Generating Word of Mouth Marketing
Sunday October 12, 2008
I don't have to tell you that economic times are tough - everyone else is doing that. What I can tell you is that there are other ways to market that can help you keep cash in your bank account.
As my faithful readers know, I always suggest that businesses don't pull their marketing budget. Not all business listen, unfortunately.
That's why this week I want to share with you a few tips that will help you generate word of mouth marketing for your business. Word-of-Mouth marketing is the most difficult to measure, but it's also the most cost effective, because it costs you nothing.
Your customers are the best vehicle for positive word-of-mouth marketing, but how can you get them to talk about you?
Very true WOM is the best way to get that soaring marketing budget go down or, at least slow down.
Online its becomes easy to do so with a Tell-a-Friend application. which puts all your internet content on a platform from where it could go balistically viral.
Check out the Tell a Friend plug and play application on http://www.Socialtwist.com
I’ve got to agree with the need to keep marketing costs down and what better way than via WOM.
You can make WOM as complicated as you like but in the end the simplest way to get people talking about you is to provide them with incredibly good service.
For example when prospects and customers visit me in my office I make them fresh coffee and serve freshly cooked homemade biscuits. Both smell and taste delicious (so my clients tell me)and clients now ask for meetings at my premises rather than theirs -because then they get treated to coffee and biscuits (and I don’t have to waste time travelling). It has become a tradition with some clients and their PAs know where to book meetings.
Sometimnes we vary the flavour of the biscuits and i know several clients who report this back to their colleagues – great WOM at virtually nil cost.
Clearly you need to provide this level of service throughout your contact with clients and prospects … but if you do they tell their colleagues and friends and you have a stream of clients knocking at your door.
As a virtual assistant in marketing and research, I also share free marketing tips in my newsletter. I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in sharing the importance of NOT cutting your business marketing budget, but finding more frugal ways of doing so.
Laura, thanks for a hint but you should share more details as just an topic of WOM.
Stefan this is nice trick but, WOM is an effect. Once people are talking about your AD and it doesnt matter if it is about the message or about the cute girl which is staring in your AD. WOM is once your AD is overreaching its own primary porter. What you are talking about is Relationship Building.
Or it is Viral Marketing???
BK,
Word of Mouth, Relationship Building or Viral Marketing …. we could argue which of these it is for weeks and be no wiser.
I know one thing … this works really well, keeps my customers happy, keeps them coming back for more, saves me time and costs just pence.
Perhaps we should just call it effective marketing and forget the semantics.
aergherhaeh5asethaehe5
Or it is Viral Marketing???
Hi Laura,
I’ve had a good read of your articles on word of mouth marketing and I’m impressed with your advice and knowledge on the subject and concur with you on the ideas you have shared. I can relate to your comment on businesses pulling their marketing budgets in this challenging time, which is the last thing they should do.
I’m surprised at how many “tradition marketing” experts still do not understand word of mouth marketing and the power and benefits it can bring. I was quite surprise at the article submitted by a highly reputable marketing expert like Jack Trout, who wrote an article in Forbes.com titled “Is Word of Mouth All It’s Cracked Up to Be?”, see: http://www.forbes.com/columnists/2006/03/02/gm-harley-marketing-cx_jt_0307trout.html?partner=moreover . I did respond to his article but as yet the editor of Forbes has yet to feature it.
I specialise in my own model of word of mouth referral marketing, which has won acclaim from top world class traditional and referral marketing experts.
This model was developed from the data I obtained 7 years ago, from conducting marketing audits with 287 businesses of all types and sizes in the UK. The general feed back from this project was that “traditional marketing” wasn’t working any more in this very competitive world. The truth to this is that tradition marketing is a major challenge and you have to have the budget and more importantly have the skills, experience and knowledge on what you are doing to accomplish any real results and obtain a decent ROI.
Business owners will not hesitate to seek the appropriate expert advice on any important legal, financial, investment and insurance matters, but when it comes to the most important task in their business i.e. their marketing, they try and do it themselves without the help of appropriate skilled professional marketers!!!
Every company I have talked to or worked with has wasted huge amounts of money on traditional marketing, due mainly to these reasons. When I asked the question during my survey “How much business do you get from word of mouth?” all the business owners replied with enthusiasm that they got MOST of their business from word of mouth (actual end data – 80% of companies surveyed got 70% of business through WOM).
My next question was “WHY” which usually stopped them in their tracks. Some of the quicker replies were “Well I suppose our customers like us”!!, which did not really fully answer the question. Only 2 of the companies I interviewed had any form of a structured plan, programme or policies to encourage word of mouth business and guess what? they were 2 of the successful companies interviewed.
As you know WOM is only given spontaneously and is totally unpredictable. I’ve calculated that on average most companies only get approx. 40% of the word of mouth referrals they should be getting, so there is plenty of opportunity to improve this high value source of leads and business with the right planning.
Many of the companies I have dealt with complain that they are not getting the referrals they feel they should be getting. I generally answer bluntly “Why should they refer you?” which always shocks them somewhat, but it is a good question, a company has to “constantly qualify” for referrals. Customers may pay good money for their product/service which they know they can always easily get elsewhere, so why should they go out of their way to refer them with the commitment and risk to reputation that involves?
In the development of my referral marketing model I looked at all the reasons, ideas, tasks, strategies, programmes etc. that would be required to gain the maximum customer and contact referrals.
The best description of referral marketing includes “A structured and systematic process that educates, motivates and rewards customers and contacts, to think and talk as much as possible about you, your company, your products/services and the benefit and value you give”.
What referral marketing does is to go from the spontaneous and unpredictable situation of WOM, to a very proactive, controllable and productive solution which provides a constant and ever increasing flow of high quality word of mouth referral leads.
The most surprising thing about referral marketing is it’s very simple, easy and involves mostly commonsense. Anyone can develop and operate a basic level, highly productive referral marketing programme in their business, they just need to plan and consider what they have to do to best qualify for increased referrals. A high level professional referral marketing programme does require some initial specialist help with the development and management of a strategic programme to gain maximum referrals in the long-term.
All business owners I know who I share my referral marketing ideas with, state they know they should be doing some of the more obvious strategies like building best customer appreciation, relationship and communication, but their excuse is they don’t have the time or motivation to implement these tasks. This is a very poor answer considering the importance of this activity for the continuing success of their business.
It takes little time, commitment and especially cost to develop and operate a professional level word of mouth referral marketing programme in any business. In brief this involves planning, presentation, strategy and implementation. Once an effective referral marketing programme is established, business owners and their staff find they save a great deal of their commitment on marketing and find more time to work ON their business, rather than IN it.
If you are interested in sharing any proven ideas, strategies and case studies on word of mouth referral marketing I’ll be glad to post them on your blogg.
Nice post. I agree word of mouth is a superb way of bringing new business on board. Digg and Stubmle have been superb generators of interest for my site – sadly they are only very temporary.