We all want free exposure and new clients at low cost. That’s nothing new. But just how do we get others talking about our business and spreading word-of-mouth on our behalf? Here are some basic principles using a combination of networking and marketing techniques that will help you see results within a three-month period.
Stimulating Conversations
With copy cat businesses flooding the market daily, identifying a core niche and a different angle can be tougher than getting a date with Jennifer Hawkins. However, it’s a critical factor in getting stimulating conversation and word-of-mouth spread about your business. Brainstorm with colleagues and friends to determine the various different angles and approaches you can take in your industry (i.e. don’t just be another business consultant, be the business consultant that purely works with corporate women on dealing with ego-driven men!) Become the ‘go to’ person for specific challenges and issues faced in your core arena.
Develop an entire marketing and networking campaign around this element that focuses on free education, such as e-books, articles and blogs. All of these can be easily forwarded to friends and colleagues virally.
Once you have identified your niche, go on to identify what is unique about you as the individual. Are you upfront and brash with your clients? If you are (and they love it), identify a business personality around this image. It’s almost like becoming an actor. Once you’ve developed your role around what it is that you’re good at, it’s not only easier to get people talking about you, it is much easier to get free media exposure and publicity. This is a key element that a lot of businesses fail to recognise when wanting to generate word-of-mouth. You need to be different and you need to be interesting – that’s why people will talk about you and your business.
Public Speaking Rounds
A lot of presenters are inexperienced and clumsy at being controversial and engaging with an audience. Public speaking is a great way to get exposure and build yourself up as an authority in your field. Just be aware that it is easier to be known for one thing than for many. Pick a topic that your business focuses on and ring up every networking event and group you can find to offer a short, sharp fifteen minute presentation for free.
The amount of exposure and word-of-mouth this generates is enormous and opportunities can come from sources at the events that you would never expect. This also gets people ringing you instead of you chasing them! For whatever reason, getting up in front of an audience and speaking on a topic is almost like getting an instant university degree. If you’re good, people will not only respect you, you’ll be able to charge more, be seen as highly knowledgeable and easily referable.
A Multi-Pronged Approach
Just like a tree with many branches your word-of-mouth campaign will include various key elements that are integrated to promote the viral dissemination of your marketing message. We’ve looked at public speaking. What else can you add to the mix? Email marketing, websites, competitions, trade shows and networking, to name a few. The important thing to remember here is that you want to touch base with your clientele via various different means. It can take up to nine points of contact before a prospect purchases from you. This also means that it can take various points of engaging interaction for individuals to talk about your business and do the marketing on your behalf.
Building Critical Mass
Building up critical mass when it comes to word-of-mouth is absolutely essential. It can take time to be recognised and receive feedback. It’s even more essential, once you’ve built up critical mass in which you’re seeing solid results, that you keep it up. Once you’ve done the initial take off and the campaign is working, you only need to add more fuel to it from time to time and the results come much faster.
Create a solid three-month strategy in which you attend every networking event you possibly can, give as many free talks as people will let you and support all of these efforts by sending out weekly email campaigns with articles and e-books you’ve created that are relevant to your target market.
I guarantee you will see results. And always remember, people advertise to stand out, not to fit in!
Ben Angel is the Founding Director of Nationwide Networking, a business networking group that meets monthly to share referrals, access key business knowledge and network with pre-matched business connections. For your FREE business audio download entitled “How to Increase Your Business Success in Under 30 Days!” visit www.nationwidenetworking.com.au/freedownload
