Social WOM is rising in addition to offline WOM

After Google's recent announcement about +1 recommendations and WOM (word of mouth), it's social networks turn to tell marketers about the growing importance of WOM.

http://www.retailwire.com/news-article/17099/most-brand-conversations-happen-offline-but-social-w-o-m-is-rising

Timing is very important with WOM, seeing customer patterns and following up with every single customer is the key to effective WOM, because we can't tell from the outset which customer will promote your brand or business (and which one won't).

Is WOM part of your online strategy?

Why is word of mouth so powerful? (a little technical)

Simple: WOM is awesome because WOM gives rises to MORE WOM. The elasticity of WOM compared to other forms of marketing is much higher (about 30% to 50% in some cases), meaning, word of mouth puts your business on a growth cycle which lasts much longer than when you market the product using traditional online marketing.

Word of mouth is not only powerful, it is sustainable too. Sustainability is the future. Everything from food production to using human resources to distributing wealth will be sustainable in future. So it makes sense that marketing will go back its roots and take a form which is sustainable, AKA, word of mouth marketing. Google also has shown interest in this area and this is a old Google article showcasing the importance of word of mouth and how it affects the way consumers buy online. Are you leveraging word of mouth for your business?

How to get word of mouth from customers? Customer touch points

Every business has to collect feedback from their customers. It is the easiest and fastest way to retain your customers. Internet has made it easy for businesses to do that because most of the people use email and it is easy to ask your customers "how was your experience?". Businesses can even ask their customers to post their experiences online. It establishes confidence among customers and customer feedback becomes word of mouth for your business. Customer interact with your business at various touch points (paper ads, website ads, search engines, industry specific sites, blogs), you can make sure you get the customers who are using these channels. So how exactly can we get word of mouth?

1. Excellent customer service: do not forget the customer after getting the sale. Treat them equally important and deliver what you promised at the beginning of the sale. A happy customer will give your business positive promotion.
2. Get in touch with them and ask them about their experience. 
3. Handle customer complaints in a systematic manner and show the customers how valuable their business is.
4. Post comment cards at the business location and ask customer to share their experience (even a comment on ambiance is valuable and will make permanent impression on the customers).
5. Use a customer retention company like KeepCustomer to use tools for gathering and promoting customer experiences online (just promoting ourselves :)
6. Above all, provide top quality service and show passion and knowledge of what you are offering, many customers will appreciate and remember that.           

         Any more thoughts and suggestions?

Google Local reviews and ratings restructured--more weight to social users

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/localnow-with-dash-of-zagat-and.html

Keepcustomer.com is viewing these changes closely and our engineers are already noticing the changes announced by Google. This will greatly affect the way users see and use the local business information. It is clear that Google sees local business as the future (no secret that about 80% of entire US dollars are in local business space). This move is definitely good for a lot of reasons and keepcustomer research team will analyze each of the changes.

The importance of reviews and ratings is again emphasized by Google here because they adopt Zagat rating system to improve the accuracy of reviews. That is a great move. Not only does such a review system give more insight into customer opinions, but it also eliminates spam reviews and number of bogus 5 star ratings from the Internet.

Word of Mouth is highly influential--customers keep it simple

Yes, customers are keeping it simple--they really like to read unbiased opinions from other customers of the business. Online word of mouth is becoming more and more powerful as seen in the above graphics. There are number of reasons for that apart from the fact that people use more and more mobile devices and computers for searching businesses. One of the most important reasons is people are going beyond their friends opinions when it comes to buying things.

A simple example of why online word of mouth is becoming more powerful
Our friends and family might not always be the people we can rely on for product and services advice. Imagine you decide to go for a vacation to Japan. I don't think many of us are lucky to have Japanese friends or people who have been to Japan. So what do you do? We rely on the Internet, we read blogs, we watch Videos, we see pictures of places in Japan and then we read reviews of hotels and locations we plan to visit in Japan. Keepcustomer.com is helping businesses by harnessing the power of the Internet.

Think about it, Internet has information from people with expertise on various subjects. It is more likely that we will find better information on the Internet than we might get from our old uncle, our best friends or people who claim to know about the subject. I personally found that I started making better decisions about which restaurant to pick, which Auto Repair Shop to go to next time, and where to go nearby for a hair cut--it works wonders.

Of course word of mouth does have its limitations, but so does everything in this world. Did you know there is only 1 No.1 Top spot in search engines when people are searching for your business? But, it only takes 1 HAPPY CUSTOMER to spread the message across the Internet and get more customers? Are you willing to put more money on that 1 spot or each and every single customer?