3 Easy Ways to Encourage Word of Mouth Traffic
June 24th, 2008 by Joy BrazelleLast week I wrote about how to track word of mouth traffic. Once you benchmark the data for your word of mouth traffic, you can begin to improve on it, to increase the traffic from word of mouth.
1 – Make it easy to spread the word
On every email you send, landing page you create or any other promotion add a ‘Send to Friend’ link. Make sure you test the link to make sure that it does not break and it is easy to use. Also make sure that it is obvious that the user was successful. There is nothing worse than ruining someone’s experience with your brand by lack of testing or confusing functionality.
2 – Make it worthwhile to spread the word
Reward your loyal customers and visitors. It is likely that a small percent of your customers will become true brand evangelists. These are your BEST and most important customers and you need to keep them happy. It is well worth the effort to go out of your way to make sure that these customers are appreciated and know it.
3 – Use contests to grow word of mouth traffic and email marketing database
This is such a simple and great way to increase the volume of quality, word of mouth traffic, but it is so often ignored. Create an email contest for your opted-in list that explains the contest. In the email, add a form so recepients can forward the email to their friends (e.g. five or ten) by simply entering the email address and first name into the form. It will involve some simple database programming, and some validation that the email addresses received are valid and qualified. But it is a simple way to encourage your loyal customers to spread the word, and grow your email marketing database at the same time.
There is a fourth way to encourage word of mouth traffic. Be remarkable. OK – so that is not easy, not by any means. But it is great when companies really go the extra mile to be remarkable.
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