Tag: seminars

Prepare for Lift Off!

Last time I gave you a laundry list of tips and tricks you can use to make your word-of-mouth program work for you. Hopefully, you’ve taken a look and decided which ones are the best fit for your company, products, services and target customers, so you can put them to work in your word-of-mouth campaign.

We will wrap up this series on word of mouth where we give you the specific steps to create a word-of-mouth campaign.

Now, let’s take a look at those steps:

  1. Seed the market. Find some way to get the product into the hands of key influencers.
  2. Provide a channel for the influencers to talk and get all fired up about your product.
  3. Offers lots of testimonials and other resources.
  4. Form an ongoing group that meets once a year in a resort and monthly by teleconference.
  5. Create fun events to bring users together and invite non-users. Saturn, Harley-Davidson, and Lexus have all been successful with this approach.
  6. Develop clips on your website featuring enthusiastic customers talking with other enthusiastic customers.
  7. Hold seminars and workshops.
  8. Create a club with membership benefits.
  9. Pass out flyers.
  10. Tell friends.
  11. Offer special incentives and discounts for friends who tell their friends.
  12. Put the Internet to work.
  13. Do at least one outrageous thing to generate word of mouth.
  14. Empower employees to go the extra mile.
  15. Encourage networking and brainstorming ideas.
  16. Run special sales.
  17. Encourage referrals with the use of a strong referral program.
  18. Use a script to tell people exactly what to say in their word-of-mouth communication.

These are all fantastic ways to get the word out about your products and services and start a word-of-mouth campaign that takes on a life of its own. Before you can release your word-of-mouth campaign into the world, you need to go through the checklist to ensure you’ve covered all the essentials.

Here’s your word-of-mouth campaign checklist:

  1. Are all of your communications sending the same simple message? If it can’t survive word of mouth, it’s not a compelling story.
  2. Is your product positioned as part of a category? Ex.”A dandruff shampoo that doesn’t dry your hair.”
  3. Are your examples outrageous enough to be shared?
  4. Do you enhance your materials with success stories from real people?
  5. Are you using experts effectively and in an objective manner?
  6. Have you created mechanisms so people can follow up on the word of mouth they hear and simple ways of inquiring or ordering?
  7. Have you made the decision process easy for customers?
  8. Have you created events and mechanisms so that your prospects hear about your product once a year, and it is easier to try or buy?

These are all essential elements to remember when taking a second or even third check over your word-of-mouth campaigns. I hope you’ve found this series on word of mouth to be a great resource and are getting ready to put it into action for your own products and services.

Remember, if you need help with anything in this series, try our FREE test drive to gain access to the best resources, tools and business coaches you can find.

Harness the Power of Word-of-Mouth (WOM)

Today we’re going to talk about how to harness the power of word of mouth. Including the six-step process to success and the 30+ (that’s right, I said 30) ways to harness the power of WOM. So, let’s get started!

There are six steps to harnessing word of mouth:

  1. Understand your customers’ values and priorities; this will help you understand why they would buy your products.
  2. Understand the different adopter types: innovators, early adopters, middle majority, late adopters, and laggards.
  3. Identify which decision stages are needed for your product to be adopted.
  4. Use the information from steps 2 & 3 to determine which wording and word-of-mouth tactics will work using the Decision Maker Matrix (we’ll talk about this in a minute).
  5. Put together the resources for the highest word-of-mouth impact.
  6. Create and implement your word-of-mouth campaign.

The Decision Maker Matrix is based on years of trial and error by George Silverman. It essentially charts different concerns you may come across when working with different adopters and puts together a decision process for each one.

We are now going to move on to the 30+ ways to harness the power of WOM:

Use Experts

Experts can come in many forms and all their opinions should be considered when creating a WOM campaign. Some experts from whom you could gather information include:

  • Customers
  • Suppliers
  • Subject Matter Experts
  • Salespeople
  • Experts roundtables
  • Experts’ selling groups

Seminars, Workshops & Speeches

These venues are a perfect opportunity to gather information. People who attend these types of events are used to giving feedback, so you can use a survey or other methods to gather the information you can look over later. Some events to use are:

  • Speakers Program
  • Seminars
  • Webinars
  • Group selling
  • Dinner meetings
  • Peer selling groups
  • Video conference experts’ panels
  • Trade show events/opportunities

Referral Selling

As we’ve discussed before, a referral program can help with various things in building your business. Using some of the following tactics and opportunities, you can find exactly what you need to do to generate positive word of mouth. These tactics and opportunities are:

  • Testimonials
  • Networking
  • Referral Selling Program

“New” Media

The concept of “new” media is using up-and-coming media sources and opportunities to get the word out about your products and services and listen for feedback about them. Most social media options could be considered “newer” media:

  • Facebook, Facebook Groups, Facebook Messenger, and Facebook Live
  • TikTok
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • WhatsApp
  • A host of others

Using Traditional Media for Word of Mouth

Using traditional media is a great way to get feedback. These are still considered mainstream ways of interacting with the public and consumers. Some traditional media outlets are:

  • Customer service
  • PR
  • Placements
  • Events
  • Promotions
  • Word of mouth in ads, sales brochures, or direct mail
  • Salesperson programs, sales stars, or peer training,
  • Word-of-mouth incentive programs (“Tell-a-friend” programs)
  • Customer gifts they can share with their friends (articles, how-to manuals)

Internal Word of Mouth

  • Encourage employee word of mouth and sharing feedback with family, friends, and others
  • Offer rewards or commissions for word-of-mouth success

As you can see there are tons of ideas you can work with to increase your level of positive word-of-mouth marketing. If you need help with any of this, please try our FREE test drive to access our exclusive resources to help you put this whole thing together. And take advantage of our Holiday Special at bit.ly/CPAHoliday22!