Understanding the Customer Lifecycle: Word-of-Mouth

There you have it, folks. The end of the funnel. This is the Word-of-Mouth stage.

For review’s sake, here’s the whole lifecycle:

• Awareness
• Education
• Conversion
• Onboarding
• Retention
• Brand Advocacy 
• Word-of-Mouth
  

If you’ve made it this far, congratulations! You’ve been doing some things right. 

Your brand advocates have reached the point where they not only #love your product or service, but they’re also telling their friends about it.

Your advocates will help you market your product at this point. Your job is to continue improving a brand that people will want to be a part of.

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Why Care About Word-of-Mouth?

You mean as opposed to having to do all of the marketing work yourself? There are quite a few reasons. 

1. Each brand advocate starts the lifecycle for a new customer, meaning you’ll likely have more brand advocates (see diagram).
2. People are 4x more likely to listen to their friends than you. Just sayin’.
   

Word-of-Mouth marketing is an excellent goal to push toward in your business. It takes a lot of work to get here, but it pays off.

Coming Full Circle

At this point, those fitness tracker lovers (if you’ve been following the series until now) are telling their friends and family how much they absolutely can’t take this thing off, it’s so great. 

They’re also already cross-selling and upselling (AKA: doing the work for you) because they’re talking all about its features and add-ons. 

This creates some next-level awareness when the new prospect looks into it.

Many of your strategies will stay the same throughout Brand Advocacy and Word-of-Mouth. There are a few to highlight -- you’ll need to keep making regulars happy, plus, you have to think about those new prospects filtering back in.

Key Concepts During the Word-of-Mouth Stage

Sell amazing experiences.

OK, so 65% of consumers have cut ties with a company just because of one bad experience. 

It’s no longer enough to just sell a good product or service. People want to work with you and spread the word if you go over the top in service and experience.

Create a buzz.

For people to talk about your product, it has to be worth talking about, right?

Make something that gets them talking.

• Make killer commercials
• Giving back to the community
• Innovate your products (like Apple)
• Host events
• Get networking

Share testimonials and reviews.

Remember, 88% of people trust online reviews as much as recommendations from personal contacts. 

With so much going online these days, building an army of good reviews is more important than ever.

They’ll continually showcase your value and draw attention to your brand. Bonus points for writing case studies.

Provide top-notch customer support.

When one of your referred customers drops by, you have to live up to the hype. 

Part of great experiences is great customer support. If you don’t give them what they expect, they’ll simply look for the same service somewhere else.

Engage with user-generated content.

Kind of like testimonials, 85% of media users trust user-generated content more than they would your own branded content.

Maybe there’s something in the water? 

It’s probably more likely because people can see real people using a highly glamorized product or service. 

#relatable

With social media on your side, you’re likely to get 18% more revenue.

So, you’ve reached the end of the funnel. The fun part? The end is the beginning all over again. 

It’s time to analyze what you found and refine your process. Each time, you’ll get better and better.

Are you ready to jump in headfirst? Give Jive a call and we’ll schedule a discovery session. In the meantime, head over to the blog tab and refresh your memory on the whole lifecycle.