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Part 5: Word of Mouth: One of the Best Ways to Spread Awareness

Hi! I am back with yet another useful post for you to start your very own business. I am Hari, a business student in grade 11. Today's post will be a short one and will cover how you can use word of mouth to spread awareness of your brand or product.

If this is the first post you are reading, I would really suggest you start your journey at this post. However, if you have been following the blog so far, I will take you through the different ways you can achieve word of mouth. Without any further ado, let's get right into it, shall we?



Well, What is Word of Mouth?

Word of mouth, as the name suggests, is a way of orally communicating something to people. It is effective because of the following reasons:

  • First-hand information can be passed on. Responses and reactions can be observed.
  • You communicate with your network, and they in turn communicate with their networks. More people can be reached using this means.

Word of mouth is used for promoting your brand or product. It will work best only if you have a large network of people who are reliable (in the sense that they will really communicate with other people). 

There are some things to consider when trying to use word of mouth as a means of communication. You must ensure that the information you pass to the people in your network is shared with others in their networks. So, you must find ways to make that possible. I will be outlining some of the steps I took to achieve successful word of mouth communication.

Unless they are very good friends or relatives, people are not obliged to do what you ask of them. They may share with one or two people just out of courtesy, but that is not what you want. You want people to spread your content to as many people as possible. How can you achieve that? 

Identifying Ideal People

The best way to achieve word of mouth is by identifying people who will surely spread the word about your business or product to many people. So, you must identify social butterflies and reliable communicators. How will you be able to identify the ideal people to spread awareness?

One way is to target your close friends or relatives. They will surely help support your initiative by spreading the news as far as possible. Meet and talk to a group of your closest friends, tell them the context and ask them to spread the news. Be sure to give them a good understanding of your business and/or product because, like how Chinese Whispers progresses, the message is bound to change when the context is not given. 

Incentives

One of the best ways to achieve word of mouth is by offering people rewards, or incentives. In the case of my iKeme Store project, I offered free ice cream to people who brought me at least 5 new customers. This worked well with young children because they would get free ice cream by just convincing 5 people to order from my store. However, bear in mind that you need to account for all these free ice creams, so you must alter your pricing accordingly. This method of giving out free ice cream will not work as effectively with adults, so I had to alter the strategy. 

Referral programs are probably the best way to achieve word of mouth through adults. A referral program can be launched wherein people who get a certain number of customers for your business will get a reward, such as a gift card, etc. Be mindful that your reward must entice the people so that they feel motivated to complete their share of referring. However, even these costs must be accounted, so that you don't incur losses because of such programs.

What are the Alternatives for Word of Mouth?

You can make use of social media marketing or other forms of advertising to spread awareness of your brand/product. Many social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, have a dedicated sponsored content program where you can spread the news about your business to a wide audience. However, these programs are paid, so you must account for these expenses in your balance sheet to recoup these expenses.

With that, this post comes to a close. I hope that you consider the ideas discussed above when advertising your business. In the next post, I will cover the process of opening your business and how you can get your initial sales up. Until next time then!

Next post: https://thebusinessbot.blogspot.com/2021/09/official-opening.html

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