Word of mouth has always been the best marketing. 9 out of 10 conversations I have with local business customers and prospects will come around to the fact that their most effective marketing is word of mouth. Roughly 6 out of 10 times they know they aren’t using social media as much as they should. If word of mouth marketing works so well why not just scale it up? Enter, social media marketing.

What is social media marketing?

Social media provides a convenient place to share content with people. The key is to provide content that shows them what you do, how you do it, and how it benefits them. Making all of this content is time consuming and requires a lot of effort, but there’s an alternative. Get your customers to help you!

Convenience is king.

You can’t force your customers to make more friends or be outgoing but you can make it easy for them to share their stories on your website, on social media, and on review sites where it reaches more people. This is why social media is so powerful as a marketing tool because it allows you to scale up word of mouth marketing that would otherwise be confined to your customer’s circle of friends and connections.

How do I make effective social media posts?

Is it some magical combination of words? Or perhaps the words don’t matter so much it’s just the context? Or maybe the person saying it is just exceptionally persuasive?

While all of these things are beneficial the best social media marketing is sharing content of your customers using and loving your products and services! This sounds difficult to some but it’s really much easier than you think. Many of your best customers are happy to help and if they’re a business they have as much to gain as you do from the campaign.

This can be as simple as an email, Facebook message, or text message requesting a review on Google, Yelp, or Facebook, or it can be more involved like sharing photos, a video, or even a brief interview with your customer. You don’t need every customer, just a handful a few times a year and you’re off and running.

Any good marketing agency can help you find the tools and inspiration you need to start scaling your word-of-mouth marketing!