Companies and organizations are used to relying on word-of-mouth advertising to get their ideas and messages out into the marketplace whether that be for business or social awareness. So, how does one compete with companies who have astronomical amounts of advertising budget to spend? The secret is to find a new way, or rather to exploit an old way of doing promotion. And, that is called word of mouth advertising.
Word of mouth advertising has been used since the first hunter gatherer found they had a surplus of supplies and wanted to share. Word of mouth spread like wild fire and everyone arrived to get a taste and share of supplies. The same principles apply today.
It is far more inexpensive and cost effective if you can figure out a way to get ordinary people to spread your ideas for you. Word-of-mouth advertising is a powerful tool and about 10 times more effective than traditional methods. you just have to find those powerful motivators which make people spread ideas.
In today’s world, just like when our ancestors roamed the plains and prairies, we tend to trust our close companions and friends opinions far more than the advertising we are subjected to. Many of us fast forward the TIVO or quickly turn the page when advertising hits us in the face. We have begun to inherently dislike the repetitive message and statistical presentation of traditional advertising. Whether it is from organizations or from social interest groups, people tend to not believe traditional in your face advertising that pushes a message which may or may not be true. But when it comes to our friends opinions–well, word of mouth advertising works. We tend to be more likely to believe that our friends will give us the ‘real skinny’ and give it to us ‘straight.’ And, we will respect that first hand knowledge on a product, organization or service they have used.
So how do you find new customers and supporters for your products and ideas? It can be difficult, perhaps next to impossible to go out and find new people interested in your idea or your product or brand so maybe that isn’t the most effective way to go about prospecting. Why not get your existing customers or supporters to do the work for you? Maybe they can find new people to target with products and ideas? Word of mouth advertising does this very effectively for you.
When it comes to word-of-mouth advertising, you can quickly see why its so effective. People tend to group together, e.g, if your a doctor, you probably know other doctors and move in the same social circles. The same could be said for any other profession. Like typically attracts like. We see the tendency of people to associate with others who are similar to them. An extreme example are those that love a particular team sport tend to gathered together with those who also have a love for their particular game of choice.
If you can get more new people to support your cause, brand, product or idea through word-of-mouth advertising. Those people are more than 15 times more likely to bring others on board than tradition advertising methods.
So how can you use your existing customers and clients to bring in more business? How can you turn them into advocates for your product or brand? How will you get them to recommend a friend to your business? Compass Marketing Group can make this easy for you. We can plan and implement an effective marketing strategy to get your customers and clients selling your cause or product. Isn’t it time to turn your client and customer base into a powerful recruitment tool, working for you, bringing in leads and sales?
Word-of-mouth advertising is a powerful tool if you can work out how to use it effectively! Contact Compass Marketing today and let us focus your advertising budget on areas which will really effect your business in positive way.