Word-of-Mouth on STEROIDS

From our consulting experience and countless engagements with CEOs and Executives, it is unanimous that Word-of-Mouth is the “most sought after” source of generating new business. OK, so maybe we didn’t have to do a ton of research just to state the obvious. But somebody had to say it – because most companies have forgotten about the basics and the power of Word-of-Mouth marketing.

It also has one other HUGE benefit – ZERO Cost-of-sale. That’s right, if you have customers coming to you from Word-of-Mouth, your direct cost to attract that customer is Zero, nada, zilch. Your customer base is doing all the work for you and “escorting” (figuratively or literally) your best customers to your door – and you don’t have to pay a cent for that sale. Staggering thought isn’t it. It reminds me of the speech Allan Greenspan gave years ago when he said, “Americans have forgotten about the power of compound interest.” Same concept, we forgot about the most basic and yet most powerful form of marketing available to any business – Word-of-Mouth.

So the BIG QUESTION we get asked frequently is, “How can I get more word-of-mouth?” And the BIG ANSWER is Social Media. Having a Social Media Strategy that focuses on building Word-of-Mouth is the best way we have seen to truly capture the power of social media and get the bang for the buck out of this new approach to marketing.

The true value of Social Media is developing a strategy to get “Word-of-Mouth on STEROIDS” for your company. The tools don’t matter, they will be continually evolving and changing rapidly (thank heavens). What does matter is to understand the basics of marketing, so you can increase the number of people saying positive things about your company when talking to other potential customers (as fast and as many as possible) for the lowest cost possible. We think this is what will separate the “winners” from the “losers” in business and define the leaders in an industry. Do you agree?