Everywhere you look, you see ads. Amid this chaos, word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) helps you cut through the noise by doing what algorithms can’t—building trust.
Whether it’s a quick recommendation in a WhatsApp group, a 15-second TikTok from a micro-influencer, or a glowing review in a niche subreddit, WOMM drives more credible, more lasting influence than traditional media ever could.
This article breaks down the importance of word-of-mouth marketing in 2025, the channels where it’s most active, and the latest data that proves why it’s still your most valuable growth driver. You’ll also find actionable strategies—backed by examples and tools—to help you scale WOMM for your brand.
What Is Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM)?
Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) occurs when customers organically promote a brand, product, or experience through conversations, posts, reviews, or recommendations. It can be spontaneous or sparked by a strategy (like a referral program or community campaign).
In 2025, it will not be just friends chatting that moves the needle. Every time you see referrals in private messages, niche forums, shared user-generated content (UGC), and everyday micro-influencer posts, you can safely say that it’s a part of WOMM.
Key channels for WOMM in 2025
In 2025, word-of-mouth marketing will spread through more nuanced and fragmented channels than ever before. It’s no longer just face-to-face chats or viral tweets—it’s happening across invisible networks, niche communities, and personal-feeling content formats.
Here are the key channels where WOMM is most active today:
- Dark Social: Think WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, Slack, and email—places where people share product links privately. This is where most recommendations happen, but they’re hard to track. (More on this later.)
- Online Communities: Reddit threads, Discord servers, and closed Facebook groups often host authentic, high-intent conversations about brands, especially in niches like skincare, productivity, or sustainability.
- User-Generated Content (UGC): Organic posts, videos, and reviews from real customers serve as modern-day word-of-mouth, especially in DTC and creator-led spaces.
- Micro-Influencers: Smaller creators with strong community ties outperform larger influencers in trust and engagement. They often act as super-referrers.
- Reviews & Testimonials: From product pages to Trustpilot, customer reviews influence discovery and reinforce purchase decisions. It’s one of the most scalable forms of WOM.
- Offline Triggers: Thoughtful packaging, real-world experiences, and physical brand moments (like events or pop-ups) help spark conversations, both in person and online.
Word of Mouth Marketing Statistics to Know in 2025
Here are some statistics that prove the power of word-of-mouth in 2025:
People Trust People More Than Ads—By a Long Shot
A massive 88% of consumers say they trust recommendations from friends and family more than any other type of advertising.
Think about it: when someone you know says, “This worked for me,” you don’t question it like a paid ad or influencer post. You believe them. You might even go look the product up immediately.
That’s what makes word-of-mouth marketing so powerful. It moves people to act because it feels personal. Brands that focus on creating genuinely great experiences and then make it easy for people to talk about them get the kind of exposure money can’t replicate.
Word of Mouth is Still the #1 Way People Discover New Brands
A 2023 survey found that 36% of U.S. internet users said word of mouth was their leading source of brand discovery, beating out social media ads (32%) and mobile app ads (21%).
This means that, despite the rise of paid performance channels, people still trust people more than algorithms.
For marketers, this is a reminder: while paid reach gets you in front of people, trust gets them to act. If people aren’t discussing your product on group chats, dinner tables, or Slack threads, you’re missing the channel that drives the highest-intent traffic of all.
Referred Customers Don’t Just Convert—They Multiply
Word-of-mouth becomes a growth loop, not just a one-time win.
A Harvard Business Review study analyzing data from over 41 million customers of a cashback app found that customers who joined through a referral not only purchased more. They also went on to refer 30% to 57% more new customers than users acquired through other channels.
This turns word-of-mouth into a compounding asset. That’s the kind of retention plus acquisition combo most ad campaigns can’t touch.
Referred Customers Stick Around Longer and Spend More
According to multiple studies, customers who come through referrals stay 37% longer and deliver 16% more lifetime value than those acquired through paid ads or cold outreach.
In other words, they don’t just buy once and bounce. They buy again, engage more often, and are more likely to refer others.
This happens because they enter your brand ecosystem with built-in trust. Someone they know already gave you a vote of confidence, and that shortcut to credibility pays off long after the first purchase.
The takeaway? If you want higher-value customers, don’t just spend more on ads. Build systems that encourage your best customers to bring in more people like them.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing in 2025: Key Trends and How to Capitalize on Them
In 2025, word-of-mouth marketing is unfolding quietly across DMs, Discords, and creator-driven content.
As consumer trust in polished ads declines, brands are finding smarter ways to spark organic advocacy in the spaces people pay attention to.
Here are the key trends shaping modern WOMM and how to emulate them to make your business more successful and inspire customer loyalty.
Micro-Influencers and Nano Communities Are More Trusted Than Celebrities
In 2025, the most influential voices are small, specific, and deeply embedded in their communities. There’s a reason micro-influencers (10K–50K followers) and nano-influencers (<10K followers) are outperforming traditional celebrity endorsements across every primary metric: trust, engagement, conversion, and ROI.
The numbers tell a clear story.
87.7% of all TikTok creators are nano-influencers, and they generate an average engagement rate of 10.3%, nearly triple that of megastars.
Engagement rates decline across all influencer tiers (2021–2024), but nano (1K–10K) and micro (10K–50K) creators consistently outperform larger accounts, maintaining the highest average engagement through 2024.
63% of shoppers say they’re more likely to buy a product if it’s recommended by a social media influencer they trust.
But how do you capitalize on micro-inflencer WOMM in 2025?
Working with micro-influencers shouldn’t feel vague or hard to measure. Here’s how to turn it into a focused, repeatable channel that drives both reach and revenue.
1. Use Modash to shortlist 20–30 creators who already post about your category
Instead of working with whoever slides into your DMs, start with a focused shortlist.
Use a tool like Modash to filter for creators with 5K–50K followers, at least 3% engagement, and existing content related to your niche—like “mineral sunscreen” if you’re in skincare, for example.
Finding nano influencers in your niche and based on other filters (Source)
This approach helps you find creators whose audience already trusts them on the topic you’re trying to sell.
2. Send 10 of them your best product, no strings attached
Reach out with a simple note offering to send them your hero product. Don’t attach any posting requirements or approval steps. Just ship the product, include a handwritten message that reflects your brand tone, and trust the quality to speak for itself.
You’ll often find that 4–5 of those 10 will post something anyway, and organic, unsolicited content performs better than most paid collaborations.
This kind of no-ask gifting is called product seeding—you send your product to creators without asking them to post. It’s personal, low-pressure, and often more effective than paid campaigns.
Graza, a DTC olive oil brand, did precisely this. They shipped bottles to food creators they genuinely liked and thought aligned with their brand values, added handwritten notes, and didn’t ask for anything.
The posts came anyway. Small content creators who received the product shared their experiences, generating authentic user-generated content (UGC).
The result? Graza sold out during their first week in business, bringing in $100,000 in revenue. Within three months, they surpassed $500,000 in revenue, all without spending on traditional advertising.
3. Give each creator a trackable URL to measure real impact
The biggest mistake in micro-influencer marketing is not tracking correctly. Every creator should get a unique, UTM-tagged link using Bitly or Switchy. It can look like:
brand.com/lip-oil?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=influencer&utm_campaign=jenna
This link shows how many clicks each person made, whether they shared it via DMs, Stories, or in a private group.
Without this, all your traffic shows up as “direct,” and you’ll never know which creators helped you grab more eyeballs.
Most Shares Happen in Dark Social, Not Public Feeds
Word-of-mouth in 2025 will live in private, untrackable channels: DMs, text messages, WhatsApp, Slack, and even Discord. Beyond exchanging messages, these platforms are your customers’ most-used sharing surfaces, and they don’t leave visible traces in traditional analytics.
Analytics expert Steve Lamar recently ran a deep attribution experiment to understand how platforms pass referral data.
By redirecting clicks through uniquely structured subdomains, he managed to track what GA4 misses. Here’s what he found:
- 100% of clicks from TikTok profiles and apps like WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, and Mastodon were attributed as “direct” traffic—completely untrackable via default Google Analytics.
- 75% of clicks from Facebook Messenger were also misattributed.
- Even mainstream platforms like Instagram (70%), LinkedIn (86%), and Pinterest (88%) mostly passed incomplete or no attribution data.
Dark traffic on major social networks (Source)
This means that even if people actively share your brand, you won’t see it in your dashboards unless you track differently.
But despite its untraceability, dark social is modern-day word-of-mouth. When a friend DMs a product link, shares a TikTok, or mentions your brand in a private Slack channel, they recommend it and influence purchase decisions.
But since it shows up as “direct traffic,” most brands don’t realize what’s working.
So, since you can’t see every share, how do you capitalize on dark social WOMM? Here are some quick tips that can help:
1. Track smarter with share-optimized URLs.
Many brands lose visibility because all shared links look the same in their analytics (“direct traffic”).
The fix? Use custom links with tags. Create trackable URLs using UTM parameters (small bits of info added to the end of a URL) so you know where the click came from.
For example, instead of sharing website.com/product-a, use website.com/product-a?utm_source=whatsapp&utm_campaign=drop1.
This helps you see if someone clicked the link from WhatsApp, email, or Instagram bio, even if it was shared privately.
Pro tip: You can use Bitly for branded, shortened links or Switchy for link retargeting and deeper analytics.
2. Make it easy to share products via WhatsApp, Messenger, or DMs
After someone buys a product, gets a discount code, or finishes a quiz, they’re in a high-emotion state. This is when they’re most open to sharing something they love (or just scored) with a friend.
To make the most of this, brands need to remove friction. The best way to do this is by adding “Send to a friend” or “Share on WhatsApp” buttons on post-purchase confirmation pages, wishlists, and quiz result screens.
A great example of this in action: Fashionette, a luxury fashion retailer in Europe, integrated WhatsApp sharing directly into a giveaway flow.
They launched a giveaway campaign where users could click a Facebook ad and join a sunglasses giveaway by clicking “Chat with us” on WhatsApp.
Once in the chat, users get real-time responses and can easily share the offer with friends, creating a conversational entry point for word-of-mouth.
Users click “Chat with us” on the ad to enter the giveaway via WhatsApp, making it easy to join and share the offer with friends in just a few taps (Source)
This shift to real-time, one-on-one messaging paid off. Fashionette’s WhatsApp flows converted 7.4 times higher than their most engaged email segments, driving a 25% increase in average order value.
3. Watch for sudden traffic spikes—then trace the source
Not all dark social traffic is invisible. Sometimes, the signal is a sharp rise in direct traffic to a specific product or blog page, primarily when you haven’t run paid campaigns or sent emails.
This often means someone shared your link in a WhatsApp group, Discord server, or Slack workspace. But instead of showing up as a referral, it shows up as “direct traffic.”
Here’s what to do:
- Set up daily traffic alerts in your analytics platform. For example, in Google Analytics 4, you can use “Custom Insights” to trigger alerts when a page’s traffic exceeds a certain threshold—say, 200% of its weekly average. (This guide helps you set up custom insights in GA4.)
Setting up custom metrics in GA4 to track a sudden traffic spike (Source)
- Cross-check those spikes with your marketing activity. Identify this by asking yourself:
- Did you publish a TikTok, YouTube Short, or Instagram Story in the past 24 hours?
- Was your product linked in a newsletter, Substack issue, or X thread?
- Did someone post about you in a Reddit community (search via site:reddit.com yourbrand)?
- Did a micro-influencer quietly tag or mention you in a private story or channel?
- Correlate timestamped events. Once you notice a traffic spike, dig into the timestamps in your analytics and compare them to when your content—or any third-party content—went live. Let’s say your product page for a “hydrating mist” usually gets around 120 visits daily. On May 5th, you notice 670 visits to that page within two hours, all showing up as “direct traffic.” That’s a red flag for dark social. You check TikTok and discover that a creator with 18,000 followers posted a GRWM (get ready with me) video that morning featuring your mist. That’s likely your referral source—just hidden from plain view in your analytics.
Private Communities Are Becoming Brand Powerhouses
In 2025, brands are seeing more word-of-mouth action inside closed groups than they do on open platforms. Think, Slack channels, Discord servers, subscription-based Substacks, even private Facebook or Geneva groups.
According to a 2024 report by TINT, 40.9% of consumers said they planned to increase their participation in online communities, marking a 9% year-over-year growth.
But more importantly, it’s working:
- 73.6% of consumers say they purchase more frequently because of a brand’s online community
- 75% agree that communities improve the customer experience
- 57% report better brand SEO tied to community discussions
- 90% of community managers say user suggestions directly inform product improvements
- And in some cases, over 30% of total revenue can be traced back to the influence of a brand’s community
So, how do you tap into this in 2025? Here are some quick, actionable tips:
- Find where your customers already gather. Instead of building your community from scratch, start by identifying where high-intent conversations are already happening. You can use platforms like Common Room to surface mentions of your brand or product across Slack groups, Discord servers, or Reddit threads you care about.
- Don’t show up to promote, show up to participate. Community members can spot a sales pitch from a mile away. Join as a peer instead of leading with a CTA or product link. Offer value: answer questions, host an AMA (Ask Me Anything), or share honest behind-the-scenes updates from your product or team.
- Seed early access or limited drops inside these groups. When members feel they’ve discovered something first, they share it naturally.
If you enter these groups thoughtfully, participate sincerely, and offer value early, the word-of-mouth that follows is more powerful and longer-lasting than any shoutout on a public feed.
Short-Form UGC Is the Most Believable Form of Marketing
Short-form UGC (think 10 to 60-second videos shared by real users) is now one of the most trusted and influential content types in marketing.
Whether it’s a quick “unboxing” on Instagram Stories, a GRWM (get ready with me) TikTok, or a 15-second “before and after” reel, short-form UGC feels real, spontaneous, and relatable. And that’s precisely why people believe it.
And the numbers back this up.
- 73% of consumers say they prefer short-form videos when researching products or services, because they feel more to-the-point and trustworthy.
- Short-form videos generate 2.5x more engagement than long-form, making them more likely to be liked, shared, or saved.
- And when brands use short-form UGC in paid ads, the results are hard to ignore: 4× higher click-through rates and 50% lower cost-per-click compared to traditional branded content.
As we mentioned earlier, a low-pressure seeding campaign is one of the most effective ways to spark this kind of UGC. You send your product to a curated list of creators without any obligations to them and simply trust that those who genuinely love it will talk about it.
Conclusion: Why Word of Mouth Marketing Should Be a Priority in 2025
At a time when paid ads are getting more expensive and less effective, WOMM gives you scalable, high-intent growth without burning budget. It turns your best customers into your best marketers. And in 2025, it’s happening where brands aren’t looking: inside DMs, private Discords, WhatsApp groups, and short-form creator videos.
If you’re serious about scaling WOMM in 2025, here’s where to focus:
- Track private sharing behavior through better attribution (UTMs, GA4 custom insights, link tagging)
- Encourage advocacy with smart referral, loyalty, and creator seeding programs
- Optimize your site for post-purchase sharing, especially on mobile and messaging-first channels
- Test how user-generated content impacts CRO on PDPs, review sections, and post-purchase flows
At Invesp, we help brands turn passive word-of-mouth into measurable conversion lifts by testing how, where, and why your best customers are talking.
Want to see how CRO and WOMM overlap on your site? Start a conversation with our team.
