How to Build Word of Mouth Without Influencers

Think about the last product you heard about and actually tried.

Was it on a commercial you skipped over while half-watching reality TV at 10pm? A TikTok you scrolled past after three seconds? A billboard you drove by while texting?

Probably not.

It was likely a product your friend used, liked, and told you about. You bought it because you trust them and because they gave you an honest review.

So if word of mouth is such an effective marketing channel, why aren’t more teams investing in it?

What actually influences buying decisions?

Word of mouth marketing works harder than any channel you can buy.

In Wynter’s B2B buyer journey research, 73% of B2B marketing leaders ranked word of mouth and peer recommendations as the most influential factor in deciding which vendors to consider. When the same buyers scored channels on influence, word of mouth landed at 4.73 out of 5. Supplier ads scored a 2.0. Cold outreach scored a 2.25.

Buyers rated a recommendation from a peer more than twice as influential as paid advertising.

A few more data points worth knowing:

• 58% of buyers start their search by asking peers for recommendations before they do any independent research
• 81% consult third-party reviews before making a decision
• 47% of companies above $50M ARR now run a formal customer advocacy program, up from 28% in 2023

This begs the question: why are marketers ignoring customer marketing as a real growth driver?

What is customer marketing, exactly?

Customer marketing is the practice of turning your existing customers into an active marketing channel: referrals, testimonials, reviews, user-generated content, product feedback, and more.

Customer marketing isn’t a referral program. It’s a relationship, where you give your best customers status, access, and the tools to talk about you — and they give you reach and credibility you could never buy.

It’s also not customer success. Customer success keeps people from leaving. Customer marketing turns the people who stay into a growth engine.

So why do companies keep spending everywhere else?

Because traditional marketing channels are easier to buy than they are to earn.

Companies spend hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, on channels that are hard to measure. They pay influencers to talk about a product they have barely used. They sponsor events built for optics that don’t convert attendees. They spend gobs of money on digital advertising for a slight bump in awareness.

Building customer advocacy takes longer. It requires you to have a product people genuinely like, organize the people who like it, and empower them to spread the word.

But patience pays off. I know this because I built one of these programs from the ground up.

The SoFi Ambassador program: what happened when we let members market for us

In 2018, when I was an events manager at SoFi hosting events across the country, the same thing kept happening. Members would come up to me at an event and ask what they could do to spread the word about SoFi.

They were not asking to be paid. They just wanted resources to tell their network about the products that had helped them get their money right.

I was embarrassed that I didn’t have a good answer for them. We had a referral program, but they wanted something more. They wanted to share their personal stories, product feedback, and help convert their closest friends into members.

So I pitched my boss on an ambassador program. She loved it, and then said go build it.

There was just one problem: I had never built a program like this before.

So I started small. I decided to create a three-month pilot ambassador program with 10 of our most engaged members — folks who never missed an in-person event, who were active in our online community groups, or emailed us regularly with feedback and ideas.

The goals were simple: determine whether members actually wanted a program like this, and measure new member and product growth.

The response and impact were immediate.

Those first ten ambassadors posted online, drove referrals, submitted heartfelt testimonials, lent their time and likeness to marketing campaigns, tested products and sent us feedback. And all they wanted in return was a super soft SoFi hoodie and the feeling of being an extension of the team.

I scaled the pilot from 10 to 400 engaged members over the next year. By the time I left SoFi in 2022, the program had over 2,000 ambassadors and a full-time program manager and budget. The numbers below reflect the value of these member ambassadors compared to non-ambassadors:

• 2.9 average products per ambassador vs. 1.4 for non-ambassadors
• 18% referral rate for ambassadors vs. 1.95% for non-ambassadors
• 74% were daily active users in the SoFi app vs. 11% of non-ambassadors

Growth metrics were only part of it. Ambassadors tested products and gave consistent feedback that shaped our in-app experience and product roadmap. They were also an ever-growing pool of happy customers ready to share their experience online and in person, on demand.

Here’s the part that still surprises people: the perks they received in return were relatively low cost. A $20 hoodie. A $50 gift card. Early access to an event or time with an executive. One of our best growth channels only cost us swag and exclusive access.

How to build a customer advocacy program in 5 steps

You don’t need a budget or headcount to start. You just need a spreadsheet and a couple of months. Here’s the process I used:

1. Write a brief. Answer these questions: What is the goal of this program (referrals, testimonials, UGC, reviews, product feedback)? Who qualifies as an ambassador? How will you measure success? How will you recruit? How will you continue to engage and incentivize them over time?
2. Build the simplest possible application. Mine was a Google Form. Ask about their experience with the product, where they are active online, and what they want out of the program. The application itself filters for people who care enough to fill it out.
3. Design a give/get framework. Determine what ambassadors should do to meet your goals and what they will get in return. Start small and add to it over time. Also determine a way to track their contributions. When it’s a small group, it can be done manually. Then you can scale up to a management platform once you prove out the program.
4. Pilot with 10 people. Not 100. Ten people is enough to learn whether there is real demand and enough to manage while you figure out what the program actually is. You can also use those people to define the next iteration of the program.
5. Measure against a control group. Track products per customer, referral rate, retention, and engagement for ambassadors versus everyone else. That comparison is what gets you budget and headcount in the next phase.

Why this is an unfair advantage

Customer marketing is overlooked because it’s not flashy and it doesn’t come with a playbook. Nobody gets celebrated for launching an ambassador program the way they do for a Super Bowl ad or a celebrity partnership.

But your customers are the only marketing channel that gets more valuable the longer you invest in it. Paid channels reset to zero the moment you stop spending. An advocate you activated two years ago is still telling people about you today, for the price of a hoodie.

In a market where buyers trust peers more than twice as much as they trust ads, brands that invest in helping their customers tell their story have an advantage their competitors can’t outspend.