Add Word-of-Mouth to Your Advertising

Advertising is a necessity for gaining new clients and growing revenues. But you might think twice before buying Yellow Page or local newspaper ads.

Are your target clients using these traditional media as much as they used to? Or at all?

Studies show that consumers:
trust the opinions of their friends and neighbors much more than ads; each participate in over 10 word-of-mouth referrals every day; and are connecting with each other more and more on Web-based social networks.

So why spend money on advertising that doesn't influence your customer's purchasing decision? Or even get read?

Businesses are saving ad money and increasing sales by harnessing WOM. These recent articles show how you can, too.

Guerrillas Use Word-of-Mouth Marketing - It comes in many forms, but all of them are essential to your business.

WoM: Viral Psychology 101 (Slide show) 12 Secrets Of Successful Word-Of-Mouth Programs

Word of Mouth (Slide show) Joining the Movement to Measurably Improve Your Business

YouGottaCall.com is your free, ready-made network with all the tools you need to
1. connect with your WOM referrers,
2. leverage the good will you worked so hard to build,
3. measure WOM results,
4. be found by your extended network and
5. reward your best referrers.

Study: Behavior of Online Reviewers Affects Their Credibility

Excerpted 9/5/2008 from PhysOrg article

(PhysOrg.com) -- Consumers increasingly rely on recommendations in online forums, such as Amazon.com and Angieslist.com, when deciding which products and services to buy. But, in most cases, they've never met the posters of these reviews.

Without traditional cues to assess the credibility of reviewers, people evaluate not only the content of opinions, but also the online behavior of posters, according to a recent article in the Journal of Marketing Research titled “Listening to Strangers.”

The study was conducted by Nicholas Lurie, assistant professor of marketing at Georgia Tech College of Management, and Allen Weiss and Deborah MacInnis, marketing professors at the University of Southern California.

"Imagine that you send an e-mail to members of your neighborhood association asking for recommendations for painters. How do you decide whose recommendation to trust?,” Lurie asks. “Our study suggests that you are likely to give greater weight to those who respond quickly, write a lengthy response, and engage you in a back-and-forth discussion.”

My Take

Imagine being able to search your friends' and neighbors' rolodexes of their trusted vendors! Wouldn't that be a powerful tool for selecting trusted local service providers!

How word of mouth really works

Word-of-mouth. It is a natural, unstoppable phenomenon.

Many talk about creating it and improving it. Maybe they'll succeed and all the best to them!

But how about facilitating it and getting out of the way? Better yet, a way to give back to the community by harnessing its incredible power.

That's what YouGottaCall.com is all about.

We'd love your suggestions for continuing to make it better. And we look forward to your involvement as it becomes available in your locale.

- - Tim

Building Your Sales With Social Media Marketing

Building Sales With Social Media 06 10 2008b

From: timtracey, 29 minutes ago

Building Sales With Social Media 06 10 2008b

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: wordofmouth yougottacall)

Building a Connect-gine. How local businesses can build a self-sustaining base of future business.


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Why Is It So Hard to Ask for a Referral?

My Take on the why something so easy and effective gets overlooked...

You've had lots of customers. Hundreds - even thousands of them, right? Whether you're a professional, a contractor or merchant, each of your clients is sharing their experience with their network of friends, neighbors and co-workers. Right now.

The "How To" books all say it. The sales experts in their seminars have told you over and over - "personal referrals are worth their weigh in gold". They also tell you the best time to get referrals is the moment you gain a new, satisfied customer.

Each new client is an opportunity to grow your business the smart way - by inserting yourself into their conversations with their permission.

So why's it so hard? Two reasons.

First reason - fear. The fear of losing a prospect is balanced with your knowledge that sales is a numbers game. "There will be lots more prospects. Besides, if they really knew me they'd have selected me." It would seem like landing a new account is a lot scarier than asking an existing customer for a referral.

The fear of rejection doesn't go away after you get the order. It deepens. So many business owners who congratulate themselves for their sales abilities are actually afraid to lay it on the line when it counts most.

Why is this so? Because once you've won their account you begin getting to know your client personally and vice versa. Their opinion of you is now formed from first hand experience.

So if your customer won't give you a referral the rejection is personal.

Second reason - pride. Some of us like giving the impression that we're all that. As a local business owner we enjoy an image of success. Sure - we advertise. And sure we accept referrals. But "asking" for referrals would make it look like we need more business.

Huh? Isn't that ludicrous?

Yep - it is as silly as it is widespread. In fact you probably know some second-generation businesses that fall into this category. Junior has done pretty well managing the good will and clientele carved out by his or her entrepreneurial forebear. But they are missing out on the personal touch and are not connecting with their customers like the ol' man did. They never had to ask, so they don't.

Whether due to fear of rejection or protecting your "image", I'll bet you a buck you aren't following a plan to:

1. Tell them they're valuable to your business

2. Let them know you'd like them to recommend you

3. Give them a way to do this

4. Follow an ongoing customer communications program

Each customer has been gained with much effort - and even more sweat has gone into making them happy with your services. They expect you to ask them to refer friends to you - and they even want to do this if you've provided good service.

Plus as each month passes, more and more of your customers are affiliating with their trusted businesses through customer loyalty programs, Web based services and friends who have home based businesses. So the longer you wait to start a loyalty program the farther behind you are slipping.

The good news is such a program is both easy and free to start. YouGottaCall.com was built to fill this need and allow you to connect with the clients and neighbors who refer business to you. Plus you can benefit the charitable organizations that your customers and friends support so everybody can benefit.

What's more, you can get started inviting your network in a matter of minutes.

Oh - if I owe you a buck, just let me know - and share your referral system techniques with your neighbors in the next issue of the YouGottaCall "Connect-gine^TM" newsletter.

My Take: Social Networking Vs. Search

Is Search Dying?

From "How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It"

By Glenn Derene as published on April 16, 2008 in Popular Mechanics

Excerpts:

"Silicon Valley’s Big Three are fighting over the scraps of the last decade of innovation while there’s a sea change taking place in the way people use the Internet"

"with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm"

"The Web is, in a sense, maturing into a different medium than the one that search engines were originally designed to tackle."

"in the past few years, a bunch of sites have begun to pop up based on the philosophy of user-generated content—a phenomenon often referred to as “Web 2.0” "

"as we each carve out our individual niche on the Web, the logic of search may well flip inside out. Since we are essentially meta-tagging ourselves through our social networking memberships ... it’s conceivable that the information could attempt to find us "

even though Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Amazon and others all have elements of this new relationship with users, nobody owns this space the way Google “owns” search

My Take

Amen.

My Take on Recession-Proofing Your Business

"Recession Proof Your Business" as seen in Relativity

Excerpts

"businesses that are bogged down in traditional ways of thinking about advertising and marketing are losing out on the next great gold rush present on the internet today"

"those not able to communicate to their marketplace in a rapid and concise manner ... will shrink and lose traction in their marketplace while those that efficiently use the internet to broaden and enrich their current market share will thrive and continue to influence a larger market"

"successful and recession proof businesses will be those that engage in growing their market share by providing high quality content and effectively leveraging “e-word of mouth” to spread their information quickly and with impact. Those that do not succesfuly communicate will go the way of the dodo. The real power lies in the hands of the people."

My Take:

How to maintain a steady supply of high quality referrals? Look at the organic word-of-mouth cycle ...

• The most successful businesses offer the best value.
• Value creates buzz.
• Buzz drives word-of-mouth referrals.

Consequently successful businesses are the ones already receiving organic word-of-mouth referrals.

The question then becomes what new tools will allow businesses to more efficiently generate and capture these referrals to convert them to sales at a higher rate? This will determine which businesses can compete in a down market by conserving their ad budget while increasing their sales revenues.

The tools that will do this will be easy to use, be widely distributed, be cost-effective (in today's Internet age this means free - or "Better than free") and will provide rewards to consumers and to the community as a whole. Or at least that's "My Take" on it.