A recipe for word-of-mouth
(and the future of marketing)
If your customers believe in your brand, are delighted by your product or service, and trust you (or your people), they will recommend your product.
That, in just one sentence, is the key to modern marketing that works.
In the past, it used to be that what the company had to say and how they said it was what was mattered. Back when the brand marketing of print ads and digital ads and, later, adwords, ruled the day.
But now the game has changed. Given the pervasiveness of options, consumers are faced with more choice and more brands. And given the competitiveness of ads and content—especially in the digital, location-independent space—the ubiquity of choice is astounding. No intelligent person can sift through all the clutter.
This means two things:
Not only are more brands competing for more attention, particularly online. (Exponentially.)
But more consumers are more attuned to reviews and word-of-mouth, to help them make better choices about what to buy and where to do business.
It also means that now—more than ever (and certainly more as time goes by)—what your customers have to say about your brand or your product or your service or your people, matters. Word-of-mouth has changed the game—making reviews and recommendations more important than any brand messaging or marketing collateral you could ever put out.
This, fundamentally, is why holistic design is important to marketing and business. Because you need to create a delightful end-to-end experience tailored around your buyer’s/user’s journey, with your messaging and product, as well as every tertiary experience they have with your brand. (Including after they’ve made a purchase.)
Only customers who are delighted will become promoters of your business...helping to ‘spread the word’ by word-of-mouth, and thereby attracting more potential prospects. The inverse being that no amount of PR or inbound or demand-gen can ever fix a broken product. ‘Broken’ as in: unremarkable, unhelpful, or just plain useless.