Mediaboss Marketing

Marc L. Goldberg| Columnist

Customers come and go to small businesses for a variety of reasons.In order for them to reach out to you for a solution, they have to be aware of you. For them to stay with you, despite the competition,you should never take them for granted.

Customers will leave you because the competition offered a product or service with better benefits or they changed locations or simply stopped needingyour product or service.You can even bet your best customers at some point will leave you.

Steve Strauss advises:You can find new customers by featuring the ones you have now on your website, social media and newsletter. And reward your existing customers when they refer new ones.

Although word of mouth (WOM) is a powerful marketing tool, most small business owners dont have a specific strategy to encourage WOM. Word of mouth marketingis an effective and inexpensive way to promote, attract and win over customers. When others talk positively about your business, it builds name recognition and trust that lead to sales.

Your best sales people are delighted customers. Getting them to offer a testimonial, which is an independent assessment of your solution, impresses even the most skeptical of new buyers.But, this doesnt happen without asking for a testimonial or referral.

When you display letters of recommendation for others to see, they take note, realizing they are not alone in reaching out to you.Google My Business is one of the best places, aside from your website, to post recommendations.

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To keep the referrals and recommendations coming, create a referral system to incentivize customers to promote your brand.Whenever posting to social media, encourage followers to refer you or recommend your offerings.

Customers feel taken for granted when you only connect with them when you want their business.When you communicate with them regularly, you become a knowledge leader and stay top of mind so when they have a need, they come to you.

Connecting is easy create a monthly newsletter, blog page on your website or create an email campaign. By communicating regularly with your customers, you give them a reason to talk about you.

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Alisa Meredith advises that no one will talk about you if your products and services are just OK.

Your offerings need to exceed their expectations in order for them to refer or recommend you.But this is just the first step.

You need to encourage and amplify what your clients are saying about you.This occurs when they take your call-to-action to share their recommendations and refer you to others.And you can spread the word by posting them in newsletters, social media posts and on your website.

Go where your customers or potential customers are, whether it be online or offline.Networking is all about creating communities where you can share information and direct one another to new resources and learn.

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One way to increase your positioning in the mind of buyers is to share your knowledge so others will share it to their network.Lifelong learning is a value that enhances not only your brand, but those with whom you are connected.

Janet Attard, ZenBusiness, offers these simple ideas to increase WOM communications about you and your business:

Contributed by Marc L. Goldberg, Certified Mentor. SCORE Cape Cod & the Islands.www.capecod.score.org,capecodscore@verizon.netor 508-740-4820.

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Business Tips from SCORE: Word of mouth marketing is key to business growth - Cape Cod Times