Word of Mouth Marketing...
For Small Business
Many years ago I was browsing the big job advertisement section in our weekend paper. One ad stood out immediately. It was brilliant. Amongst all the small print ads this big text, short, punchy ad caught my eye and I was impressed by the marketing skill of the person who had placed the ad… …until [...]
I was chatting with a friend who had noticed the worn-out tires on my car, and he was giving me a few pointers on getting new ones. He really knew a lot about the safety and performance advantages of different tires and where I could get them at the lowest possible prices. He was genuinely [...]
Everyone knows that business promotion is essential for long term success. What surprises most people is that even with all the forms of business promotion — such as advertising, PR, and internet promotion — word of mouth marketing is still recognized by the most successful entrepreneurs and marketing gurus as the number one business promotion [...]
When the cab driver taking you to your hotel starts chatting, and you end up getting a recommendation for a great place to eat… that’s tipster marketing. When your chat with your hairdresser ends up as a discussion about the latest ‘fab’ movie they have seen… that’s tipster marketing. When a travel agent has been [...]
…me. Or, you. Or whomever the buyer is. You buy lots of stuff and in those situations you are the marketing expert. The one handing over the money is the one who is deciding what ‘marketing’ was effective. Anyone else’s opinion is just that, an opinion. Non-buyers such as visitors, lookie-looks, tyre-kickers, friends, family, even [...]
In “Word of Mouth Magic” I cover, as many marketers do, tuning in to WII-FM. That is, tuning in to the ultimate buyer’s question that you must answer, “What’s In It For Me?” Sometimes I get really frustrated, and I think of it as WTF-III-FM – “What The F*** Is In It For Me?”, also [...]
Hopefully most of you reading this will have a small business of your own, so I can ask this question… “Ever had ‘success’ be a problem?” Growing a small business into a bigger business means you hope for success, but sometimes it will be like having a tiger by the tail. Perhaps the success will [...]
Ever sent a letter out about your business? Hopefully you’ve at least sent a letter out to your past customers. [If not - stop reading at the end of this sentence, go type out a letter, any letter, send it out, measure the results, and then come back here. Still reading and no letter? I [...]
One of the few remaining emails that make it directly into my inbox are the posts of marketing legend, Seth Godin. Much of what you read about word of mouth marketing applies more to big businesses, with massive resources, big campaigns and long-lead times. Seth is one of the few people who talks about word [...]
As I was sorting through my sales letter testing I thought I would pull out the results that were statistically significant to the 99% level. Most of the results identified pieces that UNsold people from “Word of Mouth Magic”. Sorry, I’m not showing you those One of the losers was the P.S. Even though many [...]
