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Word of Mouth Marketing (Part 4) - Speeding Up Word Of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing helps boost your sales considerably as the trust is at work in this case. Your customers trust you and some other people trust these customers. These customers when recommend your offerings to their people then they try out the recommendation without any apprehensions. The process, though, is a bit lengthy but is very effective for promoting your business. Therefore, its important that the recommendation about your product is made public rapidly then only your business will feel the difference it wants to.

Ways To Accelerate The Word Of Mouth Flow

Following methods should help proliferate your offeringsí information speedily:

Outstanding Value: Offer outstanding value and experience to your customers when they use your products and services and when they deal with your customer service. A genuine and honest effort is always obvious and customers do take a note of it. So, honest offerings with a willingness to help the customers will make you stand out and the customers will cherish the experience of dealing with you. Now, just watch the rapid spread of word of mouth in the market.

Customer treatment: Treat your customers as your near and dear ones rather than viewing them only as a resource to generate profit for you. A selfish attitude will give you a very short-term gain and you will loose the long-term market value.

Advertisements: Draft user-friendly advertisements that are interesting and catchy for the audience and should be easy to share. The audience should easily be able to forward your interesting advertisements to others.

Networks: Work closely with social organizations so that you have a good network. Also, put in your honest efforts when getting involved with any organization. Then only you will be acknowledged.

Discussions: Organize live discussions about your brand(s). You may also use message boards for the discussions. Obviously, your present and your prospective customers will participate in it and spread word about you and your business.

Influencers: Identify the people with whom your customers are very close and they have a say in the lives of these people. These influential customers can guide the buying decisions of their close ones.

Online clubs: As an added step towards building PR, establish online clubs for your customers. This will set your name abuzz in your business niche.

Feedback: Collect the feedback of both types, positive and negative, for your offerings. Keenly go through the feedback and implement the maximum possible suggestions. 

Right time, right place and right person are the keys to success for word of mouth advertising, provided all these three rights are happening simultaneously. Take care to maintain speed and the accuracy of information flow to get the desired sales results from the word of mouth marketing.

Word of Mouth Marketing (Part 3) - Keys To Effective Word Of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing concept is the oldest, most cost-efficient and most effective of all the known marketing methods. Word of mouth marketing has an immense potential to boost the sales of your product or service substantially, if it is favorable and vice versa, if the word of mouth is negative for your offerings. Obviously, you will not want to see your companyís dipping sales. There are ways to generate a positive word of mouth for your product or service and this article does just that.

Tips to a favorable word of mouth marketing:

The following tips will help you with favorable word of mouth marketing for your company's products and services (including music):

Credibility of your products and services: It is very important that your offerings are actually qualitatively excellent. Because a very good product or a very bad product can only delight or upset a customer. Only a delighted or a very upset customer will want to talk about your product. And, I am sure you will want all delighted customers.

Feedback: Collect feedback about your products and services from the market. Be open to improve and incorporate the maximum suggested modifications in your offerings as desired by the market. Do this exercise regularly to get good referrals and reaping the maximum benefits of word of mouth advertising.

Outstanding customer service: An excellent customer service will further position your company differently in the market. Customer service is the backbone of a customer base. A customerís trust is built in your company by the attitude of your customer service, because customer service is the face of the organization. Therefore, ensure that you deliver genuine customer service with a smile!

Promise: Promise to the customers only what you can deliver. In fact, under-promising and over-delivering can be pretty fruitful for you. In case, however, because of some unavoidable circumstances, if you are unable to live up to your promise then declare it to your customers, good if you can do it in advance. This can help you salvage your image and do not upset your clients.

High-end customers: Take care to definitely delight your high-value customers, because they are actually responsible for your revenues. Keep regular interaction with such customers so that they remember you and talk about you. Develop good relationship with them so that they refer some other similar prospective clients for you.

Word of mouth marketing aims at a very sensitive buying sense of the target market. A favorable word of mouth initially comes from a delighted customer and subsequently from a brand loyal customer.  Any slip may, land you with a negative word of mouth, which may turn out to be a quite nightmarish experience for you. So, be careful!

Word of Mouth Marketing (Part 2) - Implementing Word Of Mouth Marketing

People are talking about your business, your products and services. Few speak about you favorably and many might speak unfavorably. Though unfortunate but its true that people tend to talk aloud and a lot when they have negative experiences from your offerings or from your business. If you manage to deliver excellent customer service then the chances are that your customers will not talk negative about you at least, if they are not talking favorably. Generally, the word of mouth travels on its own without your control. There are, however, ways to steer these words in your desired direction.

Steps For Positive Word Of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing can be steered by the following factors:

Products and services: Offer premium quality products and services, priced genuinely attached with an outstanding customer service. That is, maintain honesty or business ethics. No reason why now people will not talk positively about you.

Customer rewards: You may introduce some customer referral or customer bonus schemes for your clients. Generally, the outcome is encouraging in such cases and people talk about you enthusiastically, thereby generating new business for you.

Easy business fundamentals: Your business fundamentals should be easy enough for people to remember and talk about. Some catchy punch line or some simple but interesting offer or some new easy utilities of your product, etc are the right things for the people to remember and talk about you.

Transmission medium: Once people have your business concepts to talk about, it is vital to provide them with the right platform to send a positive message across to the target customers. Blogs, discussions, message boards, emails, etc are some medium through which your customers can recommend your offerings to the others and influence their buying decisions.

Interaction: It is important that the dialogue that you have established is two way. Of course, the other side is you. You need to actively participate in the discussions through above mentioned transmission mediums. Your customers will definitely appreciate your attitude and you will be able to build a long-term relationship with them.

Tracking: Keeping a track of what is going wrong and where can actually help in what is known as controlling in management parlance. Word of mouth can help you in SWOT analysis partially and you can eliminate the weak areas and strengthen your positives.

Word of mouth can be a perfect marketing tool for you if you have a knack to tap it well. It's very important that word of mouth marketing results are in sync with your expectations. If people are talking sadly about you then your business is in for a trouble. So, ensure a planned flow of the word of mouth and enjoy the results thereafter.

Word of Mouth Marketing (Part 1) - An Introduction

Marketing is one of the most evolved fields today. Marketing deals with any market-oriented activity with the ultimate objective of increasing the sales and brand image of products or services marketed.  Marketing as a field covers market research, selling, promotion, customer service, after sales service to name some. And what works the best for the ultimate objective of marketing, that is, selling. It is the oldest method of marketing, word of mouth marketing.

The Concept Of The Word Of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing involves the activities a company or an individual or an institution takes up, to generate a favorable statement from its customers to acquire new customers and retain the existing ones. The prospective customers can be friends, relatives, acquaintances, colleagues, family members, and the like of existing customers.

The Elements Of Word Of Mouth Marketing

Word of mouth marketing has the following pillars:

1)    Trust drives the word of mouth marketing. Word of mouth marketing impacts its target market when a person whom we trust, recommends a product or service. And, it is because of our trust in that person, we trust his or her recommendation and take resultant action.

2)    The credibility of the product or service is very important. It is essential that the product or service is actually convincing and a value for money. Then only anybody will prefer to discuss it or refer it to their friends and acquaintances.

3)    The word of mouth marketing is the most potential way to affect a product or serviceís market strength. Whether favorable or unfavorable, the word of mouth can make or break, respectively, a productís and serviceís market equity.

4)    Involves an effortless dissemination of information.

5)    Results in a common response from the target market.

6)    This is the most cost-effective marketing method because it uses othersí resources to work.

7)    The word of mouth marketing is not much affected by any fluctuations in the economy or rising competition in the business.

8)    If a product or service has been able to build a particular, either positive or negative, image of itself through the word of mouth marketing then it is difficult for the competition to break it readily.

9)    The word of mouth marketing is not a long-term marketing method. It is  good as initial marketing or as a support to already encouraging sales. The product or service needs constant improvement to retain and expand its market share.

Word of mouth marketing has been around for years and is the most successful and cost-efficient selling tool. Everybody selling anything must encash the numerous benefits of word of mouth marketing. But take care that the word of mouth for your offering is favorable, failing which, it may result in deceased sales and depleting brand image.

2006 Goal Check

In January, I wrote about one of my main goals for 2006, which is taking more time off.  Specifically, I wanted to take four non-business trips.

Tomorrow, I'm leaving for a week in Moscow.  That will be vacation #2.  And I have plans to hit London in June, which will be #3.

How are your goals coming? 

If things aren't coming along for you as quickly as you want, think about this...  It's a good idea to go over everything weekly, if not more often.  And if you haven't started yet, keep in mind that the year isn't half over and you still have plenty of time to do want you want to do.

I won't be posting here for the next ten days, but don't worry...  The blog will have information on word of mouth marketing from my assistant.  If you're looking to take advantage of this with your music business, definitely check back because this is great info.

Derek Sivers on Business

Still playing around with that blog search engine that I mentioned yesterday.  Looked up "Derek Sivers" and found this interview.

By the way, if you don't know who Derek Sivers is, he's the guy who owns CD Baby.

Thought this was an interesting quote...

"Just give yourself a 10 day deadline, and just launch it with almost no features."

That's Derek's advice for starting a business.  And I couldn't agree more.

Starting a business is a lot like working from a list...  It doesn't matter what thing on the list you do first as much as it matters that you just do something.

So many people get caught up on worrying about small details that may never matter.  Just do something, and if you screw it up, do it again, but a little differently.

That means, right now is the best time to record your album, do a gig, send out a newsletter, or whatever else you're been thinking about.  So go do it...

And once you do, check out the full interview.  Derek is a sharp guy and everything he talks about will apply to you and your business.

David Hooper on American Idol

Was fooling around with a new blog search engine and typed in "David Hooper" to see what would come up.  One of the entries was about some guy named "David Hooper" who was on American Idol.

Looking around, it looks like his real name was "David Hoover."  Big difference, but close enough that I might have sent out a press release or something else to get some publicity, had I known about it.

Obviously, I don't watch American Idol.  Saw it once in the gym, but the sound was down and everything was closed captioned.  I remember was some guy on stage singing a song by the Carpenters, but I can't tell you if it was any good or not.

Things like this happen all the time and can be a great opportunity for publicity, if you act fast.  I could have gotten a lot of web traffic with a simple press release as well as some backlinks.

People Are Afraid to Dance, So...

This post could literally be worth millions to you, if you take action on the idea.

Wouldn't it be great to make a steady income from one song?  I'm talking about something that gets played year after year and isn't affected by trends on radio or television.

My suggestion to do this...  Make a song that has a specific (and easy) dance associated with it.

Why?  Although they like to do it, the majority of people are afraid to dance.  A song with an easy dance associated with it, one where everybody is doing the same thing at the same time, gets those people involved in something they want to do, but wouldn't under normal circumstances.

If you want to find out what the average person likes, go to five weddings and listen to what the DJs play.  Almost all of them with play...

Macarena
Electric Slide
YMCA
Cha Cha Slide
The Twist

When these songs are played, dance floors fill.  But play other big songs, Staying Alive by the Bee Gees perhaps, and nobody will dance...even though most people like the song.

If you can get people involved with your music, you'll have a much better chance of success.  And creating a dance specifically for a song is the easiest way I know how to do it.

House Concerts = Jail Time?

In some places, you can go to jail for holding a house concert...

Cindy Harris says...

Many of you are aware that my husband and I have been hosting house concerts for the last three years under the cloud of a cease and desist order from our local zoning authorities (O'Hara Township, Pennsylvania -- just north of Pittsburgh). The order threatens us with fines and prosecution for violating the Township zoning ordinance. We supposedly violated this ordinance simply by hosting house concerts in our living room. An appeal to the Zoning Hearing Board in April of 2003 created a legal finding that we must stop hosting those gatherings as they were then constituted. Since the Township felt that our web site was "advertising" and articles in the paper about upcoming concerts ere "publicity" we took down the web site and declined to speak with the press, but continued to host gatherings. We also took care to make it clear that we did not sell tickets, and that friends who attended our gatherings were voluntarily chipping in for the music just as people often chip in for pizza and beer at a Steelers party.

Over the next three years we hosted another seven concerts with no further word from either neighbors or the Township. But in January a complaint from a neighbor that we were continuing to host these parties caused the Township to deliver a letter threatening to take us to court and fine us if we followed through on the four additional gatherings we had planned.

At the end of the Zoning Hearing Board review of our appeal of the cease and desist order in April of 2003, I read into the record a statement intended to make it clear that we viewed the cease and desist order as a potential violation of our right to free speech and association, and stating that if the ZHB chose to uphold it and enforce it, we intended to defend those rights. Since the Township has now warned of impending action against us, we've filed a complaint in Federal court alleging eight specific violations of our constitutional rights and requesting an injunction against the Township to prevent them from taking any action against us.

http://livingroommusic.blogspot.com/ has her blog with more details.

Wedding Invitation - Part 2

More thoughts on the subject I mentioned yesterday...

The more you "touch" people, the better you'll do when it comes to your marketing.  In fact, it would be a good idea for you to create as many ways to keep in touch with your fans as you possibly can.

For example, let's say you've got a gig tonight and a new guy signs for for your mailing list.

Tomorrow, I'd give him a call and say, "Thanks for coming to the show last night.  It was great to meet you and we really appreciate your support."

Don't worry about having to talk to the guy...he's probably not there.  And don't worry that it will be "weird."  The secret is to keep contacts short and quick.  If you can do this, he won't think you're a stalker of anything.

Remember, you're the musician here.  This guy will stalk you...not the other way around.

After the call, I'd send him a postcard.  Let him know you've got an EP for him and you'll be sending it in a few days.

Wait a couple of days and send the EP...even if you have it ready to go the day after the show.  Remember, the trick is to give this guy as many "impressions" as you can.  The more you do, the more likely he'll remember you, come back to shows, tell friends about you, and spend more money buying your stuff.

You may want to leave another phone message to make sure he got the EP.  Again, this won't come off as weird, as long as you act like you care about "customer service" and don't try to sell him on anything.  Remember, you're building a relationship here...not making a cold call from a boiler room.

Repeat the process.  If you got the guy's birthday, and you should have, you can send him something then.

And when it's Valentine's Day, send him an "I Love You" message.

There is a lot you can do to keep in touch with fans, yet most acts pass over this big time.  Don't let this be you.

If you send out interesting stuff, your guy will be waiting by his mailbox for your next postcard, package, or "gift."  And that will translate into a good relationship that pays back lots of word-of-mouth referrals, lots of show attendance, and lots of income.