What’s Your Business Story? Word of Mouth Marketing

Traditional, and costly, advertising methods still don’t hold a candle to the effectiveness of ‘word of mouth’ referrals. Even with the Yellow Pages, Google and TV commercials to help consumers make decisions about who to call to roof our house, fix our car, file our taxes or provide business services; word of mouth remains a highly effective method to find a quality service provider.

According to Wikipedia, “Word-of-mouth marketing, which encompasses a variety of subcategories, including buzz, blog, viral, grassroots, cause influencers and social media marketing… can be highly valued by product marketers. Because of the personal nature of the communications between individuals, it is believed that product information communicated in this way has an added layer of credibility. Research points to individuals being more inclined to believe WOMM than more formal forms of promotion methods; the receiver of word-of-mouth referrals tends to believe that the communicator is speaking honestly and is unlikely to have an ulterior motive (i.e. they are not receiving an incentive for their referrals).”

Just this past week, our neighbours had their seasonal yard work done and being new to the neighbourhood I went to them first for a recommendation for our own yard. There is a certain comfort level in the recommendation from a satisfied customer. New roofs are also going up every other week as our homes and their cedar shake roofs near the 20 year mark. I could go with the company with the fanciest advertising brochure or the one whose ads appear most frequently on TV, but why wouldn’t I act on recommendations of happy customers?

The same stands true with business services. Ten years ago, when I started my company, I decided that I wouldn’t just be in the business of providing virtual business support and consulting services; I wanted to be in the ‘relationship’ business. Potential clients should have a reasonable level of comfort and trust in us in order to allow access to their business in order to make virtual workforce integration recommendations. For our virtual business support clients, they need to trust that our team will provide quality, value-added services when working from remote locations. A trusted recommendation or referral often provides that level of comfort and trust.

Happy clients generally like to tell the story of their success. If their success is connected to valuable services provided by you, then you become part of their success story. Client testimonials are an effective way to tell your story from an unbiased perspective. Most of us have spent many hours, and sometimes many dollars, to carefully craft our stories through our web sites, marketing materials and the social media. But, the impact of an inspiring, enthusiastic and quality testimonial telling your story through the mouth of a satisfied client can outweigh the most carefully crafted marketing copy.

How have client or customer service testimonials and word of mouth marketing helped build your business? Please share your story.

At West Coast Way Consulting Inc., we help companies seamlessly integrate virtual workers into a traditional corporate structure. Our experience spans the business, government and industry sectors, and we know about the benefits of using a virtual workforce, because we have run our company that way for years. West Coast Way’s management team offers a good mix of common sense, business acumen and unparalleled customer service. We collaborate with you to develop a workable plan by listening to your needs and problems, gathering data, and then analysing the information in order to produce a step-by-step plan for successful virtual workforce integration.

What Is Your Business Story?

There is nothing that excites me more in my business than to talk to someone that is genuinely excited and passionate about their business, their ideas and their goals and taking the step of making them happen. One thing that these people will always have in common is a love of speaking about their idea. Some do it brilliantly with Schwarzenegger voices and demonstrations, some do it calmly a succinctly, yet others tell the entire history of their business from the first thought that happened in their Grandmothers living room.

Something very common is how long these speeches can be. If it took me 15 minutes to accurately describe my business I don’t think I could ever really be a success. What we want to be able to do is break down our business into a couple of inspiring phrases that capture attention and communicate exactly what we are about.

It’s the elevator speech.

If you met someone in an elevator and had to describe your business, how would you do it? Or even better, if someone was jumping into a taxi and you had to tell them what your business was about before they left, how could you get them to be interested?

There are a few questions you can ask yourself to start building your Business Story.

1. What Do I Do?
2. What is the Problem That I Solve?
3. How am I Different?
4. Why Should You Be Interested?

You can develop an effective and impressive Business Story just by succinctly answering these questions in a sentence each.

I am very proud of my business story and I think it communicates exactly what I do. I create brands and websites that serve a purpose. Then if they want to hear more I can tell them that most websites and brands, although functional or beautiful, may not actually serve the purpose that they are there for, if they even have one. I can say that what separates me from the pack is that I have an instinct for finding, creating and guiding purpose and reflecting it through design that I have not seen anywhere else.

My business story will usually only go as far as the first sentence, then people get it. You want them to immediately know what you do and how it benefits them.

US Economic Performance – Upbeat Economic News Props the Dollar

There seems to be a clear green signal on the US economy as suggested by the US Fed. As a reflection of better economic performance, the US dollar hardened, notwithstanding the fact that the Fed did not change interest rates, which have been held close to zero for some time now.

However, the Fed appears to be in a state of readiness to implement an exit policy as and when required. The exit policy will help curb the excess liquidity that has been pumped into the system and can turn inflationary. Though, the Fed may be in a state of readiness to implement an exit policy, it still continues with its stance of having an extended low interest rate regime. Thus, the exit policy may initially start with the withdrawal of extraordinary support that has been extended followed by tightening of the interest rate regime.

The news of better economic performance and the possibility of an exit policy seem to have boosted the sentiment towards the dollar and investors seem to be showing interest in it again. As per the Fed statement, the labor market seems to be headed for better performance. Improvement in employment conditions is an important key to US economic performance, which is largely a consumer driven economy. Better employment conditions imply higher disposable income and better consumer demand, which can put the US economy back on track.

Higher disposable income would also lead to inflationary pressures and it is widely held that the Fed is tracking the labor market closely and would implement the exit policy based on improved labor market conditions. The news on housing starts was also upbeat and they rose 8.9% in November. Building permits also displayed a positive trend and stood at 584,000 for November at an annualized rated as against 551,000 for October.

Mortgage applications also displayed positive growth. US consumer prices also showed some signs of hardening with an increase of 0.4% in November. These indicators viewed along with the positive GDP growth in the last quarter, suggest that the US economy is gradually shedding its recession pangs and is headed for a recovery.

It may be noted that the strengthening of the dollar took place in the face of no change in interest rates. Usually, an upward revision in the interest rate attracts foreign funds towards US treasury investments and the dollar gets a boost. However, this time around, the interest rate remained unchanged and yet the dollar got a boost.

This clearly implies that the dollar’s gain this time is due to the intrinsic strength that the US economy has begun to display. The hardening of the dollar is also not related to risk aversion led gains and thus is indicative of intrinsic gains.

Key to the dollar’s long term strength will be the exit policy and how the Fed manages to curtail the huge amount of liquidity that it has pumped into the economy as a part of various bailout packages.

Excess liquidity, with consumer demand increasing, will lead to inflationary pressures, which can start eroding the value of the dollar. Thus, the Fed needs to be very alert to various economic indicators and time its exit policy well in order to maintain the value of the dollar.