Word of Mouth

Over and over we hear how “word-of-mouth” is the best form of advertising out there. It is unarguable the strength that lies in “word-of-mouth” marketing. But how many of us stop and REALLY think about that?

1. Are we giving our customers something good to talk about?
2. Do we have enough customers for “word-of-mouth” to have a noticeable impact?
3. How long will it take for “word-of-mouth” to produce noticeable results?
4. How long am I willing to wait to see growth in my business?
5. Is there anything that I can do to increase my “word-of-mouth” marketing?
6. Can I make my “word-of-mouth” marketing produce results more quickly?

For most businesses who are just “getting through the day”, they’re probably not giving their customers anything substantial to talk about. What are the things that make YOU talk about another business? Slightly bad service? Maybe something really fantastic that surprises you or knocks you off balance because you weren’t expecting it? Unfortunately, giving customers what they “expect” to receive from your business is going to do NOTHING for your “word-of-mouth” marketing.

• Make a big mistake and they’ll go out of their way to tell people they don’t even know about it.
• Make a small mistake and their entirely family and most of their friends are going to hear about it.
• Do what they expect and they’ll say nothing.
• Do what they don’t expect and their entire family and most of their friends are going to hear about it.
• Do something that they never would have thought was possible, that they can’t possibly ignore and they’ll go out of their way to tell people they don’t even know about it.

See a pattern here? Any thoughts on how easy each of these scenarios would be to achieve? I’ll give you a hint, they’re listed in the order of easiest to hardest. Is that a good thing for relying on “word-of-mouth” marketing? For most businesses… no it is not.

In general people seem to think that “word-of-mouth” marketing is the easiest, cheapest and most effective way to promote their business. If only it were truly that simple.

But I guarantee you – if you choose to rely SOLELY on “word-of-mouth” marketing (in the traditional sense), you had best be well planned and prepared to constantly do things to shake your customers world in an overly dramatic, positive way or you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

Fortunately, there are in fact other ways to tap in to the magic of “word-of-mouth” marketing without having to set off fireworks every time you serve a customer.

Has there ever been an ad or commercial that you have seen or heard that shocked, surprised or humoured you? To the point that it became the main topic of conversation at the supper table or in the break room at work? It happens. So you bring up a conversation “Hey, have you seen that commercial for XYZ Gadgets?” “No, I don’t think I have” “Oh you’d remember it if you did, it’s hilarious… or it’s insane… or it’s dumb as hell.” And you then proceed to describe the commercial. Guess what you’re doing? BINGO! You are giving XYZ Gadgets the highly desired “word-of-mouth” marketing that every business is itching to tap into. The interesting thing with this form of “word-of-mouth” marketing is that in some cases what may be deemed “bad publicity” is still good publicity. Before I had ever explored Facebook I had more than a dozen people tell me how much it sucks, that it’s a total time waster… not one of them had ever used Facebook… within a few weeks I couldn’t resist any longer – I had to find out for myself what all the buzz was about – both positive and negative. This is simply because people are curious by nature. So even if it appears to be bad publicity – if it gets people talking about it, then they’re talking about YOUR BUSINESS… but because it is NOT a discussion on a personal experience it doesn’t have the same negative association with it as the “word-of-mouth” you get when you’ve made a customer unhappy.

This concept can be applied to ALL of your marketing efforts, whether it’s Direct Mail, Print Media, Radio, TV, Signage etc. If you can tap into ANY emotion of a customer, then you have just sky-rocketed your chance of gaining “word-of-mouth” marketing. And if you are consistent with this level of marketing, you’ll see that customers start to LOOK for your advertising just to see what you’re going to do next. It may not always result in them stampeding to you to do business with you, but you will unquestionably be making an impression, you’ll get them talking and when the time comes that they are looking for that Gadget, XYZ Gadgets is going to already be firmly planted in their conscious mind… IF you’re doing the right kind of marketing.

Interestingly, we have learned this first hand. The Gateway Gazette has grown at a wonderful rate, we have a huge number of dedicated readers that constantly tell us how much they love what we’re doing. We made a conscious effort to make it well known to people that we are a Good News newspaper – that we focus on the positive side of life and on our local communities – that is exactly what people remember us for. But much to our dismay we found that many of those same readers who go out of their way to praise us still turn around and put their advertising dollars into OTHER means of advertising. Eventually we became bold enough to ask some of these people “why is that?” and every time the response we got was a combination of confusion, then realization, followed by mortification… “Oh my goodness! I am so sorry! I didn’t even THINK!” and they would feel absolutely horrible that they hadn’t put the pieces together.

Humans are creatures of habit and often those habits are very hard to break. So when you are planning your marketing – no matter what medium you are using – think very carefully about WHAT exactly it is that you’re advertising. What is it that you want people to talk about? What is it that you want people to remember? What do you want them to think about when they think of your business? What associations are you connecting for your customers? Whenever I hear the song “I want a hippopotamus for Christmas” there is no question that I immediately think of Telus.

Regardless of how you do it, if you tap into the emotion of a customer or potential customer, then you are going to get your “word-of-mouth” marketing. Tap in to the emotions of enough people in a short span of time (ie: through public media sources) then you are going to see far more noticeable results more quickly than if you simply wait for the day that your average customer decides to tell someone they know about your business.

Give them something big to talk about and you can guarantee that they WILL talk about it. Make sure that what they are talking about has a direct link back to something that you are selling (product or service) and you can guarantee that you are going to see results in the form of sales.

Give them a good reason to tell everyone!