Keep Your Eyes On Your Own Business!

Keep your eyes on your own business isn’t just about working your normal 9 to 5, but that you also need to be investing in your future. You have to keep an eye on your business opportunity so that eventually you’ll be able to leave the 9 to 5 and focus on it exclusively.

Buying up real estate is one of the best ways to achieve your financial goals.

Taxes are probably the biggest area where you’re losing money. Taxes have existed in the United States since 1913 and go back even earlier in England. Taxes had an origin of being established to only impact the wealthiest members of society, but over time, taxes have evolved to where they are now where everyone, even the poor in society are expected to pay them.

The more money that you bring in, the higher the amount of taxes you have to pay. The most wealthy know of ways to protect themselves from taxes as much as possible, and that’s by forming a corporation. A corporation not only has positive tax implications, but it also can act as a shield when it comes to lawsuits. If this sounds interesting to you, it’s essential to contact a lawyer or speak to a business coach about how you can go about setting up a corporation.

Remember the golden rule of the business: Pay Yourself First

The problem is that while many people know this rule, they don’t often put it into practice. It’s essential to put it into effect to help evict yourself from the rat race. By following this rule, you’re put into a position where you have to make enough to pay yourself and then have more money to take care of your expenses.

Here are some finance basics you should be aware of:

Law

Knowing about the financial world isn’t complete without being somewhat aware of the laws surrounding your business. You want to stay within all of the laws, including federal, corporate, state, local, and accounting laws. It can be hard to stay on top of them all, but a lawyer can help guide you to the information you need to know.

Strategy Towards Investments

Not all investments are equal, but learning which investments are worth your effort will be a skill you hone over time. It’s helpful to get a leg up by learning from other investors and observing their strategies to inform your own.

Accounting Data

Being able to look at and understand your financial statements is an important skill. You will need to be able to examine the financials behind a business or asset that you’re thinking of buying to determine what their financial standing is actually. 

Don’t feel ashamed if you don’t have this skill down yet. There are many mature people that aren’t sure what they would need to do to a balance sheet. Understanding this document can help you and your business in the long run.

Supply and Demand

One of the biggest things that you need to understand is the behavior of the market when it comes to supply and demand. Being clueless about supply and demand puts you in a bad position. You need to be able to identify what people need and find a way to fill it. Opportunities are out there, you just need to be able to see them. Watch what others are selling and who buys from them. Look at how you can improve on it.

Once these different areas are all in your wheelhouse, you’ll be able to put them in use. Rich people have a knack for being able to invent ways to make money. They often know what’s a great deal and what they should pass on. Going back to real estate, you’ll want to find houses that were impounded by the police, foreclosed on by the bank, or have other troubling situations that make them a good deal. Once you get this property, you can either rent the property to start receiving a residual income or renovate it to put it on the market to sell.

Types of Investors

In this world, there are two different types of investors. There are those that go along with investing their money into an investment that’s put together by someone else in a pre-packaged type of way, and then there are investors that manufacture their own opportunities for investment.

You probably already have a clue as to which of these individuals will be more profitable and successful. To become one of those investors, you need to understand the market in finding the right properties and knowing how you should respond to them.

This means that you need to be able to:

• Locate deals on properties that are being overlooked by others.
• Gather enough capital to make the purchase.
• Create a team to help you put your plan in action.

Knowing that there is risk involved in any transaction you make can stop some from going forward. Don’t let that thought of risk stop you when you’ve found an acquisition that fits the bill. You don’t want to make an effort to avoid risk, but find the best way to respond to any potential risks.

Are you having a hard time going through this process? Do you need assistance in getting your business off the ground? Contact us today to see how our service can help you reach your business goals. 

Rat Race Eviction

There is a great chance that you’ve worked a job that you didn’t like. Pretty much everyone has worked a job they hated. It may have been that you weren’t paid enough, that your manager didn’t appreciate your efforts, or the job was just plain boring. In some cases, it may have been all of the above that made you hate it. Often, you quit or were fired because you just didn’t want to do it anymore. However, there’s something to learn from every job. Turn those bad jobs into an opportunity to create success later on.

Make Bad Jobs Work For You

Have you ever thought about solutions that may have made that job better or what tools your employer could have given you to make it better? Take some time to think about it as this approach to problem-solving could be that diamond in the rough that could be used in your own company to make things better. Wouldn’t it be amazing if that horrible job could become the catalyst for your own money-making idea?

It probably won’t be a good idea to go into your workplace and tell your staff that pay is suspended, but you could find a way to have your business enhanced from this type of thinking. Let them know about how they could earn bonuses, perks, or even a raise if they can give you ideas on how to make the business better.

Understanding Financial Literacy

Next, I want to discuss financial literacy. It’s one of those concepts that unless your parents talked to you about it, you probably don’t know much about it since it’s not taught in schools. Let’s go into more details on this concept.

Many of the traditional teaching on business is all about the role that people need to take as an employee, i.e. how to be the perfect employee. These rarely cover how to be a good employer, and keeping this mindset may stop you from achieving the wealth you want. It’s important to focus on your behavior to become an employer that employees want to work for. In addition, you want to not only look at ways to gain the money you want but keep it for generations to come. This thought process is where financial literacy comes into play.

Assets and Liabilities

Are you ready to evict yourself from the rat race and build a brighter future that offers a bigger checkbook? It’s essential to identify assets and liabilities correctly. In your life, you probably have the following listed in each category:

Assets

1. Bonds
2. Stocks
3. Intellectual Property
4. Real Estate

Liabilities

1. Credit Cards
2. Loans
3. Mortgages

You may be surprised to learn that some things aren’t actually assets. Items like your car, entertainment system, and even your house shouldn’t be considered as part of your assets. When you think of an asset, you should be thinking of things that continue to put money into your pocket rather than just take it out. If you’re struggling, you’re not able to get to a place where you’re building wealth. Think of it this way, if you are mainly bringing in money from a job that pays you a wage, and every time you make more cash, you’re paying more in taxes. That’s not a wealth-building opportunity either is it?

When to Sell

With this mindset, if you purchasing a home isn’t adding to your assets since you’ll be paying it off for years to come, what is? These assets are some of the best vehicles to begin wealth-building and how long you should hold on to it before selling it for more money:

1. Mutual Funds – 1 Year
2. Bonds – 1 Year
3. Stocks (focusing on small companies and even startups) – 1 Year
4. Notes or IOUs – 7 Years
5. Real Estate – 7 Years
6. Intellectual Property Royalties – 7 Years
7. Valuables (items that provide you with an income or gain value over the years) – 7 Years

Wealth-Building Roadmap

Your wealth-building roadmap should look like this:

• Correctly identify liabilities and assets
• Find income-earning assets to buy
• Minimize your expenses and liabilities
• Keep an eye on your own business

These steps can start to help you change your mindset from one that focuses on the wrong ways of making money to one that helps you make money. In the next lesson, we’ll focus more on how you should go about keeping an eye on your own business.

Do you need help getting your business going or applying these concepts into your life? Contact us today to discuss how our service can help you and your business.

Time to Take Off!

In the previous lesson, we went over a long list of different things you can use to assist your word of mouth program garner results. You’ve probably gone through them to find ones that will fit your needs and put them to work on your campaigns.

In today’s lesson, we’re going to go over the steps that you should follow to create your word of mouth campaigns to finish up this topic. 

Word of Mouth Campaign Steps

Here are the steps that you should be following:

• Get your product out into the world. You should strive to find ways to get your products to influencers. Having influencers on your side can go a long way towards getting more people talking about your product.
• Give these influencers a channel to discuss your product on top of the regular channels they use.
• Provide testimonials and other resources to get your product out there.
• Create a group that meets monthly through a teleconference, and then annually at a resort.
• Plan events that are fun that make current users want to come together and bring along their friends that may be new to your brand. Harley-Davidson’s Bike Nights are a perfect example of a fun event that works as a way to get influencers together for a good time while marketing your products.
• Make visual content that can be shared with your clients that show loyal customers speaking with other loyal customers.
• Give potential customers a custom CD about your product or service.
• Create workshops and seminars for your customers.
• Make a rewards club that offers the benefits of being a member.
• Have flyers that you can easily pass out.
• Create your own word of mouth by telling friends and family.
• Offer a word of mouth program that rewards someone for getting someone else to try out your company.
• Use the internet to get the word out.
• Generate your own word of mouth by doing something crazy.
• Let your employees go the extra mile for your customers.
• Have your employees brainstorm new ideas and network.
• Create sale specials.
• Help others spread word of mouth by creating a script for them.

Checklist For Your Campaign Efforts

Each of these options are great opportunities to help get your word of mouth campaign off on the right tone. However, before you get started with your campaign to get the word out you should go through this checklist:

1. Does the messaging of your campaign have the same message that’s easy to understand? You want your story to be compelling to become something that’s easy to share.
2. Do you have a specific category for your product? For example, a facial cleanser that works for combination skin types.
3. Are your stories over the top and ready to be shared?
4. Have you offered the testimonials of real people that have successfully used your product?
5. Do you have experts involved in your campaign, and are you using them in a manner that’s objective for your potential customers?
6. Can people learn more easily to follow-up after being exposed to the word of mouth?
7. Are people able to easily order or try your product when they hear about it?
8. Will you have an event or another opportunity to send reminders to your prospects about your product?

Keep these elements in mind as you go over your word of mouth campaigns to ensure you’re taking complete advantage of this type of marketing effort. You may find that you missed something that could make it better.

Hopefully, you’ve gone over the series on word of mouth and have found it to be actionable. Be sure to reach out if you require any assistance on this series. See how our service can help you and your business grow.

Work It!

In our previous lesson, we covered doing research on your word of mouth and putting it to work. In today’s lesson, we’re going to go over some successful methods that others are using to put their word of mouth to work for them when it comes to creating your campaign

These methods are outlined in George Silverman’s book, The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing that’s an excellent source for more in-depth information.

They include:

• Provide something that is worth word of mouth
• Lavish your first customers as much as possible
• Incentives can help create word of mouth
• Don’t be shy in requesting they tell their friends and family about your product or service
• Remember the adage that the customer is always right
• Be honest at all times
• Give your customers more than they expect
• Offer your customers a reason to use or purchase from your company, get them to return over and over, and make them want only to use your company
• Smile and make eye contact even if you’re conducting business over the phone
• Make your business shine above others through the little things, clean environment, better lighting, a nicer greeting, a better bag, free delivery, fast service, more selection, and better prices
• Don’t be annoyed when someone asks you to break a bill, even if they don’t make a purchase
• Your customer is the whole reason you do what you do, so don’t take them for granted. Taking someone for granted is a surefire way for them to go to your competition and never look back.
• Keep your items clean, but don’t let your customers see you dusting.
• Don’t make your customers feel embarrassed or make them feel ignorant.
• Answer any questions with the desire to help the customer, not to make you feel good about how smart you are about your company, industry, or service.
• Don’t share personal information loudly when someone has a question, such as not shouting how much a feminine hygiene product costs.
• Tell your customers when you don’t know the answer, and then do everything in your power to find the answer for them.
• Remember that all of your customers are special. Work on remembering their names if possible.
• Keep any shoplifters you know about out of your store.
• Make sure your sales staff is on top of waiting on customers. You don’t want two of your staff talking or handling other tasks while a customer is waiting. Never count money while a customer is waiting.
• Make suggestions for better products for grateful customers, but respect their choice.
• Keep sales pressure-free.
• Never give out bad advice, but help as best as you can.
• Check out the competition either personally or send an employee to see how you compare.
• Use secret shopping programs to check on your staff when it comes to how they treat customers when you’re not around.
• Purchase a store where the management is horrible and put up an Under New Management sign. You can then later sell it for more money once you’ve turned it around.
• Finding an expert who thinks your product or service is the best will bring hundreds of new customers through word of mouth.
• Be aware that every stranger is a potential customer.
• People are willing to travel if it means saving money or being treated better.
• Keep up with offbeat events or sales promotions. This effort keeps customers coming back to see what you may do next.
• Use a great sign-maker, and be willing to pay more than others to keep them loyal.
• Upset people will continue to tell everyone about the reason why they are mad for a long time. Work to eliminate their dissatisfaction to turn that negative into a positive.
• Treat your staff and those you do business within the same manner you treat your customers as they’re just as important to your success.
• Create a zero error system where there are consequences relating to the seriousness of the mistakes made. Create checks and balances to ensure that work is being checked, especially when customer safety could be endangered by mistakes.
• Make mistakes to see if someone catches the mistake.
• Measure the performance of your company and your staff.
• Don’t forget to say come back soon to your customers.
• Create a mail service for when your customers move out of your local area or to engage new customers.
• Joke and be friendly.

That’s the end of today’s lesson on how you can work your word of mouth. This information can be a lot to digest, so if you need further assistance with this topic, feel free to reach out. Contact us today about how our service can help you move your business forward. 

Spreading Your Message Through Memes

In today’s lesson, we’re going to go over memes and how they help to spread ideas throughout society. They may seem like silly pictures and text, but they have a lot to offer.

What is a Meme?

A meme refers to the concept of how some kinds of ideas are able to spread quickly through a society, why they are able to move so quickly, and how they can impact consumers. This concept can help you to create a positive situation around your brand, company, services, or products. The phrase of nothing draws a crowd like a crowd refers to this idea. For many, they are more likely to take the opportunity to try something they haven’t previously if others have done so. They get a sense of reassurance and protection from the experience of others.

Vital Spread of Information

The spread of information and ideas is essential for society to survive. Five main situations that this comes into play include:

• Problems
• Crisis
• Dangers
• Missions
• Opportunities

A great example of spreading the word about something in such a way that it goes viral is evangelism. People not only listen, but they are willing to tell others about it. They help the very spread of the message. There are a few things that you can use in your message to help it get attention and be spread effectively. These items include:

• Current news
• Results that are original and unique
• Unusual offerings
• Positive news about helping others
• The sharing of secrets
• Time-test attention getter: sex

Viral Marketing

Traditional marketing is powerful and can be used to your advantage, but the new kings are online and viral marketing. You can get your message spread online quickly and efficiently by going viral.

Steps to Go Viral

There is a formula that can help you to go viral that people have developed. These steps are simplified but can help you to move forward with your message.

1. Have a unique, interesting or different idea to share
2. Create opportunities for people to get a trial or have experience with it
3. Start spreading the idea to others that are in connection with larger groups
4. Utilize the existing methods of communication to capitalize on spreading your idea
5. Develop methods that allow for more people to experience your product or service easily by removing barriers

Viral Marketing Platforms

There are a number of online platforms where you can use your viral marketing efforts:

• Facebook
• eBay
• Geocities
• Instagram
• Twitter
• ICO
• Roger Wilco
• Instant Messenger
• Hotmail
• Google
• ICQ
• Winamp
• eCards
• Pinterest
• YouTube

How to Benefit From Viral Online Word of Mouth

• Incorporate what you do on your website
• Get someone that will monitor your online presence and viral marketing efforts
• Use testimonials throughout the purchasing cycle to help walk customers through the buying process
• Create a marketing campaign through emails
• Stay aware and current of the expert opinions in your industry
• Show off your products and services on your website with people using them

Non-Viral Opportunities

You don’t have to go viral to take advantage of the internet opportunities for marketing. Some additional avenues to explore include smartphones, Blackberries, tablets, and other connected devices.

That’s it for today’s lesson on spreading your message through memes when it comes to viral marketing. Please contact us today if you are having any problems putting into action the concepts that we cover in our lessons. Let our service help your business.

Research Your Feedback and Use It

In today’s lesson, we’ll go over the best way to learn about and use the feedback your product gets. Most people are bombarded with a large amount of information all day long. Often, the only things that people will remember are those that are memorable for one reason or another. They remember strange items, topics that are surprising, unusual events, and extraordinary occurrences. That means it’s vital to get it so that your marketing efforts and ideas spark these types of reactions. Don’t panic if you have a regular service or product. It’s good to have a typical product or service as something that’s familiar to not drive customers away. It’s important to get it in your mind that when what you’re offering is great quality and markets well to separate yourself from the crowd by making it extraordinary.

Researching Word of Mouth

There are some questions that you need to be asking yourself when you research word of mouth. These include:

• What information does someone who is a customer of yours tell others who aren’t a customer yet?
• How do they describe your service or product?
• What questions are those who aren’t customers yet asking about your company?
• What information do these individuals need to know to make a decision about your service or product, but aren’t willing to ask those who use it?
• What happens when these issues are brought into the light?
• What information does a non-customer need to have to go through with a purchase?
• How do current customers answer the questions, concerns, objections, and worries of those they tell about your product or service?
• How do they go about convincing their friends and family to use your product?
• What initially brought them into the fold of trying out your product or service?
• What tips, tricks, warnings, suggestions, or safeguards do your current customers tell others thinking about using your product or service?
• Does the marketing messages you send through your hard work with positioning and sales messages surviving inside of the word of mouth that’s being given?
• How you can your marketing message to be in word of mouth in your favor and how should you go about delivering this marketing message?

Why is Word of Mouth Research Important?

You may think that just getting word of mouth is enough to help support your sales goals, but it can be helpful to research this word of mouth for two reasons.

• You want to get feedback and a real vision of what customers really think.
• You want to put a definition on your word of mouth and the concept that it’s giving your company.

The 2-2-2 Model

The 2-2-2 Model is a great formula that can help you to easily conduct your word of mouth research. It gets its name from having 2 groups of customers, 2 groups of prospects, and 2 mixed groups. This means you want to groups of your current customers. You want two groups of people that are interested in your company that you can use in a focus group. You also want two mixed groups that have both skeptics and enthusiasts about your company.

In each of these groups you’ll want to ask these questions:

• What information would you tell someone about this product or service?
• How would you go about convincing a skeptic to make a purchase?
• What do you think a skeptic would ask about before making a purchase?
• How would you answer these questions?

A teleconference is a perfect way to conduct these focus groups for your research. This option helps you to find a nice variety of people that fit your demographics of customers, both loyal and potential. Not only that, but it can be very beneficial to have this teleconference conducted by someone outside of your company. An independent party is best for this purpose as they take away the pressure. This methodology lets them feel safe in being able to be truthful about what they really think rather than saying what they think you want to hear.

Creating a Word of Mouth Campaign

Once you get all that insight into the feedback your company is receiving, it’s time to use it to your advantage. You want to create a word of mouth campaign. There are a few ingredients that are essential for your campaign, and that includes:

• Having a superior product
• Having a way to get in touch with key influencers in your industry
• Having experts that are willing to take up your torch
• Having customers that are enthusiastic about your company
• Having a line to reach more qualified prospects
• Having a compelling story that illustrates what’s impressive about your product
• Having proof that helps to back up all of your claims about the product and service outside in the real world
• Having a trial, demo, samples, or other easy ways that people can try your company out
• Having a great guarantee that reduces the risk of trying out your company

There are quite a few situations where strong word of mouth can help to benefit your company. These situations include:

• Times when your company is facing doubt from credibility issues
• Times when a new breakthrough is happening
• Times when small improvements are made
• Times when your product requires time or a large number of uses to see the benefit
• Times when there is a great deal of risk in trying your product or service
• Times when your established product is being ignored even when there are new improvements
• Times when there are unfair competitive practices in your field, such as rumors or lies being spread by other brands
• Times when there are restrictions from the government or other governing bodies that restrict what you can claim about your product directly

There are also a few situations where this tactic to get more word of mouth wouldn’t be beneficial for your company. These include:

• Times when a seminar wouldn’t add value to prospective customers
• Times when a trial won’t work and experts don’t agree on your product
• Times when your product isn’t as superior as other brands
• Times when your product is very emotional or personal and the decision won’t benefit from these tactics
• Times when it would cost more for word of mouth than you’d bring in as products

That’s the end of today’s lesson on feedback and using it to help benefit your business. If you’re struggling with utilizing these lessons to help your business or want to learn how to maximize your business, contact us today. Let us help you get your business back on track through our service.

Delivery of Word of Mouth Messages

In this lesson, we’re going to discuss the delivery of word of mouth messages, and things that you can do to help influence your word of mouth.

3 Methods of Delivery

There are typically three different methods of word of mouth delivery.

They are:

• Peer to Peer
• Expert to Peer
• Expert to Expert

Experts discussing your service or product will typically result in you getting a tremendous rush of sales and new customers trying out your product. This event can be one of the best things to happen to your business. You can strive to achieve this by getting in touch with experts and offering them free products that they can review and share with others.

Getting an expert’s opinion can go further than just bringing in new business. It can also help you in getting new ideas. It can help you to create new operating systems, products, and services. If you’re able to develop the opinions of just a few experts, you can help to make your market burst open.

Standard Word of Mouth Delivery

A standard word of mouth delivery system can take a few years to ramp up. There are some things that you can do to speed this process up to just a few weeks.

This standard system is:

• Hearing from the experts with their first impressions
• Creating a trial of your services or products
• Putting together the experiences of peer customers

Stop Ignoring Praise

It can be essential for you to determine who is being your advocate through word of mouth. You want to reward these people. You probably have a system in place that handles your complaints and working to keep those customers happy, but what happens with praise? You probably don’t keep track of it, and that’s got to change. You need to take the time to give those satisfied and talking about your product some extra love. This change can bring your company over the top.

Ways to show appreciation include:

• Host customer appreciation events, such as a dinner
• Get their testimonial on video
• Interview them for feedback on what you’re doing right and what can be better
• Offer them a premier membership or other program
• Create a referral incentive program where they are rewarded by others using the service

You want to find ways to help them stay satisfied with your company and to spread that happiness with others.

The conventional media methods have been in place for a long time, and are still useful, but there are some reasons why many feel that it’s starting to lose its luster. These include:

• High expense and may not receive a lot of results
• Old and dull rather than new and inventive
• Not enough time to give all of the information you want

There is truth to each of these reasons, but you can find ways to make conventional media fit your need. You have to find the right sequence and sources to be effective. Credible information must be shared. It has to be relevant to your target audience and delivered using the right medium.

Product Adoption Cycle

Let’s go over product adoption cycles now. The traditional media is excellent for the informational stage. This stage is when you reach out to your potential customers with information about your product, but it’s hard to measure how these efforts go over with your audience.

Not having these measurements can make it hard for you to develop your marketing to what it needs to be. There’s a chance you could waste money and lose out on potential customers. Once you get the information into the consumer’s hands, they will want to analyze if this purchase will be a good one for them. They will get their information for making this decision using:

• Their experience with the product or service
• Their peer’s experience with the product or service
• Experts’ opinions
• Resources like scientific journals
• Reviews and opinions from other independent sources

You can add to this available material in a few ways.

• You can give out demos and free trials
• You can offer prospective customers an indirect experience by letting them know about what other customers experience
• Share true stories and testimonials

Being able to understand how word of mouth is delivered and how you can positively impact that delivery will help you to be more successful. Do you need more assistance with how you can impact your company’s word of mouth? Contact us today to learn more about how our services can help you and your bottom-line.

Capturing Word of Mouth for Your Business

In today’s lesson, we’re going to dive deep into how you can start capturing word of mouth for your business. Let’s discuss the six steps you need to do to increase word of mouth and the top 30 ways you can capture word of mouth. Ready to dive in?

Six Steps to Increasing Word of Mouth

1. Get inside the mind of your customers and determine their priorities and values. This insight can help you understand what makes them purchase your product or use your service.
2. Having a working knowledge of the different types of adopters. There are the innovators, the early adopters, the middle majority, the late adopters, and finally the laggards. People all buy into products and services at different times depending on their personality and needs.
3. Determine the different stages of decision-making that customers have to make to start adopting the use of your products and services.
4. Take steps two and three to help you in writing out the best wording and tactics you’ll use based on the Decision Maker Matrix developed by George Silverman. We’ll touch on this more in a bit.
5. Get the most significant impact from your word of mouth by putting together resources.
6. Make a word of mouth campaign and implement it.

The Decision Maker Matrix was developed over the years using trial and error. Basically, it creates all of the different concerns that the different groups of adopters may have and how to adjust your decision process to meet those concerns.

30 Ways to Capture Word of Mouth

Expert Opinion

When you’re creating a campaign to raise word of mouth for your company, experts can be useful. You’ll want to take what they have to say into consideration. Experts that can be beneficial to get information from include:

• Salespeople
• Suppliers
• Experts
• Customers
• Roundtables for Experts
• Selling Groups

Speeches, Seminars, and Workshops

Gathering information at these types of events is a perfect opportunity. Attendees at these types of events are a wellspring of feedback, and you can use things like surveys to get the information you’re looking to gain. Examples of these events include:

• Trade Shows
• Seminars
• Dinner Meetings
• Teleconferenced Panels
• Group Selling
• Speakers Programs
• Peer Selling Groups

Word of Mouth Canned Responses

The term canned responses is a concept that refers to using both online and hard copy products to get feedback while offering something in return. Options for this type of feedback include:

• CD’s
• Websites
• Videotapes or online videos
• Audio files or tapes
• A combination of the above 

Taking Advantage of Referrals

A referral program can be an excellent way to build your business and get more word of mouth. These programs are exactly what you need to start creating positive word of mouth. The following opportunities and tactics can help you in taking advantage of referrals.

• Networking
• Selling program for referrals
• Testimonials

New School Media

There are plenty of media sources available today that are considered new media. Each of them offers more ways for you to get word of mouth out about your services and products. Also, they give you the perfect opportunity to hear any feedback about them to improve them. Some of these new school media options include:

• Call centers
• Faxback services
• Hotlines
• Word of mouth on the web: emails, chat, forums and so on

Word of Mouth Through Traditional Media

Although new school media offers excellent routes for getting feedback for your business for word of mouth, the traditional media routes are still the most mainstream methodologies. Some examples of these traditional media options include:

• Public relations
• Customer service
• Promotions
• Events
• Placements
• Direct mail, sales brochures, and ads
• Peer training, salesperson programs, or sales stars
• Customers gifts to keep and to share with friends and family
• Incentive programs encouraging word of mouth

Initiatives for Internal Word of Mouth

Your employees can be an excellent tool for word of mouth that is often underutilized. You should find ways to encourage them to share word of mouth with their friends, family, and anyone else that they come into contact with during their day. You can offer incentives to assure success, such as rewards or commissions.

There are lots of ideas that can help you to increase the amount of positive word of mouth that your business is getting for marketing purposes. This post is just the tip of the iceberg as you can brainstorm ways to garner word of mouth that’s more personalized to your company.

Do you need assistance with any of these concepts to help grow your business? Contact us today to learn about what we have to offer and how our services can change the way your business runs.

Taking Advantage of Word of Mouth – Part 3

In our previous lessons, we’ve been going over the importance of word of mouth and how you can design a system that will increase your profits by shortening the amount of time it takes your customers to make a buying decision.

In today’s lesson, we’re going to go over the nine different levels that exist with word of mouth. Each of these levels is a measuring tool to help you with identifying how well your business, services, and products are doing for your customers. Using these levels can assist you in identifying areas where your word of mouth may not be up to snuff and allow you to turn it around.

These levels are on a sliding scale starting in the negative and working towards the positives. You, of course, know that you want your company to be hitting it out of the park with all positives.

Negative Four

Can you say scandalous? At negative four, your company is a problem and is the worst of the worst. For instance, do you remember when Tylenol and other over-the-counter pain relievers were thought to be unsafe? This type of word of mouth should be avoided at all costs.

Negative Three

 At negative three, you’re being boycotted for one reason or another. Unhappy customers are actively trying to tell others to stop using your service or products.

Negative Two 

Negative two isn’t as bad as three where an active boycott is occurring, but customers asked about your company give a critical response that’s negative in nature.

Negative One

Moving up the scale, at negative one, your customers are a bit unhappy with something about your brand. They may not speak about it unless asked, but they are feeling miffed. At this level, they may still utilize your company but could reduce their usage. It can be a bit confusing for business owners.

Neutral Zero

At neutral zero, you’re at a point where people are using your services or products, but don’t really talk about them. No one is asking, and they aren’t sharing their opinion. At this point, you’re at the tip of the slippery slope because a neutral experience is on the tipping point to be a potentially negative experience. Just because you’re not in the negatives doesn’t mean you can take your foot off the pedal to improve your word of mouth.

Positive One

At positive one, you’re finally getting to the point where your customers are giving out positive word of mouth about your service, product, and company. People are happy with what you offer, but they don’t go out of their way to tell others about it.

Positive Two

At this point, customers are happy with your product and will talk about their love for your products if it comes up.

Positive Three

Congratulations if you’ve made it to positive three. You’ve gotten to the point where your satisfied customers are singing your praises and will go out of their way to talk about their experience. Think of it like how moviegoers that enjoy a movie give a glowing movie review and tell everyone about how they love the movie.

Positive Four

Pop the champagne if you’ve made it to positive four on the scale as you’re being toasted by your customers. Your company has buzz, and everyone wants to be involved. Word of mouth is all about your company, the service, their experience, and their perception of the future with your company.

This top step on the scale is where many of the big brands that come to mind are located. Some examples of these companies include:

• Apple
• Celestial Teas
• Disney
• Harley Davidson
• Toyota
• Coca-Cola

That’s some excellent company to be in if you’ve reached the pinnacle of word of mouth.

That wraps it up for today’s lesson. Are you still struggling with your word of mouth? Contact us today to discuss how we can help.

In our next lesson, we’re going to go over the 30 different ways you can capture word of mouth power for your business.

Taking Advantage of Word of Mouth – Part 2

In our previous lesson, we started covering word of mouth and ways you can go about making your customer’s decision to purchase short and simple. In today’s lesson, we’re going to continue discussing this topic. Word of mouth has its own power, and we’re going to discuss how you can make it work to your advantage.

Decision-Making Help

Just about everyone looks for input when making a decision. They look for advice that’s going to guide them towards the best option. We often rely on the experience and expertise of other people to determine what the right decision is based on their information. Keeping this in mind, it’s easy to see what word of mouth is and the power that it can have. Once you see this, it’s easier to understand how you can take advantage of what it has to offer.

Keep this flow in mind when discovering the power of word of mouth:

• Increase your profits by speeding up the decision-making process for your customers
• Make customer decisions easier by making the purchase process easier
• Ensure that you deliver on promises made through word of mouth advertising rather than focusing energy on using a used car salesman approach or low-ball advertising

Advertising Versus Word of Mouth

Advertising in a traditional method typically gets about one inquiry per every thousand ads, and often this is just getting the customer into your pipeline for information before they even decide to pull the trigger on making a decision. Getting information from family or friends can help to improve the speed of this decision-making process and taking action because of a recommendation. Did you know that on average, a customer will make a purchase based on two out of every five referrals their friends and family make? That can be huge for your business.

Word of Mouth’s Power

Let’s take a moment to define word of mouth again because of how powerful it can be: it’s the communication that occurs between a customer and someone that isn’t a customer. Often, there’s some type of relationship between the two individuals. This relationship created a level of trust between them in that the one will put more weight on what the other has to say.

Now, let’s compare this message being shared through a trusted relationship and advertising. Who do you think they are going to trust more easily and take advice? It should be pretty clear that they’re going to put the words of a trusted friend or family member above any advertising that you could put out.

Why Word of Mouth Works

We’ve discussed the benefits of word of mouth, so let’s look at why it works. Some reasons include:

• The person doing the referring can custom tailor the information on why this is best for them because of the knowledge they have about the potential customers’ needs.
• The recommendation is trustworthy, pertinent to them, and personal.
• The referral is customer driven for them.
• A good recommendation is self-generating and often will balloon into a much bigger thing. This fact is especially true with the internet as it has opened up the reach of word of mouth.
• Word of mouth can become part of your product or service’s description.
• It is more effective and important when word of mouth comes from an expert.
• Lastly, word of mouth will save you both money and time.

You need to understand a few things to utilize word of mouth for your business fully. The questions you should be asking yourself are:

• Where does your word of mouth come from?
• What products tend to get the most love from your word of mouth?
• How are people passing along their word of mouth to others?

Once you have a handle on identifying this information, you can make a plan for how to increase your word of mouth.

That’s all for today’s lesson. Do you feel that you could benefit from some more guidelines on word of mouth? Contact us today to learn more about how our services can benefit your company.

In our next lesson, we’ll be going even deeper into harnessing word of mouth by examining the nine different levels. We’ll go over these levels to help you determine what word of mouth is positive and what isn’t.