All My Business is Word of Mouth

All My Business is Word of Mouth.  It’s an expression people use when deflecting what they think is an imminent sales pitch for their marketing dollars.  What they really mean is;  “I’ve got it under control. I don’t need you. People get my name, call me up and hire me.  I’m so successful I don’t need marketing.”  What they really don’t really understand is the way business works today.  Let’s say I have a legal issue worth quite a bit of money.  I need an attorney but don’t know anyone.  I ask my friend Janet and she says Mike is an awesome attorney. Much as I like Janet, with an issue as important as this what am I most likely to do before I call him?  I’m going to ‘Google’ him. The results of these searches today can and are managed by companies like VOX. By managing your online reputation and the community that is attached to your social media networks you not only grow your own networks, you also increase your digital footprint. If the quality of the information on your business pages is valuable to your target audience they will engage and share that content. Those ‘Likes’, ‘Shares’ and ‘Follows’ are digital reinforcements about your name and your business. They are in fact ‘digital word-of-mouth.’ If Mike does this then when I Google him I’ll see more than one result. There will be pages of posts, links, videos, and other references to him reinforcing him as the authority in his field. So before you discount the value of social media networks in marketing your message, understand how much time you spend online trying to learn about and improve your own business. This is where all the worlds’ information is. Don’t you think it might make some sense to get in the pool where all your customers are? And as for deflecting a sales pitch, if someone doesn’t think the internet and social media networks are important today then I’m not going to waste my time trying to educate them. I’d rather spend that time trying to find his competitor who’s been asking for, “someone who can do all this stuff for me so I can focus on my core business.” In my next post I’ll share with you a clever little video about much of the Fortune 500 will be gone in the next few years because all their business is all “word-of-mouth.”