, but a fact admitted by Dell Computer. One of the main tasks of word-of-mouth marketing is to manage bad word-of-mouth rather than spread good word-of-mouth. Unfortunately, there is no universal tool to manage word of mouth in the world, but this does not prevent marketers from working towards this goal.

Of course, marketers can hire professional companies to do search engine optimization services and filter out any negative information about the company. But the best way is to open enterprise blogs and brand virtual communities, release brand information in time, collect consumer word-of-mouth information, find out the shortcomings of products and services, handle consumer complaints, reduce consumer complaints, answer consumer questions, and guide consumer word-of-mouth to spread in a good direction.

It is worth noting that consumers are tired of well-organized news and public relations drafts and advertising slogans, and hate the hegemony of what you say and what I listen to. They hope to have an equal, sincere and homely interaction with the brand. In the field of marketing communication, advertising lost an ally, but the brand gained a partner to establish close relationship with consumers.

Scoble, known as Bill Gates' number one radio speaker and former head of Microsoft blog, said: "If you don't run a blog, the enterprise will become a second-rate role." If you don't lower yourself and listen to the voice from consumers, the historic reputation of marketing opportunities will pass you by.

[Edit this paragraph] Skills

It is the dream of business operators to let every customer publicize the "virtue" of their business. But is the formation of word-of-mouth purely accidental, completely accidental and spontaneous? Renee Dye, a management and marketing expert at McKinsey & Company in London, and her colleagues found that it is no accident or coincidence that word-of-mouth advertising creates explosive demand, but there are several rules to follow. Enterprises can predict the spread of word-of-mouth advertising by analyzing the interaction and influence between consumers, making it networked, knowledgeable and global, which requires our marketing to pay great wisdom.

Make the advertisement "catchy"

Not all goods are suitable for word-of-mouth marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing plays different roles in different goods. According to the analysis of authoritative survey companies, from the product types that people are willing to spread information, "clothing, shoes and hats" (53.4%), "daily necessities" (46.7%), "household appliances" (39.2%) and "food/beverage" (37. 1%) have become the main product topics that people talk about. Further analysis shows that people of different ages and genders exchange different goods: the younger they are, the more frequently they talk about the information of "clothing, shoes and hats", especially among the respondents aged 18-25, they exchange "clothing, shoes and hats" (6 1.7%) and "mobile phone/pager" (50.7%). With the growth of age, "daily necessities", "food" and "housing" have gradually become the main products of people's communication; Clothing, shoes and hats (65.3%), daily necessities (54.8%) and cosmetics (44.2%) are women's favorite topic products. Men, on the other hand, often talk about household appliances (50.6%), mobile phones/pagers (45.3%) and housing (42.0%).

Therefore, in order to make more effective use of word-of-mouth, all marketing activities should be aimed at these groups who are more willing to spread such products, and first spread the information that these groups are most concerned about. Genet Dai suggested that marketing experts should pay attention to two standards: first, products should have certain uniqueness, such as appearance, function, use and price; Second, products should have the potential to be suitable for word-of-mouth advertising and make advertisements catchy.

Guide customers to experience consumption.

There is a slogan on the message board in every office of Dell Headquarters: "Customer Experience: Grasp it". The so-called customer experience is "the sum of the interaction between customers and enterprise products, people and processes". In other words, let customers stay in the whole process of manufacturing, or let customers enjoy the fun of consumption in person, thus forming a strong consumer desire to "get what they want at the price they want, at the time they want, and in the way they want". Dell even thinks that "customer experience is the next battlefield of competition".

Pfizer's "Iacocca" has not invested much in advertising, but it can be popular all over the world in a short time. The important point is that with the help of customers' experiential consumption, people's discussions and disputes about the positive, negative, pros and cons of this product have become the focus of gossip in almost every country, and the "blue pill" of "Iacocca" has become a world-famous product under word of mouth.

The experience of experiential consumption is unforgettable. Because of this, more and more products choose experiential consumption, and use this ancient and magical marketing method to guide enterprises to go more steadily and further in marketing.

Learn to use brands to make recommendations.

[2] Let excellent brands recommend some brands that have not yet established a good reputation, which will receive unexpected results. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods frequently appear in Nike product advertisements, making Nike a world-famous brand; Coincidentally, at the 23rd Olympic Games, after drinking Jianlibao, the China women's volleyball team beat the American women's volleyball team to become the world champion with the autumn wind sweeping away the leaves, and Jianlibao became famous in one fell swoop.

For a new product, the recommendation of famous brands will undoubtedly help to eliminate consumers' doubts. For example, when Newway products begin to appear in the market, customers need to be convinced that the products will not have aftertaste and are very safe. The first point is easy to prove, as long as customers can do risk-free tasting. But it is more difficult to convince customers of the second point. Newway products are safe, and this quality characteristic can only be verified through long-term use. When brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi launched Nutrilite low-sugar products, they virtually supported their statement that Nutrilite is a safe substitute for sugar.

It is conceivable that if a certain brand of automobile engine is jointly recommended by Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, BMW and other brands, we can assert that users all over the world will use it with confidence and boldly, and this brand will be in short supply.

Let the brand and the story spread together.

Stories are effective tools for spreading reputation, because they are spread with emotion. In the new century, the Italian leather shoes "Fareno" quietly landed in the China market, and was loved by domestic movie stars, successful men and political celebrities not only by the fashion, exquisite workmanship and exquisite materials of "Fareno" leather shoes, but also by a legendary fairy tale.

1 189, the holy Roman emperor Frederick I and the kings of Britain and France led the third crusade to Jerusalem. When traveling near the Alps, the weather suddenly changed, heavy snow fell, and the Crusader's feet were frozen and could not move. In desperation, Farinaud, a Roman knight, asked others to wrap their skins around their feet and move on. 14-15th century, a famous leather shoes manufacturer in the northern Italian city named his top leather shoes "Fareno" to commemorate this interesting event of General Fareno. The reputation of "Fareno" spread from this.

Beautiful and meaningful legends can always make your products unforgettable. It is estimated that the popularity of the TV series "Dazhaimen" will definitely make the reputation of Tongrentang Pharmacy resound throughout China.

Pay attention to every detail of yourself.

What affects consumers' reputation is sometimes not the main body of the product, but some unremarkable "parts", such as buttons of suits, buttons of household appliances, a word of maintenance service and so on. These "insignificant" mistakes will arouse consumers' resentment. More importantly, it is difficult for brand enterprises to hear these antipathy, and it is also difficult to improve it quickly and thoroughly. Often sales are greatly reduced, but I don't know where the root cause is. According to a survey by a professional market research company, only 4% dissatisfied customers will complain to the manufacturers, but 80% dissatisfied customers will tell their relatives and friends about an unpleasant experience.

In the shopping hall of new york Meirui Company, there is a big information desk. The main function of this information desk is to serve customers who have not bought anything in the company. If a customer goes to Murray's company and doesn't get what he wants, the waiter at the information desk will take you to another store with this kind of goods. The practice of Meirui Company is not enough, but it is a tangible "detail", which is talked about by people and deeply remembered. Not only won the trust and admiration of competitors, but also made customers feel intimate with Meirui Company. Whenever they go shopping, they always go to Meirui Company. More and more customers come here, and the business of Meirui Company is getting more and more prosperous.

Provide quick and thoughtful service.

A touching story of Haier:

A user in Fuzhou called Qingdao headquarters, hoping that Haier could send someone to repair his refrigerator within half a month. Unexpectedly, the maintenance staff arrived at his house the next day. Users can't believe it. I didn't know until I asked that the maintenance personnel arrived by plane overnight. The user was moved and wrote the following words on the maintenance list: "I want to tell you that I bought Haier refrigerator." From the perspective of simple benefits, the round-trip fare is almost the same as the refrigerator price, which is not worth the candle; But from the perspective of corporate image, it can win a good reputation for Haier and attract potential customers for the enterprise.

EMC, a leading enterprise in the American computer industry, believes that once customers trust the company, the company must try its best to maintain this trust. If the company can prove its determination to be responsible for its customers to the end, customers will not leave. Therefore, when there is a problem with EMC's storage system, EMC will provide customers with two choices: one is to get a brand-new EMC system, and the other is to be paid by EMC, and the customer specifies to buy other brands of systems. At that time, some people in the company questioned this way of losing money to let customers choose solutions, but customers finally realized EMC's commitment to be responsible to customers. Because of EMC's attitude of being responsible to customers, although the price of products is higher than that of other companies, many EMC customers still insist on choosing his products. In addition, you can also build a good reputation for brands or products by means of leaderboards, social welfare activities, limited sales and other forms.

It is worth reminding that to win popularity, you only need to invest a lot of money and carry out intensive advertising bombing, which can be formed in a short time; To win public praise, we must do all the basic work very carefully, in place and persistently. Only when products and services exceed customers' expectations can we get their recommendation and publicity. Those services and initiatives that are ahead of competitors or ingenious will make consumers enjoy it while vividly spreading.

Word-of-mouth marketing is showing its eternal charm.