There’s a marketing axiom which goes along the lines of “potential customers must be exposed to your message between 7 and 28 times before they will act upon your marketing message”. Those marketing exposures are sometimes referred to as “marketing touches” and when your customers are making those marketing touches for you – that is called Word of Mouth Marketing.
Creating multiple marketing touches is a common problem for many small business owners. See, many small business owners want their local advertising campaign to consist of running a single newspaper advertisement – a single radio advertisement or a single television advertisement. The small business owner than watches as the customers come POURING in by the truckloads as a result. Talk about unrealistic marketing expectations…. advertising just doesn’t work like that.
Which is why Word of Mouth Marketing is a popular small business marketing strategy. What’s not to love? Word of mouth marketing is free and word of mouth marketing is easy and effortless. What could possibly be better than a free and easy marketing plan, right?
One of the most appealing aspects of Word of Mouth Marketing for the small business owner is how it takes the PRESSURE of creating multiple “touches” off the business owner’s shoulders and places that responsibility onto the shoulders of the customers.
In the Word of Mouth Advertising campaign, customers are expected to carry the marketing message to the masses instead of using media. The problem is – how do you get your customers to pick up the story and tell it for you?
That my friends is the million dollar question, one which Brian Clark answers in Here’s How Word-of-Mouth Marketing Really Works.
People respond to marketing stories when they either identify with the hero, or desire to become the hero. Your story must put the prospect front and center as that hero.
And your product or service must be the indispensible supporting character that makes the hero look good.
Brian has hit the nail right on the proverbial head. Once again, successful marketing is still based in the old WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) and as Brian points out – your story will be told again and again if telling the story makes the CUSTOMER look like a hero!
Does your product make your customer appear smarter, prettier, cooler? Does using it put your CUSTOMER in the position of being the hero when the story is told?
If it does, then you can bank on your customers to start singing the praises of your business. Soon you have a chorus of customers singing your praises at which point you’ll be singing the praises of how wonderful Word of Mouth Marketing is for your business.
The secret to creating word of mouth marketing is to create a marketing story where your customers are the hero. When your customers are cast as the charming, smart successful hero, it’s a story they’ll want to tell over and over again and THAT is what Word of Mouth Marketing is all about.
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