Congratulations! You’ve learned the ins and outs of word of mouth research. Now, it’s time to get started with some tried and true ways to use this marketing tactic when building and executing your own campaigns.
The Ultimate Word Of Mouth Tips List
To make it easy to highlight what might work best for you, we’ve created a massive list of tips. We’ve gathered these from the highly informative The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing by George Silverman.
- Give people something worth talking about
- Cater to your initial customers
- Provide incentives
- Ask or remind customers to tell their friends
- Remember the customer is always right
- Tell the truth
- Provide more than customer expect
- Provide reasons for customers to come back and choose you over the competition
- Always make eye contact and smile (even when you’re on the phone)
- Provide a better shopping experience, such as friendly greetings, clean environment, faster service, free delivery, competitive prices, increased selection and more
- Change out large bills, even without a purchase
- Never take customers for granted
- Keep items clean without customers noticing
- Never embarrass a customer, including yelling out personal items they’re purchasing
- Help customers make the right choice for their needs, including suggesting better or alternative items
- Admit if you don’t know the answer, but make an effort to find it
- Try to remember regular customers’ names
- Don’t admit known shoplifters
- Avoid socializing when customers are waiting
- Never pressure someone into a purchase
- Never give bad advice
- Check out the competition personally
- Hire a shopping service to gauge customer treatment
- Buy out stores with poor management (such as insulting customers). Add an “Under New Management” sign outside and sell it later as sales increase.
- Find one trusted expert to endorse you
- Treat every stranger like a loyal customer
- Remember, people will go out of their way to be treated right
- Always have a sale or offbeat event running to keep people coming back
- Find and reward the best sign maker to help you stand out
- Always work to correct any dissatisfaction immediately to avoid negative word of mouth
- Treat all employees and vendors the same way you treat your customers
- Create a zero error system where employees double-check each other
- Make intentional mistakes to verify your zero error system
- Consistently measure performance
- Always ask customers to come back soon
- Offer to deliver items to customers who are moving away
- Provide a light-hearted environment, such as telling jokes
Use this list to change the way you do business to provide the best experience to keep customers coming back and recommending you to others. Have fun putting the homework into play to grow your business. Don’t forget to schedule a call if you’d like any help with this part of our series.