Advertise Your Business With Word-Of-Mouth
August 24, 2007 · Print This Article
If you’ve ever recommended a good movie to a friend or stayed away from a restaurant because someone told you it had poor service or its food quality was low, you have experienced word-of-mouth advertising.
Just like any other business, word-of-mouth advertising can help your business or hurt it, depending on your reputation.
With most advertising, you as the business owner have control of how your advertising will look and what it will convey. For example, you can construct a particular ad to your specifications, to say exactly what you want; this will help draw customers in. However, this is not the case with word-of-mouth advertising.
Word-of-mouth advertising is something that your prior customers have control over, not you. Simply put, if they had a good experience with you, you’ll attract new customers. If they’ve had a bad experience with you and complain about it, this will drive business away.
Whether you like it or not, you can’t do anything about word-of-mouth advertising. It’s going to exist if you have any customers at all (which, of course, is exactly what you want).
Therefore, it behooves you to work as hard as you can to give current customers a good experience so that their word-of-mouth advertising will be of benefit to you.
For example, let’s say a customer has a good experience at your business, and he or she tells two people about your business. Those two people become your customers, and their experience of you is also very positive.
They in turn each tell two friends, who in turn become your customers and then each tell two more friends, who in turn each tell two more friends, and so on. This can grow your business exponentially, very quickly.
Now, of course, it works in reverse as well. If a current customer has had a bad experience with you, then he or she is going to tell friends not to go there.
For example, if a current customer who has had a bad experience tells two friends not to come to you for services, those people can in turn each tell two friends, who can in turn each tell two friends, and so on.
This can not only shrink your business very quickly, but it can spread the word that your business is not be trusted.
You should also know that positive word-of-mouth advertising may take a while to make its way around. This is because when people have a good experience, oftentimes, they won’t express an opinion on your business until they’re actually asked for a referral or an opinion.
On the other hand, if a customer has had a bad experience at your business, they will tell friends right away to stay away. Therefore, you’ll see a negative impact right away, while it may take awhile to see a positive one.
Unfortunately, bad publicity can affect you even in venues your business doesn’t normally serve. For example, people are usually pretty angry when they don’t receive good service. Therefore, a disgruntled customer might tell another friend how awful your steak house was.
Even though that friend would never go to your restaurant because he or she is vegetarian, he or she might very well pass that information on someone else who would visit your restaurant otherwise, but now will not do so because of this negative information.
Although you can’t be sure you’ll make every customer happy, you can help protect yourself from negative word-of-mouth advertising by consistently ensuring that you provide quality products and services.
Make sure that your customer service does its best to satisfy customers if something does go wrong. If you are consistently high quality in your products and/or services, eventually, word-of-mouth will reflect this and will provide great free advertising for your business.
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