Want to leverage the power of word of mouth? Here are 5 easy ways to transform your best customers into brand ambassadors who love to share their experiences.Word of mouth is a huge driver of consumer purchase decisions. According to Nielsen, 84% of customers say they are either completely or somewhat influenced by recommendations from their family, friends, and coworkers. As many as 74% of consumers see word of mouth as a major influence in their purchase decision. There's so much value in customers who talk about your product and service. The hard part, for most brands, is figuring out how to get their customers talking. Small businesses don't have the same marketing budgets or brand power of globally-recognized companies. Inspiring customers to become ambassadors might seem difficult when you have little to no budget. Thankfully, it doesn't have to cost much more than time in most cases. Here are 5 tactics you can use to get your best customers talking about your business and sharing their experiences. Inspire Them to ShareEncouraging customers to leave reviews is a great start. But, don't feel like reviews are the only method for customers to share their experiences. When customers love what you do, they're happy to share their experience. So, show them how they can do that. Locate the customers who are talking about your brand, products, or services online and feature those mentions. You can do this by:
When your best customers see featured or shared content from happy customers they'll be inspired to share their own successes and positive experiences. This creates a feedback loop that continually produces user generated content to help reinforce your brand authority and consumer trust. Take a cue from some of the top brands on social media and how they engage their customers to inspire sharing. Manually monitoring for these kinds of posts can be time consuming. Instead, set up alerts for your products and brand using Google Alerts. You'll get a notification anytime one of your trigger words is mentioned (your brand name, product name, or even competitors) so you can respond appropriately. Ask Customers to Share Their ExperiencesYou know who your best customers are, and you know they love you. Inspiring word-of-mouth sometimes means nudging customers and asking them to share their experiences. According to a consumer survey from BrightLocal, 70% of customers will leave a review if you ask. But don't just ask for a star rating. Be sure to guide and educate them on the best way to leave a review for your business. The survey from BrightLocal revealed that while some 58% of consumers look to the star rating first, they also take into account the sentiment of reviews, recency, quantity, review detail and if businesses have responded to reviews. When you ask customers to share their experience tell them what would be the most beneficial or helpful. This could include:
Keep in mind there's no bad time to ask a customer. Ask them to share their experiences right after the sale, in a follow up call, via your monthly newsletter or a follow up email, or through social media as a general call to action. Create a Community Around Your BrandThis is more about creating a sense of community over creating a physical place for your customers to gather. Social media offers a great place to grow and nurture a community. If you can inspire a sense of community among your customers you can foster that growth. As the community grows, customers will be inspired to share their experiences, help one another, welcome new members into the community, and make one another feel welcome. Not only will this encourage the sharing of experiences on a broader scale, it can reinforce brand loyalty while lifting the lifetime value of your customers. Harley Davidson is a solid example of how a community (Harley Owners Group) has grown around a brand and its products. That kind of community can be nurtured around products, interests, and your brand with the right approach. In a post for Infusionsoft Sujan Patel, co-founder of WebProfits, offers a 5-step guide to crafting and building a community around your brand.
Make Easily-Shareable, Awesome ContentWhen customers are happy word-of-mouth isn't limited to sharing positive experiences. They'll share your content, posts, and insights but only if there's value. The content you create needs to echo their beliefs and remind them of why you're so great. Create content that equates to an enjoyable experience, whether that's an unboxing video, montage of behind the scenes clips, pictures and video of community involvement, content featuring success stories or employee spotlights and more. You don't need fancy equipment, or a huge budget, to create easily-shareable awesome content they'll want to spread around. Lean sharply toward visual content whenever possible; 4x as many consumers prefer to watch video over reading about products and brands. Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement, and tweets with images receive 150% more retweets. Your best customers are your most loyal brand ambassadors, and entertaining, educational, high value content will be far more likely to trigger a share and get them talking about you. Surprise Your Customers to Get Them TalkingFew things get your customers raving faster than delighting them when they least expect. This is why one of the best moves for doubling revenue, according to Neil Patel, is to take a customer-centric approach to business. If everything you do is focused on exceeding the expectations of your customer, you're guaranteed to “wow” them more often than not. In an increasingly competitive world, you can't afford not to make your customers happy. Most businesses think they excel at customer service and keeping consumers happy, but an American Express survey found that only about 7% of consumers feel like companies exceed their expectations. That's a sizable gap easily corrected when you aim to delight your customers at every turn. Not only will they be far more likely to share their positive experiences, you'll improve your bottom line while reducing marketing spends - because it costs upwards of 7x more to attract new customers compares to the cost to retain the ones you have. Surprise them, make them happy, get them talking, and keep them coming back. ConclusionThese ideas may seem targeted toward consumer products, but they can work for any small business owner whether its service related, food, or retail. You can learn a great deal by asking your customers “what do you find most valuable about doing business with us?” Use that information to improve your business, and don't be afraid to ask them to share their experience online and with others. Guide your top customers and let them know the best way they can help. With a little trial and error you'll find the perfect formula to get them talking. Top image via Lucky Business. The post How to Get Your Best Customers to Share Their Experience appeared first on The Shutterstock Blog.
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