Ask the typical small business owner how they get most of their business and the term “word of mouth marketing” is bound to come up. However, most of you are probably not taking full advantage of word of mouth marketing. Few business owners take proactive actions to encourage and promote word of mouth marketing for their business.

What are your customers saying about your business?

Word of mouth marketing is the sharing of opinions about your products or services, between two or more people. Whether the opinion is positive or negative can have a powerful impact on your bottom-line. In a study by Northeastern University, they found that 15% of people’s daily conversation was about the experiences they had with a product or service.

You need more than good customer service to get people talking positively about you

Having good products or services and providing great customer service is critical to generating positive word of mouth. But it’s not the only factor. The fact is more unhappy customers are likely to talk negatively about you, than the happy ones ever will. Your typical unhappy customer will share their opinion and experience with 12 people, but those with happy experiences may only tell two or three.

The secret is great customer service will reduce your negative word of mouth, but it really won’t do a lot to encourage or increase positive word of mouth marketing for your business.

So what can you do to promote and encourage positive word of mouth marketing?
Here are four ideas to consider:

1. Increase your visibility in your community - Get involved in a variety of networking groups, community organizations and trade associations. Volunteer to be on the board or to head up a committee. Find inexpensive ways to support local causes, like charities and non-profit organization.

2. Develop a list of influencers - This is a list of other businesses that targets your market, but offers a non competing product or service.  For example if you’re a lawyer an accountant could be an influencer. A realtor and a mortgage broker could be on each others list. How about a florist and a photographer? If you begin to develop close relationships with your influencers they will provide positive word of mouth and referrals for you.

3. Referral Programs – Developing tools and strategies that will enable satisfied customers to easily refer their friends, family or co-workers is an effective word of mouth strategy. For example if you’re in a business that relies heavily on repeat business, you could give your regular customers a discount on their next purchase if they refer new business to you. You can give your loyal customers discount cards that they can give away to friends and family. Whether you are selling business to business or directly to the consumer, I’m sure you can come up with some creative referral programs for your specific business. If you can’t, call me for help.

4. Say thank you – Show your appreciation for the business people give you. It sounds simple, but it works. How many of you go out of your way to say thank you to your clients or customers, not just during the holiday season, but year round.  Do you send out thank you cards or letters after every sale? How about giving small inexpensive gifts? This simple act of showing gratitude is effective at creating positive word of mouth marketing, because so few businesses are doing it.

While word of mouth marketing can be very powerful at bringing in new business, it’s not smart business practice to rely on it as your only source of new business. It’s too unpredictable. What will happen to your sales if for some reason your word of mouth dries up?