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
- 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.
- 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.
- Determine the different stages of decision-making that customers have to make to start adopting the use of your products and services.
- 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.
- Get the most significant impact from your word of mouth by putting together resources.
- 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.