If Word-of-Mouth is Your Top Source of New Customers, You Might Have Problems

Let’s face it, the primary reason “word-of-mouth” often ranks as the top source of new customers is because most business owners don’t know how to find new customers themselves. Thus, it’s easier to let existing customers tell their friends about a business than it is for the business owner to learn new skills in marketing.

This is entirely normal. Finding new customers requires dedicated time, different skills and completely different tools than those necessary for servicing existing customers. Worst of all, time spent finding new customers is time not spent on creating the type of customers that give word-of-mouth references.

But the rewards for learning how to market a business are huge. Businesses that learn how to market themselves and deliver a quality experience are the ones that create reliable cash flow, outgrow their original space and even continue to grow outside their original neighborhood.

So what is required?

Most businesses are already reaching outside their business for help in their marketing to people with titles such as website developer, social media marketer, PR professional, SEO consultant and Adwords expert. That’s a step in the right direction, but the old saying “too many cooks in the kitchen” often starts to ring true. Expertise is required, but expertise needs the following to work effectively:

1. Guidance as to what a good customer looks like
2. Targeted plan for how to reach and best engage these customers
3. Multiple paths that address the way online customers find and engage with your business
4. Data and Adaptability to learn what is working and make the necessary changes to what isn’t working
5. Consistent efforts that don’t lurch from project to project or fade to fade
6. Tools to lower costs, increase results and provide more business owner control

Over the last few years, BubbleLife Media has worked with numerous Dallas-area businesses to help refine an approach that puts all of this together under one roof or as a toolset for an agency that seeks to accomplish the same goals. The advantage of this single source approach is:

1. Increased efficiency
2. Lower cost
3. Improved results
4. Multi-path expertise to assess the best of many possible approaches
5. One phone call takes care of everything
6. Predictable and planned expenses

Word-of-mouth is a testament to the quality of your product or service, but it should not be your primary source of new customers. BubbleLife Media or one of our certified agency partners can take your success with existing customers to the new ones you want. Give us a call, the consultation is free.

Jeff Farris

Jeff is the President and CEO of BubbleLife Media, the publisher of http://bubblemedia4.wpengine.com, DFW's largest neighborhood news source, and a leading provider of neighborhood marketing solutions. Jeff has always been a technology entrepreneur including founding and leading one company that ranked 26th on Inc. Magazine’s list of Fastest Growing Private Companies, held an IPO and sold to McAfee.