You’re heard it said 1000 times…

The best kind of marketing is word-of-mouth.

This is true for any organization, whether it be a business, non-profit, event, or anything else that would necessitate any type of advertising.

It’s true. They weren’t lying.

But how do you get word-of-mouth advertising, especially for your business? You can’t just go buy Google Adwords for word-of-mouth—there’s no such thing. (By the way, if you can somehow figure out how to manufacture word-of-mouth advertising, you’ll be a billionaire.)

So what’s the key to scoring this seemingly elusive type of advertising?

Three steps:

1) Kill it.

Go above and beyond. Do such a good job that your customer is blown away. This is hard to do with a product, but easy to do with a service. You always want to underpromise and overdeliver, so you have to be creative with how you overdeliver.

On one hand, you want to promote and market the best part of your product to your customer so they want to buy it. On the other hand, you want to limit what you communicate to your customer so they don’t completely know what they will get.

When your customer pays for your product or service and then they get something extra, they feel like they got a bargain because the value was greater than what they anticipated.

Do a great job and your customer will likely reward you by sharing their positive experience with their friend.

2) Survey your customers.

If your current customers aren’t sharing their experiences with anyone else, you might consider providing greater value in what you offer. A great way to figure out how your customer’s perceive your value is to send them a survey after a purchase.

Your survey can be very brief with just a few questions or a big longer with around 10 questions. If you create more than 10, you run the risk of your customer giving up on the survey and quitting before they submit their answers.

I am often shocked at how many business owners—especially service-based businesses—that do not have any sort of survey for their customers. This means they are getting virtually ZERO feedback from the opinions that matter most.

Add a survey and you’ll find out exactly where to fine-tune and tweak what you offer and how you offer it, and you’ll create more raving fans along the way.

3) Show gratitude.

This is one of THE most important pieces of advice I can offer you. Show gratitude, but I’m not referring to your customers—I’m referring to the other vendors which whom you work.

When I was building Lighthouse Entertainment—my DJ business—I would send a literal stack of thank you cards after each event. If I performed at a wedding, I could easily mail out 10-15 thank you cards after each reception.

It didn’t really matter who I sent thank you cards to—I just sent them to any person with whom I had ANY interaction.

I sent cards to:

• The banquet manager
• The catering manager
• The bartenders
• The event coordinator
• The photographer
• The videographer
• The baker
• The florist
• The bride & groom
• The parents of the bride
• The parents of the groom
• The Best Man
• The Maid of Honor

 

I even sent a card to a janitor once!

You might be thinking, “What in the world would you thank all those people for?!”

Think of something. It doesn’t matter what you thank them for, but you can likely find SOMETHING that they did well.

I realized early on that when I was working alongside other vendors, I could do the best possible job I have ever done, but if other vendors didn’t pull their weight, it brought down the quality of the overall event in the customer’s perception.

When all the vendors went above and beyond, there was a compounding effect of gratitude from my clients. They were thrilled with all the vendors, and experienced a collective incredible event.

For this reason, when another vendor does their job with excellence, they are actually helping me even though I am not the one who they’re trying to impress.

Therefore, I would look for any and all reasons to show gratitude.

And here’s what happened: they appreciated it! A lot.

I began receiving recommendations from all over the place. It seemed as though there was a direct correlation to the number of thank you cards I wrote to the number of referrals I would receive from another vendor.

I’m telling you—it works like magic.

Follow these 3 steps and you’ll be well on your way to generating more word-of-mouth traffic than ever before. And when you do, send me a thank you card. J

Question: Have you ever received a thank you card from a business before? Share your experience in the comments.