People are social creatures. It has been proven time and time again from the earlier years of civilization right until the present. These days, you can see that people are social creatures by the way they flock to social media.
Technology has only made the need to socialize a whole lot easier. With just a computer (or a mobile gadget) and a good internet connection, people can easily connect with other people anywhere around the globe.
With that, companies are making sure that they are able to reach these people in places where they usually converge and meet. As they say, it is all about hitting two birds with one stone. You get to tell people about what you are trying to bring to the market and you also get to do that in just one fell swoop. Think of it as how a teacher does things. She needs to teach each and every kid in her class. If she teaches each kid individually, it would take her a lot of time. However, if she teaches the whole group, she would be saving a lot of time and effort. This is the same thing with companies. Companies need to save up on time, money and effort so that they would be able to get more revenue.
Social media has been quite a very popular tool when it comes to telling people about what they are offering the market. See, there are plenty of social media sites where people converge. The important thing here to see is that these sites allow you to put ads. Plus, these ads would only appear if it is applicable to the data that the user (or person) usually checks online. So it would mean that you would be talking right to the person who may be interested in what you are offering them. This kind of system has made things a whole lot easier for marketers.
But the question now is, is social media still the best tool to use to spread the word about what you are offering? Or should we still give word of mouth the time and focus that it needs? Let us take a look at both sides.
Word Of Mouth And Just How Powerful It Can Be
A lot of people may have never looked back after they have gotten hold of social media and its capacity to reach a huge portion of the market in one go. After all, it should mean that they would not have to deal with going through consumers one by one. Plus, if they were going to do ads on television, radio, and print, it would mean having to spend a huge amount. Social media seemed like a savior.
However, as much as these businesses are trying to tell everybody in the largest possible way about what they are offering, they seemed to have forgotten one very important way of advertising their product or service. This is known as word of mouth and as old school as it may sound, it still does work. In fact, there are still a small number of companies who go old school and use word of mouth. It still does work for them and it does the trick. It still is quite so useful when it comes to online marketing that you can find several sites offering tips on how to go about using such.
The thing about word of mouth is that it is highly personal. The more personal something is, the more chances that customers are going to remember you and are going to check out what you are offering. It is because in this day and age where everything is given to you by advertisements everywhere, you would more likely go with something that catches your attention, or something that is familiar. Once somebody tells you about something, you remember it because it is personal for that person and you know that person.
Another thing about word of mouth is that it is able to show people that this company or this product is worth the trust. You would not really be thinking about talking about any product or brand if it was not worth trusting or if it was something that you did not really give much attention to. You talk highly about a product or a brand because you find it worth giving time to and it is something that you trust to work as how it is supposed to be. This is one vital piece to keep in mind when it comes to word of mouth marketing and this is something that a lot of companies have go to realize.
In Conclusion
Word of mouth sure is still powerful. Although it may not seem like much, it has sure has got a lot of tricks up its sleeve still. It does take some effort and a lot of patience for it to work but it still does. For example, one company, Zappos, has done things in the most personal way possible because they believe that the more personalized customer service is, the happier their customers are. They were right. And they got free word of mouth marketing because of what they had decided to do. People now know Zappos for its service and its products because of how customers talk about them and not necessarily because they spent a huge amount of money and effort into advertising.
Companies should understand the power that word of mouth still has. All it takes is a little more effort on the end of customer service and you can be sure that customers would be flocking back to you. Just think about how you would be able to provide a little kick to the current way most companies do customer service and you would be all set. The thing about word of mouth is that you get one customer happy, you would be surprised at how many people already know about it. It can go viral and that is the kind of thing that we are aiming for.
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Is Word Of Mouth Still The Best Social Media Tool?
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