Whenever I speak to business owners, the topic of conversation invariably turns to marketing. When I ask how they market themselves, “word of mouth” almost always comes up as the primary or only form of marketing they rely on.

This used to shock me but now I’ve come to expect it.

Whilst word of mouth marketing is powerful, and an important part of your marketing plan it’s an extremely slow and unreliable way of building a business. Assuming you do everything right, it can take many years, even decades, to build a successful business on the back of word of mouth alone.

Word of mouth or referral marketing is the business equivalent of a free lunch. Sure it’s nice when it comes your way and you appreciate it, but do you really want to rely on it to feed your family?

By being solely reliant on word of mouth, you’re putting the fate of your business in the hands of others. Essentially, you're hoping they like you and remember you often enough to regularly send new business your way.

This is an extremely dangerous path to be on. Instead, now’s the time to start building a much more robust marketing system.

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Building An Unbreakable Marketing System

Having only a single source of new business is extremely dangerous. Being unable to control that source makes it doubly so.

I advocate having at least five different sources of new leads and new customers. This is called lead generation. You can read about the benefits here.

Added to that, I recommend that most of these five sources be in paid media i.e. they cost you money to market yourself. The reason paid media is so important is twofold.

1. It's Extremely reliable.

If I pay a newspaper to run my emotional direct response ad, there’s a high probability the ad will actually be run. It’s much harder to get reliable and consistent lead flow from free marketing methods such as word of mouth.

2. Paid marketing Forces you To Focus on Return on Investment (ROI).

If a paid marketing method is not working, you cut it. You don’t waste further time or money on it. Whereas when the marketing method is free, such as with word of mouth, we tend to be less ruthless and often end up wasting huge amounts of time because we didn’t have to pay anything upfront. However, there’s an opportunity cost which, if careful analysis is done, often translates to a surprisingly large amount of real money.

The art and science of being able to consistently turn a dollar of paid advertising into a dollar or more in profits through direct response marketing will make your business resilient and can help you turn the tap on to rapid business growth.

Boosting the Reliability of Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

While we don’t want to be solely reliant on word of mouth, we do want to amplify it’s power and increase it’s reliability where possible.

One of the best ways I’ve seen this done is by straight out asking for referrals from customers for whom you’ve delivered a good result. It’s amazing how many business owners hope for referrals yet rarely ask for them. Something as simple as:

“Mr. Customer, it’s been such a pleasure working with you. If you know anyone who’s in a similar situation as yourself we’d love you to give them one of these gift cards which entitles them to $100 off their first consultation with us. One of the reasons we’re able to keep the cost of our service low is because we get a lot of our business through referrals from people like you.”

See what’s going on here:

• We’re acknowledging them and appealing to their ego.
• We’re not asking them for a favor but instead offering something valuable they can give to someone in their network.
• We’re giving them a reason why they should give us referrals – a reason that directly benefits them.

You could also look at affiliate marketing. This is another great way to generate referrals to your business.

Systemize Your Word Of Mouth Marketing Strategy

By putting a system around generating referrals, we’ve dramatically increased the reliability of word of mouth marketing. And while not everyone will give you referrals, many will and it sure beats just silently hoping.

Relying on the goodwill of others is not my idea of being an entrepreneur. By creating multiple sources of new leads and increasing the reliability of word of mouth marketing, you take back control of your lead flow and build a solid foundation for rapid business growth.

If you enjoyed this article, you may also enjoy our article on How to Create a Lead Magnet that Converts in 6 Steps. As a small business owner, it’s the smarter way to acquire leads for your business and build your authority.