Even in the world of the Internet, people believe their peer’s opinions more than any advertisement. So in this article, we’ll show you 7 word-of-mouth marketing strategy examples used by global companies to generate buzz, encourage reviews, and engage customers in a way that’s authentic, and mutually beneficial. Leaving a lasting impression with great customer service is crucial, now let’s see how you can motivate shoppers to share their experience with the world.
While we’re on the subject of a good deed, naturally every one of those deserves an equally amazing reward. Make sure to download our Rewards Planning Worksheet, which will help you segment reward ideas and track key details like reward duration and availability.
7 Word-of-Mouth Marketing Strategy Examples – Activate, Encourage, Reward
Did you know we have an article about Word-of-Mouth Marketing? In it, we went over the basics, the benefits, and the relevancy of this business strategy. We also examined how companies can build a solid foundation through the five pillars of WoM: authenticity, high-quality products, social inclusion, appreciation, and easy access.
Now it’s time to take things to the next level and get into the nitty-gritty of how to activate your customers and encourage them to spread the word about their outstanding experiences. In this segment, we’ll show you actionable best practices from industry-leading companies, to inspire your own game plan.
1. Friend Referrals
The friend referral concept is a mutually beneficial way of turning offline recommendations into online referrals. It combines two things people generally love: sharing good experiences, and great deals. Just think about it: Your favorite file-hosting service/food-ordering application now offers a special discount if you bring in a new user/loyalty program member. Of course, you ask your brother to download it too.
It’s a no-brainer! Why?
- The original user and the new account owner both receive instant benefits,
- It poses no risks to either of them,
- Requires no financial commitment,
- Takes basically 2 minutes to sign up.
As for the company itself, the benefit is clear: a low-cost, low-effort way of gaining a new user/loyalty program member, someone they can easily engage, target, and convert into a paying customer, maybe even into a future ambassador.
How Can You Incentivize Referrals With a Loyalty Program?
These tried-and-true reward options will surely inspire you:
- Discounts,
- Coupon codes,
- Credit they can spend on your website,
- Extra storage space
Introducing the friend referral feature is an immediate home run. On one hand, you reward your existing customers and nurture their connection to you. On the other hand, you gain a new user/loyalty member, a.k.a: A potential customer, who comes in with a positive attitude and is already inclined to purchase from you without a single advertising dollar spent to convince them.
Whichever option you choose, make sure to create a structure that is beneficial to both your existing and new customers, just like Fiverr did. Their offer states clear benefits to both audience members, and the option to bring in more than one new user. This strengthens brand awareness and incentivizes people to continue to keep in mind both the company and its referral program.
2. Influencer Marketing / Affiliate Program
In today’s tech-prone, yet somewhat lonely society a new form of digital friend emerged, called the influencer: people we trust and connect with almost as much as our real-life friends. Ranging from specialists, artists, models, makeup lovers, and health enthusiasts to the latest generation of reality stars, influencers have a say in how most people’s opinion is shaped about a variety of topics and products.
Companies are able to utilize this power as well by creating sponsorships or affiliate programs. Amazon is one of the biggest names in the industry, and early on realized the power of influencer marketing. By collaborating with famous faces, both small and big influencers, they managed to reach a wide and willing audience of potential customers. Famous examples could be beauty influencer Laura Lee or booktuber Steph Bohrer, who both have Amazon Storefronts, where they earn commissions after their followers’ purchases.
Frequently Asked Questions About Affiliate Programs
Before starting an affiliate program of your own, there are certain key topics you have to carefully consider, namely the expectations and requirements of said program:
- Who can join your program?
- How can people sign up (link or commission code)?
- Content ownership and usage rights.
- Are you prioritizing follower count or viewership?
- How will influencers be paid?
3. Ambassador Program
When talking about brand ambassadors we need to differentiate between two categories. The first one is celebrity ambassadors, who are paid a certain amount of money ahead of joining the brand. Their fee is based on their value to the company: their reputation, advocacy power, previous campaign success with other brands, plus how many followers they have (aka their reach).
The perfect example of such collaboration is jewelry brand APM Monaco X Monegasque F1 driver Charles Leclerc. Charles has a Monegasque heritage, and an excellent reputation, accompanied by a modern, effortless style, a widely loyal following, and outstanding sports achievements. He represents everything the brand stands for and embodies the vibe their customers wish to achieve.
When Greatness Comes From Within – The Ambassador Tier
The other category is represented by loyal customers who are doing the promotion out of pure brand love. These shoppers have been active in the loyalty program, engaged and invested in the brand, and taken both transactional and non-transactional actions to reach the highest category of loyalty members. And just because you don’t pay them as the other group, it doesn’t mean you can’t recognize them through ways such as a dedicated Ambassador Tier in a loyalty program.
Their efforts as ambassadors can also be rewarded by VIP treatments, exclusive event invites, additional services, free products, early limited-collection access, etc.
4. Customer Reviews
Over the past few years, looking up customer reviews and completing thorough research has become a quintessential part of the buying process. According to the Medill Spiegel Research Center, a service or product with at least 5 reviews has 270% higher purchase potential, than a product with zero reviews.
Why? Because these ratings and reviews represent a crucial and powerful indicator of service quality and the company’s trustworthiness. In most cases, this type of feedback outweighs even price tags, with potential customers considering written and visual commentary from previous buyers to be a clear indicator of a product’s worth. This also means that every brand needs to generate and encourage reviews – by providing excellent service and appropriate rewards – whether through their loyalty program, website, application, or dedicated review platforms.
How can companies utilize reviews and customer feedback?
By responding to the aforementioned feedback they can engage their customers, nurture connections, and prove their transparency. Utilize the credibility they gain through their communication. Use it for field research for brand-new product lines. View it as an indicator of product development needs.
How Can Companies Incentivize Their Customers to Write Reviews?
On the one hand, the opportunity to showcase their opinion and give feedback is enough for a lot of people to comply, on the other hand, certain shoppers require a bit more encouragement, mainly in terms of rewards. These rewards can range from coupons, free gifts to the opportunity to earn loyalty points, such is the case with Benefit Cosmetics.
In the company’s Benefit Loves Loyalty Program, users can earn points (aka hearts) with a few different actions, including writing in-app customer reviews about beauty products. It is an excellent way to incentivize customers to engage with a brand and specifically with a loyalty program outside of the direct buying cycle. Strengthening trust and loyalty, and providing valuable feedback at the same time.
5. Hashtags for Every Occasion
Also, a great tactic to create buzz around your brand is to set up social media challenges, hashtag campaigns, or branded contests to encourage your users and customers to post content featuring your products, review them, and share their general opinions about them. This way the different platform algorithms can sense the uplift in interest in your product and push it out to even more people, making it possible to reach a bigger audience pool.
One of the biggest companies that has managed to utilize social formats for its campaigns is Spotify. At the end of each year, the music streaming platform releases its annual Spotify Wrapped summary, which sums up its users’ individual listening habits for the year. They inform their users about which artists, songs, and genres they listened to the most, encouraging them specifically to start a conversation.
Turn Outstanding Content Into an Annual Event
They’ve created so much buzz about it already, that it became an event of its own, with users speculating weeks ahead of the release, interacting with the company, and asking each other questions as well. According to Forbes, the reason why the Spotify Wrapped campaign event became so popular leads back to a few angles:
- The format is easily shareable on Instagram
- Adding new features every year
- Getting more and more personalized
- Fully on-brand
Attesting to the success of the campaign is the fact that the #Spotifywrapped sits at 447K posts on Instagram, and an astonishing 74 billion views on TikTok (as of early 2024).
6. Capitalizing on the Moment
One of last year’s biggest product-related news was “The Survival of the Stanley Cup”. And no, it was not about the NHL Trophy (although we hope they’re okay too), but a US-wide famous and famously coveted water bottle’s survival in a car fire.
The original TikTok video of a woman describing how the only thing that survived her car burning out was her Stanley1913 cup, has 93,7 million views on the platform. The story itself has more than 6 million search results on Google and has been reported by every major outlet from the New York Post, to USA Today to the Business Insider.
Why Is the Stanley Story Important From a Marketing Point of View?
The amount of endorsement and raw sales power this unprompted, 100% authentic video means to the company is nearly immeasurable. Unfortunate circumstances aside there is quite literally no better endorsement than this, highlighting a product’s quality and sturdiness even under exponentially hard circumstances.
Responding also in a Tiktok video, Terence Reilly the president of Stanley achieved bringing about one of the best company reactions of the past few years, furthering goodwill and elevating the word-of-mouth power even more. Here’s what he did:
- Offered his condolences about the incident,
- Highlighted the fact that the quote “really shows how Stanley, our Stanleys are built for life”,
- Responded to comments on Danielle’s video asking the company to send her a new Cup (which they will),
- Surprised everyone by offering to replace the burnt-out vehicle as well.
This was a modern, responding-in-kind answer from the company, eloquently weaving together a tasteful response to an unfortunate incident, reinforcing a positive product image, and rewarding the customer for the value they’ve gained from her video.
7. Hot Takes and Memeable Social Media Personalities
A sure way to cultivate social buzz and word of mouth is to establish viral – or as the kids like to call it “absolutely unhinged” SM personalities. Two brands who have mastered this tactic are Ryanair and Duolingo. Both the budget-friendly airline and the language learning app managed to create funny, sarcastic, (occasionally borderline scary), and most importantly entertaining and memorable personas.
Noteworthy Reasons How They Managed to Stand Out:
- Setting the right tone – as we established creating a persona with a distinctive style that fits their brand image and speaks to their followers is
- LOL – one thing most people have in common is the desire to be entertained, to have a good laugh, which then they want to share with their friends as well, generating organic word-of-mouth buzz. These companies mastered the power of social sharing by creating funny, meme-worthy content.
- Read, reply, repost – Both companies understand and engage with their audience on a regular basis, reply to questions and comments
- Hit it while it’s hot – Especially in Ryanair’s case, the brand further engages their own fan base, and a wider audience as well with commenting on current cultural events.
Mistakes to Avoid When Using Word-Of-Mouth
As with any marketing strategy, this system also has certain requirements for it to work. Sometimes companies, trying to harness the power of word-to-mouth tend to make the following mistakes:
- Dishonesty – Customers these days have an eye to spot imposters, and easily turn away from brands, that betray their values
- Buying reviews – Customer reviews are powerful tools to build trust, but rewarding customers only for positive reviews ultimately takes out the trustworthy element of the game
- Thinking all PR is good PR – Wrong! There is a difference between showcasing good and bad reviews alike (heavily encouraged) and purposefully creating controversial content, for the sole reason of being talked about.
- Disconnected ambassadors – Choosing a famous face, who has no connection or previous track record with the brand feels disconnected and has a backward effect by alienating customers
It is quite easy to avoid these mistakes, for example having a dedicated landing page to show people how ratings and reviews work like Ikea’s and also exactly how those reviews will be utilized, can clear up a lot of confusion, and encourage shoppers to more freely and frequently engage with the company’s review system. This then leads to a more comprehensive product guide for new customers in the considering phase of the buying process.
Wrapping Up: Igniting the Right Conversations
Word-of-mouth advocacy is one of the most potent forces in today’s business landscape. Building trust with authentic actions, leveraging the influence of happy customers through ratings and reviews, and capitalizing on viral moments, are all part of the elaborate ecosystem of WoM.
The strategies outlined in this article, used by global industry leaders will help you find the best way to ignite conversations both offline and online about your customers’ outstanding experiences, leading not only to brand advocacy but also to better engagement, higher conversions, delighted customers, and expanded audiences.
Ready to learn how loyalty programs can help you generate and utilize word-of-mouth? Get ahead of the curb and book a demo or include Antavo in your RFP process.
Download our Rewards Planning Worksheet, and let’s get cracking on the best incentives for your loyalty members.
Zsuzsanna is a Loyalty Specialist with years of experience in digital marketing and e-commerce. Zsuzsanna is known for having an analytic approach and high-level communication skills, helping her deliver engaging content. In her free time, she enjoys watching Formula 1 and listening to endless Taylor Swift playlists.
