The ultimate goal of any given business should be to attain word of mouth, plain and simple.This is entirely due to the fact that once your company operates using word of mouth, sales will commence without having to do any additional high-cost advertising. However, if you conduct word of mouth research, you’ll receive an additional benefit with the same amount of buzz: the opportunity to evaluate your customers’ mindset.
So, how do you go about conducting word of mouth research?You should always understand what it entails before you begin.Simply put, conducting word of mouth research is when you create a marketing campaign in order to understand your customers’ psychology as opposed to selling them a product.Surveys are a great way to do this, especially when you give your customers a reward or some form of compensation to participate.
In my opinion, surveys without compensation or some type of "thank you" are a waste of time because they have no word of mouth value. Instead, there’s the expectation that the customer, on their own goodwill is going to fill it out. That’s not really going to happen unless they are genuinely enamored with you or your company’s objectives.
However, things are different if you give your customer money or a free product in exchange for their participation. This is especially the case if the compensation is given straight out, without the participant having to worry about sweepstakes or free trials.This is not to say that sweepstakes or free trials will not work, it would still be beneficial if your name is more well known.When you are just starting this method, you will want to avoid that and give your customer a more immediate incentive.
Anyway, after giving your customer decent compensation, you need to concentrate on the next step associated with good word of mouth research; making sure your survey questions promote an honest response.
Now, by the fact that your customer is getting money or a free product for your survey, there is a risk that they could put down any old thing simply to receive their gift.To prevent that, consider giving surveys that require the participant to reveal very detailed feedback.Require them to actually complete sentence or two of why they answered as they did. And don’t let them proceed with the survey until they’ve completed this portion.
In some cases, people will not want to spend time doing your survey because they feel that they have to put in too much work.So, to counteract that feeling, you’re going to have to try to award a larger incentive.If your survey awards the participant $5, consider giving them a bit more, like $10. And if you can’t afford to do that, you may sell advertising space on your survey, (especially if it is online).
Related posts:
- Get Your Employees Bragging - Word of Mouth Campaigns With the Inside Track
- How to Buy Word of Mouth Referrals
- Word of Mouth Marketing - How Smart Companies Get People To Take Notice
- Enhance Your Marketing Strategy Using the Power of Word of Mouth
- Why The Focus in Marketing is Word of Mouth - Just Ask WOMMA
