🎧 How to Track & Measure Your Word of Mouth...

Renier Kriel

4 essential steps to effectively harness word-of-mouth marketing using the Net Promoter Score (NPS): Include a direct survey question, calculate your score, benchmark against industry standards, and continuously monitor and adjust based on feedback to improve customer loyalty and brand advocacy.

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"Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room." – Jeff Bezos

Ah, word of mouth, the most powerful, gold standard and often most elusive “tool” in product marketing. And we say “tool” in quotes because it often feels like something you don't really have control over…

Enter your Net Promoter Score (NPS), a method to start discovering your customer loyalty, satisfaction and how likely they are to tell others about you.

Not the only one, mind you, but definitely the simplest for a small business or startup to quickly implement right now…

How to get your Net Promoter Score

1. Include an NPS question in your survey

Simply ask: "On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our product/service to others?" and let people indicate on the scale. If possible, give them the chance to say why they entered that score.

2. Calculate your NPS

In NPS, you only look at 2 segments: Detractors (those who voted 0-6) and Promoters (those who voted 9-10). Subtract your percentage of Detractors from Promoters.

E.g. let’s say you had these results:

Promoters (rating 9-10): 50%
Passives (rating 7-8): 30%
Detractors (rating 0-6): 20%

NPS = Promoters – Detractors
NPS = 50% – 20%
NPS = 30%

So your NPS is 30%.

3. See how you measure up

Compare your NPS to some industry standards – basically see if you can find some online or ask ChatGPT about your niche.

Some NPS standards are:

  • SaaS: 30%–50%
  • Social Media & Communities: 20%–40%
  • Gaming: 20%–50%
  • E-commerce: 20%–40%
  • Cloud & hosting: 30%–50%

Obviously, the higher, the better.

4. Make it long-term

The magic of this simple and continuous measurement is that you can use it to inspire changes and updates – just read WHY people give their scores and action those things. But you can also use it to test how your updates/changes impact NPS over time – if, after a major update, your NPS suddenly goes up and everyone says that’s why, that’s obviously a great update, do more of those.

And, as a general rule, you’re trying to do stuff that will make more people want to be Promoters.

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