The Real Truth About Word of Mouth

December 8th, 2014 by
lead generation
You need more than just word of mouth for lead generation

Leads- leads- leads.
That’s the old saying? The best leads comes from word of mouth.

While this does have some truth to it, it often leads businesses to fall into what I call the word of mouth trap. And new businesses are the ones who suffer most from this syndrome.

New businesses will get a rush of leads right off the bat from their clients & existing friends network. While these referrals are great…many new businesses continue to think that word of mouth will be their single best marketing tool.

Forget it. Once that initial rush is over and you’ve done all the work you can for family and friends, it’s like somebody turned off the faucet. Suddenly your appointment schedule is empty with no way to generate leads – if you have no plan in place.

The truth is that marketing is not a one time event that happens when you start a business. It’s unlikely that you’ll ever thrive on word of mouth along.

Lead Generation is something that needs to happen consistently. Businesses need to face this fact every day of the year make sure they have a long-term marketing strategy in place that includes outreach via several different types of media; including direct marketing, online presence, branding & networking.

We have lots of tips for your consideration. As a matter of fact, there are 32 of them on this post.

Now that I am updating this blog – I want to let you know about on of the newest forms of leads generation – Geofencing. It takes word of mouth and moves it into digital advertising right on your mobile phone!

Geofencing brings a new kind of targeting to the table.  Geofencing allows you to draw a virtual fence around areas where there’s a high chance that customers will visit your physical location.

Then there are different options within geofencing:

  • Basic geofencing – where you are serving ads based on geography. For example, serving ads to people in a given community or within 5 miles from a particular location. For example, hospitals use this to reach prospects for their emergency rooms.
  • Addressable geofencing – when you are serving ads to people on a particular mailing list. This is great for a combination direct mail / digital mail campaign. It is also the only way to reach certain specialty markets – such as New Homeowners.  Want to see a 90 second video?  Click HERE
  • Competitive geofencing – think about an auto dealership looking for new business. They can serve ads to people coming out of other car dealerships.
  • Event geofencing – often used at conventions and events. This can be used to serve messages to concertgoers at a specific event by using the venue to define the location parameters

 

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