Marketing experts will tell you that Word of Mouth is the best publicity. If your product and service is good, customers will talk about it. Whether its a boutique hotel or a smart phone. Influencers will help you connect to like minded people. Gradually, more and more like minded people will like what you sell.
So whats the first step to use Word of Mouth marketing to your advantage ? Well, start with doing the job right first. Your product and service has to be excellent – for its target group. For a small test, I narrowed down on the beautiful Vegas, baby! On TripAdvisor, the Mandarin Oriental is rated as the number one hotel in Las Vegas has almost 2500 reviews with 95% positive reviews and just 17 (yes, seventeen – not even 1%) reviewers calling it terrible. I also picked a hotel from the bottom of the list, taking care to select a hotel with at least 25 reviews. With 11% positive reviews and 70% terrible reviews. (As of the Ides of March, 2014). In your opinion, which hotel do you gets a higher RevPar – a higher occupancy with a higher ARR ? Even adjusting for star, amenities, location and hotel operating expenses – its a no-brainer which hotel has a better bottom line. In today’s interconnected world with public customer reviews, you have no option but to work hard to have a large number of customers voting for you.
Invest in your product and service, and at least keep the promises you make even if you can’t exceed them. Build your brand. Get more reviews on TripAdvisor. The rest will follow.
