One of the first steps you should take when starting a business is deciding how you will market your products or services. There are so many marketing strategies to choose from, and you should constantly be reviewing and changing any problems with your marketing strategy if you want to have a successful business. Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) can be a very powerful strategy if used properly. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it’s usually free.
If you decide to focus on WOMM, you should know that there is no right or wrong way to this approach. Each company is different, so what works for you may not work for another business, or even one of your competitors. You will need to find the best way for your company to maximize exposure, so here are a few strategies you could use from the beginning.
Talk to friends
If you don’t have much experience in sales, or you are not very experienced in marketing, you may find it difficult to sell your business to others, especially those who are closest to you. You may feel like you are putting a burden on them or that they won’t understand what you are trying to do with your business. Word of mouth marketing is a perfect solution. This way, you are not asking them to sustain your business financially, but you are asking them to tell others about the great qualities of your business. When you ask your friends and family to tell their others about your business, you will be able to trust the information they are giving to your potential new customers. Starting with those who are closest to you will give you a way to promote yourself and your business with a strong support group to back you up.
Give before you take
You could also start supporting other small businesses in your community to gain their support in return. When you make an effort to help those around you, their customers could start to talk about your business as well. Make sure that the other businesses and their customers know how much you care and support them, and they will be more likely to share positive information about you.
From there, you could try giving out free samples to people who will use them. This process is called seeding because you are “planting a seed” that will grow by word-of-mouth. The key with this strategy is to find people who will like your product enough to tell others about your business. These customers should also have a strong influence on others as well as the ability and the resources to tell many other potential customers about your product. Once you have sent out the free samples, make sure you follow up with the recipients to see if they enjoyed the product and ask them if they will tell their friends and family. Sometimes, all you need to do is ask.
Customer service is the key
With any business, customer service is always the key to success. A happy customer may be able to help your business a little, but an unhappy customer can do a lot of damage, especially to a small business. When you think about it, customer service is an investment. You want to build strong relationships with your customers so that they want to tell everyone about their great experiences with your business. There are more than a few ways to approach customer service to ensure positive word of mouth, but these are the strategies I found most beneficial.
- Go above and beyond – When you go above and beyond what your customer expects, they will definitely have a reason to talk about your business. Try to exceed even your best customer’s expectations, and treat every customer with that level of enthusiasm.
- Make customers feel like insiders – Ask your customers what they think about your business, your products, and/or your services, and then actually listen to what they have to say. Let them know that their opinion matters to you, and that you want to do what is best for them.
- Provide quality service from the start – This will give even the newest customer something to talk about.
- Respect – It’s sad that this must be included, but some businesses simply don’t treat their customers with respect. Even something as small as knowing a customer’s name will let them know that you are trustworthy.
- Stay in touch – Keep your customers informed about sales and send them any coupons that might help them save some money. Enough of this communication will increase their visits to your business and keep them talking about you.
Author Bio:
Amy Young is an author who writes about small business ventures and marketing advice to help the small business owner. The company she works for strives to help small business owners with financial and credit problems.
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Sarah recently had an online interview with Business Helper, Tracey Bartlett. Not really one to step out of the shadows very often, you don;t tend to see these aroud very often!
You can view the results of that interview on Tracey’s fantastic new website: www.businesshelpers.co.uk
Andrew Hall has taken the lead role in Love Web Design and has now fully stepped into his new role as Support and “Head Honcho”.
Andrew’s role will be to escort all new clients and customer through the transition period into the new company structure as we bring the new processes into place and new service structure online.
Sarah Hall has now stepped down from her full time role and is now consulting for Love Web Design as and when we need her to. Sarah’s role, when present will be the same as it always was. To be there for everyone and to oversee projects from start to finish, capturing your visions and bringing them to reality – whatever that reality may be.
We are wishing Sarah all the luck in the world as she moves on to ventures new and unexplored and hope to have her around for awhile yet!
Future Updates
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Last evening I received a direct message (DM) from a follower which set alarm bells ringing!
I saw a real bad blog about you? [LINK WAS HERE]
So why did it set the alarm bells ringing?
Here are my reasons:
- My follower uses proper English when tweeting.
- My follower uses 3rd party apps and could have been hijacked.
- Having read #alerts from @tweetsmarter about exactly these types of links, I knew NOT to click!
What should I do about it?
So, what then?
My next move is to disconnect (revoke) my twitter account from all applications that it may be connected to to prevent the further spread to any of my followers. Once completely disconnected, I would cleanup, detect and disinfect, change my password for something much more complex and then reconnect my third party applications.
Point to note.
It may be worth only reconnecting those applications that you know that you use and waiting for the requests of others. You will be prompted for permissions as and when they arise.
The outcome?
You will be better informed, better protected and so will your followers. It also does not hurt to tell everyone on your own timeline that you have been hijacked or that someone you follow has been hijacked.
Incidentally, I received a reply from my follower, who incidentally was not aware and apologised, setting to work fixing the problem immediately.
More information?
If you want more information, the best place I know to get it from at the moment is TweetSmarter. You can find them on Twitter @tweetsmarter or via the Blog, this section is all about Twitter Spam : http://bit.ly/pccY38
Jonathan Walker writes our guest spot for us this week from Spindogs Digital Agency.
We are hoping that Jonathan will write a few more articles for us over the coming weeks and months as we are liking the work that they do and the skills that they have (do pop over and have a sneaky peek at the website!). Now if you know us well at Love Web Design you will know that we are not afraid of promoting the competition. We acknowledge that we cannot possibly do everything for everyone all of the time!
We believe that Spindogs Digital Agency have a little something to offer, so without further ado here is today’s guest post on iPhone apps and why you should consider one for your business.
Why should you invest in an iPhone app for your business?
iPhone applications (or apps) are all the rage at the moment with many business investing in having unique and innovative apps built to help extend their brand and even to increase revenue.
There are many business’ though that are yet to take the plunge and invest in an app, if you are one of them, then have a look at these five reasons why you potentially should.
PR Tool
iPhone apps offer a great opportunity to contact different areas of the media about your company and brand, regardless if your just starting out, or if your established. iPhone apps are popular sources of news online and in printed media, so you could get yourself mentioned in places where you couldn’t before.
If your iPhone app is somewhat quirky, different or outright special it’s also a great way to advertise your brand potentially worldwide at a comparably low cost to other forms of marketing.
Reach An Audience
If your target audience are IT literate or Internet Savvy types then it is pretty likely the majority, or at least a high percentage will be Smartphone users, with the iPhone being the most popular. By having an app, you will be giving your target audience an opportunity to interact with your brand.
Even if your target audience doesn’t directly fit the above, the reality of the situation is that iPhone users are a unique breed that can be appealed to providing your app is interesting. iPhone users love to download apps, they may not have ever heard of you before, but if news of your app spreads then you could appeal to this crowd.
Compete
It can be difficult to compete with the big players in an industry, for example you may not be able to compete with offline advertising budgets, or online with pay per click and SEO, however at the moment the App Store offers a level playing field, so if you can create something unique, you can really stand out above them!
In reality the IT savvy crowd expect well known brands to have an app, so if you are a leader in your industry, then you should really consider investing in one not to disappoint your audience. It’s also likely that your competitors (especially the larger ones) will have apps available, or be considering investing in one, so you’ll need to invest in order to keep up with your competition.
Increase Revenue
This may not be applicable to many types of app, however a well thought out app could ultimately end up paying for itself. If it is something original and practical, then potentially iPhone users won’t mind paying a small amount of money to download your app, if you can get enough users to do this, it could be a nice little earner in addition to increasing awareness of your brand.
Alternatively your app could help you to cross sell, up sell and promote particular products or services that you may not have been able to do as well just via your website alone.
Show Off!
If nothing else, a well designed app can just give you something else to show off to potential clients. Apps are still very much in their infancy and clients will love to see your app and interact with it.
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This article is written by Jonathan Walker, of Cardiff based Spindogs Digital Agency. who build custom iPhone Apps in-house. If you have questions you can contact Jonathan or a member of the Spindogs team on 02920 480 720 or by emailing info@spindogs.co.uk, they are great folks and friendly too!
COMMENTS / FEEDBACK
We would very much like to know if you find these articles useful or helpful and whether you would like to see more of these and what topics would be useful to you. If you have a question please do feel free to contact us and let us know.
We look forward to hearing from you.
