Word Of Mouth

People are talking about advertising and marketing whenever they want to grow their business. They want more customers, subscribers or more traffic for other reasons and they often think about various marketing campaigns. They need to be seen and heard. While winning nowadays requires strategy and squeezing the most out of every opportunity, one powerful area often tends to get neglected...

Word of mouth marketing (WOMM), also called word of mouth advertising, is the social media era’s version of simple word of mouth. Traditionally, word of mouth marketing was spread from one person to another based on recommendation. Modern word of mouth marketing describes both targeted efforts and naturally occurring instances where users share their satisfaction with a brand.

As someone whos main business were brand building for a handful of years, a business I set up from the comfort of my own home while I was still a simple "freelancer" working on sites like Fiverr, I often tend to be rather upset, or at least annoyed when I hear people talking about "how to bring in more people".

Many of the people I have heard, seen or even talked to personally, have this weird mindset. They often have very deep pockets, willing to spend tons of money on advertising.

Unfortunately I can't remember the exact details, but I know that Steemit Inc paid large amounts to at least a handful of people "back in the days" to promote Steem and Steemit. Obviously with various results.

I never got the chance to work for them directly, because I was a nobody. But I did bring in loads of traffic during my early days.. I did that without payment. Just like many others are trying to promote Hive and/or LEOFinance and other communities today. We promote it because we believe in it. We know that our stakes will be worth more eventually with more people. That's the payment we are looking for.

Anyhow, I worked my way up and suddenly found myself in a situation where I became a leader, a tutor, a teacher and a support pillar. I hired dozens of people from all over the world and I suddenly had a brand building business. My little side-thing had become a full time business. (Long before I stumbled across Steemit.)

I have worked with hundreds of unique clients, include my employees and co-workers and we're probably talking about thousands of people in total, which I've had personal and direct contact with. Many of them on a daily basis. While I might share a post that will cover a large amount of all of this, I won't go into any major details regarding my business, but I can tell you that everything started with SEOClerks. The largest SEO marketplace in the world. I worked with and for them for months. Not sure what the CEO would say about me sharing specific details though, so I won't. But I can obviously prove that I have worked for them. And I don't mean as a seller on their marketplace, even though I've been a seller too. I was even hand picked by their staff as a seller, before I started to work for them, so I have a special badge and all that. On top of that, or, perhaps I should say along with the work I did for them, I also worked for myself. I pushed some ref-links and I have more than 1000 affiliates on SEOClerks today.

I can at least show you that I have more than 1K affiliates.

I can also generate $5 coupons for new SEOClerks users who signs up using my ref-link, so let me know in the comments if you're interested. The $5 coupons expires in 10 days.

Side note: My 1128 affiliates have spent a total of $25,598.38, which equates to $25.59 per user. I earn 10%-12% on every order, for life. Not too shabby extra income, which is 100% passive.

Long story short, I know how to drive traffic, without thinking about creating awesome backlinks, using super-cool SEO tools and stuff like that. I did my thing manually, and it gave me great results. My 'outside of the box' thinking paved the way for my full time business. A business I don't run today, but a business I had for several years.

I used word of mouth marketing.

You can spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on different SEO (Search engine optimization) services & backlinks. You can spend a fortune on traffic services or salaries if you hire people. These things can basically cost you millions over time.. Coca-Cola has spent an average of $US4 billion globally every year in advertising over the last six years according to new data from financial data firm Learnbonds. Microsoft spent 1.6 Billion on advertising in 2016 and 1.9 Billion dollars in 2015. That said, we're talking billions for large companies.

I knew that I would never be able to score that type of deal, obviously, so I came up with something I could provide individuals or small companies instead. I came up with word of mouth marketing, in a different way than you had seen before, even though it wasn't new at all.

I used social media, much like our own @nathanmars with his HIVETwitter thing, but I went outside of Twitter. I looked outside of Facebook and these other places. I used literally everything from the smallest internet marketing forum to Facebook, Twitter and Quora. I did that because I was eager to put my customers webshops, products, reviews or whatever in front of everyone's eyes.

I also often did it in multiple languages, depending on the things I was marketing, which isn't easy when you only speak two languages. (English and Swedish). But I accomplished that as well, by working with people from around the world.

Some Statistics:

Nielsen report that 92% of consumers believe suggestions from friends and family more than advertising.

Beyond friends and family, 88% of people trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts.

And 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decisions.

But only 33% of businesses are actively seeking out and collecting reviews.

Despite the fact that a little, can do a lot. When specific case studies were analyzed, researchers found a 10% increase in word-of-mouth (off and online) translated into a sales lifts between 0.2 – 1.5%.

The Advantages of Word of Mouth Marketing:

Grow sales without the ad spend: Many brands from The Hustle to Bangs Shoes and more use word of mouth marketing instead of advertising spend to increase sales and fanbase.
Build a community not a commodity: Word of mouth marketing works to build an engaged fan base rather than a buy and bolt customer. Higher engaged customers buy more often and recommend their friends more often, extended your return on time spent on the strategy and generating a high customer lifetime loyalty
More funding, more freedom: Brands with high customer lifetime loyalty and therefore repeat purchases receive more angel and venture funding. Why? Because CAC to LTV, or Customer Acquisition Cost to Lifetime Value, is considered one of the most important aspects of a healthy business model in the early days of a company’s lifecycle.

We already have communities on Hive. We have active, loyal, dedicated and engaged users. We have people promoting Hive and even specific communities on Twitter and other social media, but you can't just make a lousy tweet saying "LEOFinance is awesome" or "Hive is great" and add a bunch of tags..

That doesn't work. Most people won't listen to that, because they don't trust you. It doesn't matter if you have 100 or 1000 followers on Twitter when doing tweets like that. None of them will listen. You need to step up your game.

If you want more, you need to do more.

You need to connect with people on a personal level. You need to find the "sweet spot". You need to find out what "the masses" will listen to. "WEB 3.0" and "Crypto is king!" doesn't do the trick for the average Joe or Bob.

I never tried to promote my clients stuff just out of the blue. I always had a "way in". I spent time finding answers by doing research. I listened to the peoples needs before I threw them a fancy link or a product in their face. I did the same thing when I worked as a salesperson. I listened to the person in front of me, and that is something you have to do, even online, to have successful marketing.

Find out what someone wants and fill their needs.

That's how we will reach the masses.
That's how winning is done.

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