Word of Mouth Tactics – Part 2

In the last post we started our series on word of mouth and explored how to make your customers’ purchasing experience a short, easy one. We are going to continue along that thread a bit today as we will be discussing the power of word of mouth and how to shape it to your advantage.

 

The reality is everyone needs an advisor to guide them when they are making a decision. We often rely on the expertise of others to assist us in our decision-making process as we learn about their experiences. When you take the time to understand how word of mouth works, you will be able to identify the great advantages it can offer you. Remember this path when working to understand word of mouth:

 

  1. It serves to accelerate the decision-making process for increased profits.
  2. You can accelerate product making decisions by making the process easier;
  3. Instead of lowball advertising and the used car salesman approach, try delivering on your word of mouth promises.

 

Traditional advertising draws approximately one response for every one thousand advertisements and most of these are inquiries for more information prior to the customer even considering a purchase. When you get receive information from a trusted friend, you are more likely to believe what you hear and act upon that information. On average, customers purchase two out of every five recommendations made by their friends. This is an ASTRONOMICAL difference.

 

So, what exactly is word of mouth? Word of mouth is a communication that occurs between a customer and a potential customer. Most often there is some form of relationship between these two people with an established level of trust. Word of mouth, therefore, is extremely powerful.

 

Now compare word of mouth to advertising where you are providing a message to a potential customer that neither has an established relationship with you, nor any level of trust. What strategy do you think would be more effective? Obviously this is a rhetorical question as the answer is clear!

 

Now that we have highlight the benefits of word of mouth, let’s take a look at some reasons why it works.:

 

  1. The information is custom tailored to the potential customer because of their relationship to that of referrer;
  2. It’s more personal, relevant and credible;
  3. It’s customer driven;
  4. It’s self-generating and can take on a life of its own, especially with the information age of the Internet;
  5. It becomes part of the product’s description;
  6. The word of mouth can be even more compelling when coming from an expert;
  7. Word of mouth saves you time and money.

 

To fully utilize word of mouth you need to understand:

 

  • Where is your word of mouth coming from?
  • What products are being affected by word of mouth?
  • How is your word of mouth traveling?

 

Once you have the answers to the above, you can develop a plan how to encourage more word of mouth. If you need help understanding word of mouth and how it can impact your business, don’t hesitate to reach out to me for assistance.

 

Next time we will be discussing the nine levels of word of mouth. These levels will help you understand when word of mouth is positive and when it is not.

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PRODUCTIVITY COACHING

Your time management is crucial to the success of your life and business.  If you had more time, what would you do more of?  If you had more energy, how much more could you get done in a day?  We teach you how to manage your time and energy in such a way that you can gain as much as 40% of your time back into your life.  What kind of difference would that make for you?  If you need more time, reach out to us for a free consult.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

If you could increase the productivity of your employees by as much as 40% would it change your profitability as a company? Engaged and happy employees are a crucial part of your company but most often employers don’t look at the financial impact this has on their organization. A healthy team makes a world of difference for you in your organization. If you have high turnover, internal bickering or clients who are complaining, call in a coach to assist with your employee engagement.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

True leaders are hard to find in this day and age.  Could your leaders be better at leading?  Do you ever have communication breakdown within your organization?  We work with the business leaders, management and influencers inside your company.  We help inspire them to live true leadership in work and home.  If you have turnover in your company, or if you have fighting and bickering amongst your employees, pull in a coach to help uncover the problem and create positive relationships inside your company.

SALES COACHING

Sales results are the fastest way to turn around cash flow in your life and in your business. Too often sales people don’t know the key behaviors that they need to track in order to create the success they are after. There are two key areas that are crucial to sales success.

 

  • Generating leads
  • Converting the leads to customers

 

True sales results create more time and freedom in your life. As you track your sales behaviors, you will see momentum and your productivity increase. As your productivity ur pipeline will fill up.

MARKETING COACHING

Most business owners don’t know where their marketing dollars go. They don’t track the numbers. Sometimes it’s because they don’t have time, sometimes they just don’t know which numbers are crucial for their marketing success. We build a tool that contains the marketing metrics that are crucial for you and we track the results. After we have begun to track our results, we modify our strategies and tactics to match what marketing vehicles are the most successful. Your marketing should generate business for you. Through coaching, focus groups, customer surveys and employee questionnaires, we can assess where your brand is, where it should be compared to your competitors and your plan of action to get there.

LIFE COACHING

What is that one thing keeping you from going to the next level in your life? Do you know what it is? Most people don’t. They have tunnel vision. They don’t have clarity of the big picture. They don’t know what their life calling is. They know they want to leave a legacy that spans many decades of time, but they don’t know what they could do that would actually achieve this. All of these things keep us from our true destiny. In life coaching we look at the behavioral, emotional, mental and physical elements that are keeping you from going to the next level. We help you see your greatest faults, your biggest strengths and how you can leverage them to create momentum. Life coaching can create massive change in short periods of time and can sustain it through ongoing accountability.

 

If you’d like to learn more about our life coaching platform and how you could change the course of your life.

BUSINESS COACHING

What is truly holding your business back from going to the next level? Is it you? Is it your sales? Your processes? Your team? Your cash flow or profit?

 

Business Coaching helps you look at five key aspects of your business:

 

  • Business Development – marketing & sales. Learn what methods people are using to grow their business the fastest. Discover how to get real ROI on your marketing dollars. Learn how to sell without having to be a “salesman”.
  • Infrastructure – systems, processes and your team. Learn how to build the business to run itself. Learn how to use technology in ways that create more time or money for you. Learn how to build a solid team of people that want to work with you for life.
  • Production – where you provide the deliverables of your product or service. How can you do things bigger, better and faster for your customers? What things hold you back from a true customer experience?
  • Customer Service – Finding the right customers and keeping them
  • Metrics – What numbers tell you the most about how your business is being successful? What numbers give you clarity on potential risks?

 

Business coaches know the questions to ask to find the metrics that are important to you. They can help you find risks. They help you see problems. They know how to take a business to the next level. They can help you find how you are getting in the way of your own business. They help you see what you don’t know even when you don’t know it. They see the common patterns that we all make in our businesses. Not only are they aware of the greatest things holding you back, they know how to create action that will create lasting and sustainable results.

 

A good business coach should be able to pay for themselves within 6 months of you hiring them.