Sunday, September 9, 2012

Your New Word of Mouth Marketing Plan

Word of mouth marketing is when your efforts are put into empowering your consumers to tell other consumers about you. This can come in many forms such as a viral video that is shared by your consumers, to an online community where your consumers share their interests, content and information.

Word of mouth marketing is a far more effective way of getting your message out and can do wonders for your brand awareness & reach. So below is a plan that you can follow to make your word of mouth marketing as effective as possible:

Encouraging Communications
First things first, you must make it easy for your consumers to share your message. These are the essential things you should do:

- Get yourself on Facebook & Twitter, and then on LinkedIn, Pinterest & Google+ dependent on your industry.
- Add share buttons on your website so people can share on various social networks
- Add social network buttons in your email signature
- Encourage visitors to your establishment, add you on your social networks, and talk
- Chat with followers & fans on social networks
- Add a feedback page or widget to your website

Give People Something to Talk About
Now that you are connected with your consumers, you need to give them something to share! This is where you can get creative and generate lots of content in different forms. Try doing some of these:

- Take pictures of your food, drinks & venue and share them online
- Create funny related memes
- Write blog posts about the happenings at your venue
- Give people useful recipes to your dishes and drinks
- Give offers to loyal consumers

Connect People
Now that you have your consumers connected with you, it is time to connect them to each other. The more that they talk you up between themselves, the better!

- Create groups, events and fan clubs on social networks where they can hang out and discuss
- Put on nights & events just for hand picked customers

Identify Influencers
In order to grow your reach, you are going to need to get in front of the industry influencers at some point. The influencers on your social networks will be really approachable and really honest so make sure you are ready to impress them when you do get their attention!

- Identify bloggers & critics in your local area and ask them to check out your venue
- Ask them to share specific content of yours to their networks
- Support their work too by sharing and replying to their stuff

Customer Feedback
So many people visit restaurants, bars and clubs on a weekly basis yet not many venues capitalise on the opportunity to get a lot of customer feedback. Start now by asking people to tell you about their experience and ask them to go one step further by sharing their experience with others:

- Give people an incentive to leave reviews & feedback online (as a status or on review websites such as trip advisor)
- Track all conversation about your organisation on social networks and review websites
- Respond to all reviews, regardless of whether they are positive or negative

Involve your Consumers
One way to really seal the deal is to get your consumers actively involved in the development of your venue & co-create.

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