The Impact of Customer Experience on Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Richard Nolan is a team building coach in the social marketing sphere, expert in a life insurance company, traveler and car lover. Scott also works on several own projects, including AutoExpertGuides.
Every company strives to give their customers the best experience. This is probably at the top of their priority list, apart from making profits of course. In most cases, a customer will tell four to five people about their experience, whether it was good or bad.
Instead of investing heavily in advertising, strive to give your customers the best experience and let them do the rest for you. Word-of-mouth marketing has evolved from just telling your close friends about a company, product or service to telling the whole world about it thanks to the power of social media.
How to Ensure Good Customer Experience
Customer satisfaction can be easily achieved when you have an open mind. This is because you will meet many different kinds of people along the way. Some are easy to please, whereas others are not so much. Unfortunately, the hard-to-get ones, if not handled well, can cause a loss of existing and potential customers.
As they say, “bad news travels faster”, and they are likely to influence more people not to purchase. Make sure you are honest about the features of the product and, most importantly, if you don’t know something, simply say so. The customer is also human, and your unusual honesty might even impress them.
Why Is Word-of-Mouth Marketing So Important?
You may be wondering why you need to put so much emphasis into this, right? Well, according to research, 84% of consumers’ purchasing decisions were as a result of other people’s views. Most of these were based on online reviews.
There is a destructive aspect to online review, too: the research showed that a dissatisfied client can convince around 20 people not to purchase a product. In other words, a review giveth, a review taketh away.
What Role Does Social Media Play in Digital Marketing?
Almost everyone uses social media these days. Therefore, as a business, you need to ensure that your social media appearance is on point. There are some people who are out to frustrate you by leaving negative comments on your product.
The scathing comments may not necessarily be true but, unfortunately, they have an impact on the buyer. Make sure you do not engage in petty fights with these kinds of people, so that you maintain your brand image. Instead, “kill them with kindness”; this method has been proven effective.
It is also important to acknowledge the people who give your product positive reviews. Appreciate them, make them feel important and valued. This is a nice way to retain customers — and get some more.
But now, let’s talk about some of the impacts of word-of-mouth marketing.
Impacts of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
A Learning Experience
After listening to what people think about your business, you get the opportunity to learn your strengths and weaknesses as a business. This way, you can improve and correct the flaws before they become more visible. Even as you read other peoples blogs or websites, you can take some notes on how to create impressive online content.
Collect as much helpful information as you can from all the reviews and use them to your advantage. Remember, even the negative reviews can serve as a lesson on what to improve as a business.
Build Customer Expectations
Before making a purchase, most customers look for information about the product. The reviews tell them about the performance of the product, its durability and the features. Most people often prefer getting reviews from outsiders as they are considered honest opinions. Those from the producers are usually considered biased and a marketing gimmick.
Improve Sales
Having a great online review has been proven to improve sales by more than 30%. This means a lot to any business owner. In the quest to get that rise, do not just rely on the views of others.
It is important that you create your own website to give people an insight into what services you offer. The website will also allow your customers to leave a comment on what they think about your products.
Though not all the visitors are customers, the number of visits to your site shows you that people are considering your product.
When creating this website, use an expert and a positive language that convinces and prompts them to click on the buy button. Use the trending keywords and site optimization so that your site will be among the first links that pop up in the search engine results. After all, 90% of the people would click on the first link and ignore the rest.
Interact with Your Customers
When the customers leave comments — say, on Facebook — and you reply, you get the chance to discuss the performance of the product on a more personal basis. Potential customers use these platforms to decide on whether or not to make the purchase. Online platforms are a great way not only to learn other people’s opinions but to build meaningful relationships with them.
When making your business plan, always make sure that you invest in customer satisfaction. This mainly comes in the form of after-sales services and customer care. Ensure that you’ve invested well in that sector and that your products and services are of the best quality, to match the positive reviews.
Always encourage customers to leave their comments. Speaking of which, we hope you will share you own insights about the impact of customer experience in the comment section below.
