A point of view on advertising

[DayTrader]

People who are satisfied with your product and service are the best kind of advertising you'll ever find. They can spread through word of mouth. You can ask your valued and satisfied customers if they know of anybody else who could benefit from your product or service. Your goal shouldn't be just finding more customers, but rather find the customers who will benefit most from what you offer and form strong, solid relationships with them.

That is what I am trying to achieve right now. I believe Word of Mouth is still the best marketing strategy!

[avelina]

Word of mouth can be equally too much harmful if you show a very minute negligence in quality and customer care service. Make your customers loyal to your product then they will market your product more effectively and will force their fellows to buy only your product.

[Advertising Swami]

Word of Mouth is great if you've got it.

When I was a cabinetmaker struggling to get jobs I would want to strangle other woodworkers who
claimed they never advertised and got their jobs "by word of mouth". Inevitably there was a
hidden story - 1 guy's dad was a contractor for 25 years in the same city... so there he
was saying it was word of mouth when in reality his clientele and reputation were pre-built
for him by his father.

If you are starting from scratch word-of-mouth is a tricky thing to get. Yes, you should work
to get it and put a system for getting referrals in place, but depending on word of mouth to
go from 0 to 60 is a low way to get your business up to highway speed.

You still need to advertise and aggressively court and seduce customers to win in today's
competitive environment. DO not fall victim to the "Field of Dreams" illusion that
"If You Build It, They Will Come" - I've seen dozens of costly websites created by
talented marketing-ignoramuses on that sketchy belief.

Delivering exceptional and detail-oriented service is virtually a requirement to get
any word-of-mouth going. So work on your delivery and sales systems so people
have an exceptional experience and feel cherished as customers. I've read a
lot of books on these topics and studied a lot of businesses - the ones that achieve
exceptional reputation and word-of-mouth usually are run by very detail-obsessed
people who "get it" with customer service.

[inle]

The challenge is How to get the First Mouth Talking....

[avelina]

Word of Mouth is great if you've got it.



If you are starting from scratch word-of-mouth is a tricky thing to get. Yes, you should work
to get it and put a system for getting referrals in place, but depending on word of mouth to
go from 0 to 60 is a low way to get your business up to highway speed.

You still need to advertise and aggressively court and seduce customers to win in today's
competitive environment.

Truly handy lines by you; inspiring and worth to practice. I agree with you that no doubt word of mouth is effective one but it is fairly slow process you will have to wait for almost 25 + years to turn into corporate business man.

[waterbymidnight]

i think word of mouth is the best way, you should always be treating your customers right in the first place. Although it depends how quick you want to advertise, word of mouth does take some time.

[Stone]

This is why social media and social networking sites are so powerful, there are based on word-of-mouth.

[DayTrader]

The challenge is How to get the First Mouth Talking....

Yes. It is indeed a challenge. We need to use other marketing strategies first to promote our business before we can make use of Word of Mouth.

[sep]

Customer Loyalty and Retention is the key to business growth. Build and maintain customer loyalty and the referrals will flow.

[goldie]

Marketing is Demand Optimization (see http://www.va1ue-chain.com/What%20is%20Marketing.pdf) so Word of Mouth (WoM) is just one strategy. Also, you need other marketing strategies to trigger and sustain WoM. Further, WoM is exponentially increased in synergy with other strategies.

Don't be lazy.

[BizDoc]

Word of mouth is misleading. It takes multiple impressions - and variety is key - of an advertisement to compel somebody to take action. The default people revert to when asked the referral source is WOM...because they can't remember. But it was likely a billboard, coupon, yellow pages, online ad, print ad, or some form of advertising that got them to go "Hey! I need..." WOM is a great multiplier but you shouldn't rely on it as your primary method of advertising.

[Lemman]

I agree that word of mouth is cool if you have a solid reputation built. But it's not really easy to come by, especially for new businesses. So it's basically provide good services and products, advertise and touch base with your customers.

[simplyfreegas]

It really depends on what type of business you have, and it's size. When you have Millions upon Millions to spend on advertising, you don't really have to rely on WOM because the product normally speaks for itself in that you can't avoid it. Example? Coke or Pepsi. I will guarantee that you cannot go about your average daily life without seeing one of their logos during the day. But hey, they can afford it right? God bless corporate America!

Now for the smaller businesses, with real people at stake behind their advertising budgets, WOM is definitely a larger part of that portfolio on their market strategy. Restaurants will naturally rely on this more than something like hardware stores. Sure customer service plays a part in bringing back customers, but hardware stores are more a necessity and restaurants provide people with the enjoyment of choosing from the competition.

That's my opinion from personal experience.

Your thoughts?

Richard

[beninbrown]

Very true word of mouth is great. But it all starts with company's understanding what their audience wants. Once they do that then under promising and over delivering on those wants is the key to generating word of mouth. If one thinks aloud and takes a count of the number of businesses that they've really raved about lately, then the small list indicates that its often easier said than done.

[DayTrader]

Customer Loyalty and Retention is the key to business growth. Build and maintain customer loyalty and the referrals will flow.

Yes, I agree. Take good care of valued customers. Maintain product quality and offer after sale service. If the customer is satisfied, referrals will follow.