Employing Shopify word of mouth marketing techniques can help your store reach a wider target audience. This will help build trust in the brand and also build a loyal community.
In this competitive era, it is not enough to simply follow traditional marketing techniques to help your Shopify store grow. Word of mouth marketing statistics state that it brings 5X more sales than paid Ads.
This blog will equip you with the best strategies that will help you leverage word of mouth marketing strategy for your Shopify store success.
Rewarding people for their recommendations is crucial. Using Afflr you can set flexible commissions and rewards.
What is word of mouth marketing?
Word of mouth marketing in Shopify is the process where existing customers or influencers spread a positive word about the product or service to their family and friends. This will result in new customer acquisition and more sales.
Shopify word of mouth marketing leverages the power of an unconventional sales team in the form of your existing customers, patrons, influencers, affiliates, and anyone who loves your product.
These have several benefits apart from resulting in high sales and conversion. The social image of the brand will rise and the awareness of the brand will grow organically.
Word of mouth marketing for Shopify stores can be done by adopting various techniques, each one with its own benefits. You can analyze each type and choose the one that suits best for your Shopify. Following this you can build your word of mouth marketing strategy.
There are various word of mouth marketing examples that can teach and inspire you to build your own program.
Why Word of mouth marketing for Shopify stores is important?
Word of mouth marketing for Shopify stores is important because it will yield higher sales and other benefits that are proportionally higher than any other traditional marketing.
The following are the major benefits of Shopify word of mouth marketing:
- When more people advocate for your Shopify store, many will be willing to purchase. This way you will gain new customers through Shopify word of mouth marketing.
- People recommend products only if they are satisfied with them. So, these satisfied, existing customers will be making purchases again and again. This way customer retention rate will be high.
- Through Shopify word of mouth marketing, the buzz of the business will increase on social media thereby increasing brand awareness.
- There is no limit to the reach of the brand, as word of mouth can be spread across multiple people around the globe.
- While scaling the business, there aren’t any additional efforts or cost investments needed to widen the Shopify word of mouth marketing efforts.
Types of Shopify word of mouth marketing
The types of Shopify word of mouth marketing that can help you boost your business are:
1. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing in Shopify is a way of encouraging affiliates to promote your Shopify business in exchange for rewards and commissions. This commission can often be a percentage of the total sales or a fixed amount.
In this type of Shopify word of mouth marketing, the Return on Investment will be high as payout is made only on successful sale or conversion.
One of the cons of this type of word of mouth marketing in Shopify is that it has limited control over the content and means the affiliates promote the products.
2. Referral Marketing
Referral marketing in Shopify lets your existing customers recommend the business to their friends and family. In exchange for this, these customers will receive an incentive.
Word of mouth referral marketing is also known as recommendation marketing, Loyalty, or VIP marketing. Here, customers will be given loyalty points for their recommendations that can be redeemed later.
For this type of Shopify word of mouth marketing to succeed, the quality and service of the business must be top-notch. Only then customers will be satisfied and in turn, recommend the Shopify store to others.
3. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing in Shopify, also a part of viral marketing, is how the top influencers in social media help promote the Shopify store.
Social Media marketing has become essential in running any e-commerce business in recent years. Influencers are at the peak of the social media hierarchy. Therefore, with their help, promoting the business is easy and effective.
A key factor for this Shopify Word of mouth marketing success is the selection of the right influencers. Influencers must have high credibility in the niche to which the Shopify business belongs and also generate quality content with good audience engagement.
These different types follow the same foundational word of mouth marketing techniques where organic peer recommendation is encouraged.
Want more organic recommendations for your Shopify store? Automate all your word of mouth marketing efforts with Afflr.
9 Strategies to grow word-of-mouth marketing of Shopify store
The strategies to grow word of mouth marketing of Shopify stores are:
1. Empower Influencers
Choosing influencers to represent your Shopify word of mouth marketing needs groundwork. Choose Shopify influencers with a high trust rate among the audience in your business’ niche.
Empower the influencers by giving them full access to marketing tools and any details needed to create User Generated Content [UGC]. Be clear with the instructions given to them and conduct expectation-setting meetings to ensure everyone involved is working towards the same goal.
Additionally, provide provisions for them to keep track of their performance and activities. Transparency builds trust. Providing the influencers with a platform to work independently will help them give their best contribution to promote the product.
2. Build a Social Media Presence
In this digital era, it is very important to have to have a strong social media presence. Social media users sum up to 5.17 billion in 2024.
Imagine the prospect of reaching out to all the active users around the world with limited investment. Word of mouth marketing makes this task smooth and effortless for you.
Shopify word of mouth marketing using social media doesn’t just increase brand awareness. It also offers a platform to engage with customers directly using comments and DM facilities.
This can help build brand affinity as well as trust. With your dedicated followers, you can also build a loyal community of brand enthusiasts.
3. Create Quality Content
People are not exaggerating when they say ‘Content is the King’. People don’t appreciate dramatic, false marketing gimmicks. People look out for an authentic connection with the brand.
While promoting through Shopify word of mouth marketing, ensure the content is not run of the mill. It has to align with the products and spirit of the business.
When collaborating with influencers or creators for word-of-mouth marketing for your Shopify store, allow them to create their own content but ensure you communicate the values and benefits of your Shopify store.
Furthermore, follow the trends popular in social media as a part of the viral marketing strategy. This will also help stay relevant and be relatable to the social media content-consuming audience.
4. Turn customers into brand advocates
Richard Branson once said, “Your brand name is only as good as your reputation.”
This stands true in the world of Shopify word of mouth marketing. People will trust recommendations more when they come from a person who has experience using the products or services of a business. Hence, motivate your existing customers to refer the store to their family and friends.
When customers become brand advocates, it boosts the credibility of the brand. You can reward these customers with a commission or loyalty points for every new customer they bring. This will encourage them to actively promote the goodness of the brand.
5. Engage with customers
Customer retention is as important as customer acquisition. According to the survey by Bain & Company, a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by up to 95%.
Customer retention is crucial for Shopify word of mouth marketing since it relies on customers being satisfied enough with the products to make repeat purchases and recommend them to others.
In order to ensure customer retention for your Shopify store, keep engaging with them by various means like email marketing or social media interaction. This customer engagement includes feedback, customer behavior, offers, discounts, etc. Constant interaction will increase customer’s lifetime value.
6. Compile Social Proof
Customer reviews are an organic way of conveying to people that your business is trustworthy. When people trust a business, they project this trust on others willing to make a purchase.
While implementing Shopify word of mouth marketing, compile reviews received for your products from every platform. This will act as social proof to cement the dependability of the project.
Using your solid social proof, you can build a whole word of mouth advertising campaign.
There are various ways of showcasing social proof.
- You can collect testimonials from existing customers and send them in your email newsletters.
- You can display snippets on your website or create social media posts with it.
- You can also request your customers to make videos sharing their experience using your products.
7. Reward your advocates
Customers or influencers are not obligated to promote the products they like. Shopify stores ought to take up the responsibility of creating exciting incentives in return for the new referrals people bring.
To maximize the success of Shopify word of mouth marketing, set a flexible commission rate to reward your brand advocates.
There are several types of word of mouth marketing commission rates. However, to effortlessly set and manage commission, it is wise to employ a Shopify word of mouth marketing app. This app will not only help in automating your marketing efforts but also smoothly process all payouts of the commission.
8. Develop the best product
Ultimately, all marketing efforts bear fruit only when the product’s quality is high. Invest time and energy in making your products better. Furthermore, all other important business-related factors like support, packaging, shipping, etc should also be made efficient.
Shopify word of mouth marketing depends majorly on people liking the product. Therefore, it is important that you develop the best product that will exceed the expectations of the people and they will love talking about it.
9. Use a Shopify App
Several best Shopify affiliate marketing apps can help you manage all your Shopify word of mouth marketing needs.
Some apps are so efficient that they can manage your affiliate, referral, and influencer marketing all at once. So, make sure that you find a Shopify app for affiliate marketing that also takes care of referral and influencer marketing.
Some of the features that are must-haves in your Shopify app are:
- Program creation
- Onboarding affiliates or customers
- Flexible commission setting
- Streamlined payout
- Measure performance
- Integrate with other apps
Before choosing a Shopify app for word of mouth marketing, analyze if they offer all these features.
Keep up with the performance of your Shopify word of mouth marketing programs using Afflr’s tracking facility.
Conclusion
Shopify word of mouth marketing will help build a strong foundation for your business by not only bringing higher sales but also increasing brand trust and loyalty.
The statistics on word of mouth marketing are self-explanatory on why it is a lucrative marketing technique to grow your e-commerce business. Organic word of mouth promotion can attract new customers and encourage repeat business.
You can employ the strategies mentioned here to strengthen the word of mouth marketing of your Shopify store.
Further Reading
- Ultimate Guide to Shopify Affiliate Marketing
- How can Referral Marketing benefit your Shopify Store?
- A Guide to Shopify Influencer Marketing
- 10 Best Shopify Affiliate Marketing Apps
An example of word-of-mouth marketing is when a satisfied customer or influencer recommends the product or service to their friends and family resulting in bringing new customers and sales.
You can market by word-of-mouth by developing good products that encourage customers to share positive reviews about them. Some ways of doing it are creating referral programs, or collaborating with influencers.
Yes, word-of-mouth is a good marketing strategy because people trust recommendations from friends, family, and influencers more than traditional advertisements. Shopify word of mouth marketing can build credibility and yield higher conversion rates.
Yes, affiliate marketing is word-of-mouth. However, affiliates are usually incentivized for their promotions, whereas in Shopify word-of-mouth marketing rewards are optional.
Word-of-mouth is more effective than traditional advertising. It brings 5x more sales than traditional paid advertising. Shopify word of mouth marketing often results in higher engagement and customer loyalty.
The digital version of word-of-mouth marketing is affiliate marketing or influencer marketing. These both largely depend on social media and the internet to put the point across.
