Digital marketing is a wonderful world of different strategies. Among all the strategies you can do in digital marketing, the battle between word of mouth and influencer marketing is getting more and more attention lately.
That is not surprising because these two digital marketing strategies are effective and provide a handful of benefits depending on the industry where you will use it.
Before discussing the benefits of the word of mouth strategy and influencer marketing, let’s start by defining the two terms so we can easily spot the difference.
Word of Mouth Marketing
More than 90 percent of B2B buyers admit that they decide their purchases due to the influence of word of mouth, may it be by a friend or a family member. With that big chunk of buyers, it’s clear to say that word of mouth marketing is an effective method to increase your sales and reach more of your target audience.
Influencer Marketing
The rise of the social media platforms opens up a new wave of marketing strategies and one of which is the influencer marketing. Influencers can be considered as celebrities in the world of social media and beyond. They are the ones who are capable of communicating your organization’s message to a specified target audience.
What’s the difference?
Word of mouth marketing is as old as marketing itself. It can be the most affordable yet effective type of marketing strategy. This is due to the fact that the information that is given was gathered based on personal experience when using a certain product or service. In addition to that, word of mouth marketing is passed on by people who are close to the target audience. The word of mouth marketing is passed on the first-hand level. Thus, the level of trust is higher unlike if the marketer is a celebrity who is strange to the target audience.
On the other hand, the influencer marketing strategy has a certain number of fans or followers who trust the influencer. In other words, if the influencer promotes a brand or product, they know that they will get the value for their hard earned money. The influencer marketers can use different platforms to reach their fans and followers and that’s the best thing about this type of strategy. You can easily reach more people or target audience as the influencer can have different channels to engage with them.
Which one should you use?
This question boils down to the niche or industry. Word of mouth is effective in almost all industries- from house cleaning products to newborn baby toys. On the other hand, influencer marketing can be utilized in specific niche only. Let’s just say that you can’t easily find an influencer who can effectively promote home cleaning services since the number of people in this niche is limited unlike if you work in the travel industry.
Both marketing strategies are effective in their own rights. The key point is to determine what your business needs and the niche you’re in. by narrowing down the factors, you can easily decide whether word of mouth or influencer marketing is the perfect fit for your business goals. Also with the help of social media marketing agency and website design agency, your marketing strategies would be more successful for your website development.
