Word of mouth is still one of the biggest and most powerful forms of marketing. 

But how can we affect it? The simplest, truest, and hardest answer is by being better. Better than the competition, better at solving the problem, better products, better services, better at how we treat employees. If you ARE better but are still having trouble breaking through the noise, you may be asking how can you stop being a “best kept secret” and start being a “well loved solution.”

Creating Word of Mouth

There are proactive ways to influence word of mouth marketing that cost little to nothing to implement. You can:

1. Encourage customer reviews and social sharing
2. Create referral programs
3. Build an employee advocacy program

The first two strategies are focused on your customers. How can you get them to share about their experience and bring in others? The key to those two strategies is acting fast. Ask for a review or a share when they’re still on site or within 24 hours of the interaction. Ask for referrals while the experience is still fresh (within a week). 

The third strategy, though, is a bit more long term and involves doing internal work. It’s about teaching your employees to become brand advocates. 

How to Turn Employees into Brand Advocates

The benefit of having employees see themselves as brand or company advocates is multi-fold. It helps with spreading word of mouth to potential customers/consumers, with recruitment for new employees, with reaching potential investors or board members and with raising overall awareness in the market.

To set up a culture of brand advocacy, you should focus on a few key things to start.

1. Be Clear About Expectations and Guidelines 

Provide clear ideas/expectations for what it means to be an advocate. Do you want employees to fill out a survey? Share content on social media? Participate in recruitment activities? Be clear about what you’d like employees to engage in and outline incentives for them to participate. Be careful though — turning advocacy into a requirement can often backfire. 

2. Provide Education

Asking employees to do something without showing them how is never a good idea. If you want them to share things on social media, offer educational documents or sessions to show them how. This could look like a “guide to social sharing” or “tips for updating your LinkedIN profile,” etc. Bonus points if the content can benefit them outside of being an employee advocate. You may also want to establish key messages or talking points and make them widely available. 

3. Involve Real Employees in the Marketing

Marketing decisions by committee isn’t necessarily the route you need to take in order to involve people in marketing. Instead, you’re looking to bring your employees’ authentic experiences of your brand into the messaging. Two key steps to this:

1. Start with an anonymous survey – Survey your employees about what they do and don’t like about your work culture, products, services, etc. Let them answer anonymously and then look for trends. Use the feedback to create authentic talking points to share as part of the advocacy resources. 
2. Engage employee testimonials and images – start recruiting! Find key employees to offer testimonials that can be used on the website, in recruiting materials or even in external-facing marketing. 

4. Invest in Quality Swag

If the water bottle keeps their drink cold, the sweatshirt is reliably cozy even after being washed, the logo on the bag is subtle, the laptop sticker is a cool design… people will use and wear the swag without being asked. This is the ultimate goal for any brand — authentic adaptation and celebration. Skip the mass-produced cheap fabric and water bottles at $.10 a pop. Search for quality brands that offer logo embroidery or will do bulk orders. You don’t need to completely outfit your employees with 10 pieces either. Focus on quality over quantity and budget for it, don’t ask them to buy it. 

Above All, Keep Treating Employees Well

Treating people well, providing a good experience is the best way to raise your brand affiliation among employees and turn them into advocates. Word of mouth, ultimately, is just people talking about their experiences. Their likes and dislikes. You can’t control it 100% and shouldn’t try. If you treat your employees well, word will get out. And you can bet it will if you don’t.