One of the most famous commercials in history is for Faberge Organics shampoo and conditioner. In it, an extremely satisfied (and spectacularly coiffed, Charlie’s Angels-esque feathered) user of the all-natural shampoo that featured wheat germ oil and honey claims how happy she is with the product. Her hair is so perfect that she couldn’t help but tell two friends – and as this line of dialogue is spoken, the camera splits into two frames and her face and voice is echoed. Then those two friends tell two friends, and so on and so on. It was an extremely successful commercial for the cosmetic company, and even holds a distinct honor of being one of the spoofed commercials in the first Wayne’s World.
Why Small Business Owners Should Never Underestimate the Power of Word of Mouth
Having a customer tell two friends (or any amount for that matter) about your product is known as word of mouth advertising, and study after study has confirmed that it is by far the most effective form of it. The 2012 Nielsen Global Trust in Advertising report, which polled more than 28,000 people from 56 different countries and all walks of life, ranked recommendations and/or opinions from somebody you know as the most trusted source – 92% of people surveyed said it was the most trusted, compared to 70% for online reviews from strangers, the second-most trusted.
How to Encourage Word of Mouth
The unfortunate part of word of mouth advertising is that is nearly impossible to track. A customer comment card asking where your patron heard of you is a good start, but out of the small amount of people that actually fill those out, many will not be truthful. If you have customers, odds are good that they are talking about your business on some level with their friends, family, and throughout their entire sphere of influence. While nothing is guaranteed to turn each customer that comes through your doors into a brand-loving evangelist, here are a few guidelines to maximize the possibility that they sing your praises from the rooftops.
1. Provide Excellent Goods and Service
This is the most surefire way to increase your positive word of mouth buzz, but also the most difficult to deliver on a consistent basis. Say you own a garden supply shop, and one of your customers is provided with exceedingly great service with one of your employees. She is helped immediately (but not pushily), finds exactly what she was looking for, had all of her questions answered, and left having an exceedingly pleasurable experience. She is a prime candidate to share her positive experience throughout her sphere of influence. To ensure this happens consistently, your staff needs to not only have a friendly demeanor and the patience to deal with more difficult customers, but they also need to be knowledgeable about your business and its wares and be able to answer questions at a moment’s notice.
Finding people willing to work at a retail wage that are quick, friendly, patient, and knowledgeable can be a burden – and let us not forget that even the friendliest and best employees are going to have bad days. And that’s to say nothing of the inventory – the customer in the above example would not have been as pleased if the item she was looking for wasn’t in stock. This is the rub of providing superior goods and service to get word of mouth – it is easily the most effective way to earn word of mouth, but it is the most difficult to maintain. Still, as a small business owner, it is absolutely, 100% worth your time to try your best to do so.
Have little patience and a short leash with rude or inefficient employees. Hawkishly manage your inventory and products to ensure that the goods being sold are always in their peak condition. Maintain a sparklingly clean storefront. It’s going to be a lot of work, but nobody said getting all this free publicity and new customers was going to be easy.
2. Seek Out Customer Complaints
This might sound odd at first, but complaints can be your biggest method to ensure positive word of mouth. Keeping with the garden supply store example, say a man comes in to buy some hostas for his garden. He’s looking for a particular variety, but your selection of full-shade plants is somewhat lacking. He would probably ask a couple sales associates if your store carries what he’s looking for, but with no luck he would probably would just go on to another store, never revealing why you lost a potential sale. If you go out of your way to seek out complaints, or rather ways that your customers feel your business could improve, this situation could be avoided in the future. It’s why many companies have customer service departments in the first place.
Have comment cards readily available throughout your store (even if only a small amount of patrons fill them out); place a complaint/suggestion box in a very visible location; incentivize people to fill out surveys, either in person or online, about what they would do to improve your business; monitor your business’ Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and other social media channels for negative reviews or complaints and respond quickly to inform customers that steps are being taken to improve the items in question.
The more feedback (even negative) that you receive, the more you will understand what it is your customer is looking for. And if a customer comes in and isn’t satisfied with a facet of your business but sees that you took notice and fixed it, they are VERY likely to tell that positive story of brand interaction to a friend. You get more awareness and your business is improved in the meantime.
3. Make an Impression
Think of ways you can make a non-verbal statement. What if your garden shop was in the shape of a giant ceramic flower pot? Wouldn’t that be a pretty crazy talking point for your customers to tell their friends after they leave? Or what if with every purchase, you throw in a small bag of nutrient-rich, composted potting soil? Wouldn’t such a generous and helpful gesture be likely to be shared, either when speaking with friends or posting online about their shopping trip?
Think about ways you can make a lasting and impactful impression other than providing excellent goods and services. Depending on your budget and size of business, this could be as big as what many larger Bass Pro Shops around the country feature – a large, fully functional bass pond in the center of the store, with real-life bass swimming through it and non-shopping features (arcade, food courts, etc.) nearby – or something as simple as Trader Joe’s offering complimentary coffee and Wi-Fi to all of its patrons. The more ways you can make a non-verbal statement in your business, the more likely that statement will be reverberated after they leave.
4. Under-Promise, Over-Deliver
As great as positive word of mouth is, negative word of mouth is equally as detrimental. One of the most effective ways to get negative word of mouth is to not deliver on your promises. If you claim that your garden shop has the biggest and best selection of perennial bulbs in the tri-county area, you’d better be sure that you do – if someone comes from the neighboring county looking for a specific variant of allium, imagine how disappointed and upset they’ll be if not only you don’t have it, but somebody else in the area does. Ensure that your key messages, your branding, and your advertising are consistently achievable – if that message isn’t impactful enough, you need to seriously consider raising the bar on your goods and services so your message can be more impressive.
5. Seek Out Referrals
It never hurts to ask, right? Seek out partnerships with other businesses and try experimenting with referral programs. If there’s a local arborist you know well, tell him that you will refer his services to all of your customers looking for pruning or limbing services if he in turn will recommend your garden shop for all of his customers’ non-tree gardening needs. The more customers that know of your brand and are talking about it, the better. Also, look into ways of incentivizing customers to share their experience with your business on social media – digital word of mouth is arguably even more powerful than face-to-face testimonials, and customers these days are used to being encouraged to share their stories online.
One of the biggest reasons why word of mouth advertising is so desirable is that you are turning your customers into walking, talking marketers for your business and your brand that promote your business after hours. While some people will claim that word of mouth advertising is “free”, ensuring that you have superior products and services, making memorable, non-verbal statements in your store, and hiring experienced, knowledgeable and hard-working employees are not cheap endeavors.
If you view all of these elements as ways to fundamentally improve your business rather than a means to garner positive word of mouth, you’ll be doing yourself a lot of favors and going a long way to ensure that your customers tell two friends, and those friends tell two friends, and those friends tell two friends…
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