Word-of-mouth marketing can get people to talk about you and make it work for you and your small business. Word of mouth is one of the main ways that people learned about new business before the Internet or major advertising networks. With an online business, getting the word out using this strategy can be done without a lot of major marketing dollars on your part. Most of it will be done offline, which is probably your untapped market right now.

Strategies for Word-of-Mouth Marketing

* Customer service – This is one of the crucial areas of your business. You could be the biggest company, but if you treat your customers as though they are not important to you, they will take their business to Company B and let everyone know why. How much you value your customers will keep them talking long after they have purchased the product. Online, you can provide help pages and auto-responder emails for customers needing help with purchases or other questions.

* Become visible in the community – This includes advertising in your local community newsletter or church directory. People can become aware that you exist and find out what your services are.

* Give out samples – Sometimes you have to give some to get some. Donate sample products to prize baskets for fundraisers. Donate your own prize basket to raffles and other community events.

* Create promotional items for family and friends to share – Invest in shirts that contain your logo. Give away key chains, bottle holders, cups and refrigerator magnets. Family members can distribute them to their friends. Be sure to poll them to see what kinds of promotional items would be the most popular.

* Sponsor a sports team – This could be the local little league team. Buy them shirts for their team and get your business name on the back; they will be representing you in every game that they play.

* Hold home shows – Create a presentation and ask friends to book a show. In exchange for the use of their home, they can receive free products or services. You can do this free of charge for the opportunity to expand your client base. Ask everyone that attends the show to sign up for free coupons or your mailing list if they don’t decide to buy anything. Also give away free trial samples so they can share them with friends.

There are a number of ways to expand the reach of your business. Word-of-mouth marketing can be done by valuing your customers and also increasing your visibility in the local community.

Customer loyalty can make or break your business. A loyal customer isn’t just someone who will buy from you time and again. They will also publicly talk about your business, defend you against criticism, refer their friends and family to your business, and in general do everything in their power to help you win.

How can you cultivate more customer loyalty? How do you create a culture around your brand that people want to help?

Connect with Your Customers Regularly

The companies with the most loyal customers are those companies that connect with their customers often. That means you are not just a distant brand or a faceless organization. You are real people behind a real business creating real value in the world. This connection can be through a company blog, through Twitter, through Facebook, through email or through in-person events. The more your customers feel as though they have a connection with you, the more loyal they will be.

Always Think and Talk in WIIFY Terms

WIIFY, or “What’s In It for You,” basically means you’re always putting the customer first. Instead of doing what might make your company the most money in the short term, you plan your business around what would benefit the customers most. Your customers will notice. Anytime you write a blog post, make sure your readers and customers will get something from it. This may seem obvious, but so many bloggers make the mistake of posting just what is interesting to them or their company, rather than writing something that will genuinely improve the lives of their readers. Always, always put the customer first. Think in “What’s In It for You” terms.

Ask for Feedback

How do you always deliver what the customer wants? By asking! Before you can deliver what they want, you have to first be absolutely certain about what it is they want. Feedback can take the form of surveys, focus groups or just a simple telephone call. Even if you have thousands of customers, you can still learn a lot just by picking up the phone and calling half a dozen of your most loyal buyers.

Over Deliver

In the end, it is only your product that matters. It has been said again and again that at the end of the day, your product is your brand. Marketing can help increase sales in the short term, but in the long term, the quality of your product(s) will become known on the marketplace. Make a great product and over deliver and that will be your reputation. The reverse is also true. If you want people to truly be loyal to your brand, then do everything you possibly can to over deliver.

If you do these four things – connect regularly, think in WIIFY terms, ask for feedback and strive to over deliver – you will very quickly build a company to which your customers can be fiercely loyal.

Every business has their fair share of difficult clients; it is part of the experience of owning your own business. It can also be a valuable learning experience and business-building experience. Quite often a difficult client can help you grow. Of course in order to reap any rewards, you must learn to successfully handle difficult clients. Here are a few strategies to help you along the way.

Listen

Listening to a difficult client is perhaps the single most challenging task. However, when you really listen to a client, it accomplishes several things. First, the client feels as if they have been heard. This is important and oftentimes it is what they are really looking for. They want to know that you have heard their complaints and concerns. Listening means not interrupting. It means responding to their concerns and complaints without getting defensive – even if they are one hundred percent wrong. A client can tell you have been listening to them if you respond with comments that confirm you have heard them. For example, “I understand” or “I hear what you’re saying.”

Honesty

Once you have heard your client’s concerns, spend some time reflecting. When you take an honest look at the situation, it may be that they have a very valid point. This is where business growth and better customer relationships happen. Ask yourself, “What can I do to improve the process and prevent this from happening again?”

Apologize

A simple apology can go a long way to mend fences. It is important to know that apologizing doesn’t mean you are admitting to any wrongdoing. An apology can simply let your client know that you are sorry they were frustrated or that they experienced any difficulties. For example, “I’m sorry the product didn’t meet your needs.” This is a simple apology that addresses a customer’s problem without saying that your business is at fault.

Make Amends

When you can, make amends; however, it doesn’t always make sense to make amends with a client as some clients will never be satisfied. The best thing may be to let them know you are not the right company to meet their needs and move on. However, a difficult customer can also turn into your best customer.

Making amends often makes great business sense. For instance, provide the customer with a discount. Give them something for free. Provide them with a coupon for future use or offer to repair the product at no cost. There are many ways to make amends, and the situation and the customer will often determine your best course of action.

Be proactive. Often, simply creating a system to manage difficult clients will help you streamline the process. The faster you can come to a resolution, the happier you and your customer will be.

Building a long-lasting profitable business means building customer loyalty that lasts. How do you get your customers to come back time and again? How do you get them to tell your friends about you? How do you build up so much goodwill that customers will overlook your occasional mistakes? How do you make your customers love you?

Be Undyingly Dedicated to Customer Satisfaction

The best and most successful companies in the world are companies that care deeply about the customer experience.

Amazon.com was not the first company to sell books online. In fact, they were number four or five to come on the market. The reason Amazon dominated the market was because they had a customer-satisfaction focus. They made sure that everyone who came to Amazon was satisfied. Today, they boost a conversion rate of over 12 percent as a result of the brand they built up.

The same can be said of PayPal. PayPal was not the first to launch an online payment system. Many competitors came into the space after PayPal, including eBay, which launched its own competing payment system. People kept coming back to PayPal time and again because PayPal had an incredible focus on making the customer experience smooth and easy. They kept the number of steps you needed to take to a bare minimum and adapted to customer demands, while other competitors failed to do so. Eventually eBay had to shut down their version of the company and acquire PayPal, because it was so clear that PayPal had so much customer loyalty that they couldn’t compete.

An unerring focus on customer satisfaction and the customer experience is the number one most important thing for building customer loyalty.

Ask for Feedback in Multiple Media

Asking for feedback is integral to providing a great customer experience. You need to know what your customers like and don’t like about their experience in order to innovate.

Ask for your customer’s feedback in many different media. The most basic method is to ask for feedback via online surveys, but don’t stop there. Ask for their feedback by telephone and in person.

Ask for feedback from people who bought, from people who might buy but haven’t, and from people who decidedly didn’t buy. Get feedback from everyone. Only with diligent feedback can you build a really great company.

The bottom line is that building a great company means building a brand and a product that customers love. In order to do that, you need to pour all your energy into the customer experience. Everything else, including marketing, comes second to building a brand and product that customers can feel proud to be associated with.

Here is a great free white paper from top internet marketer James Yuille on how to gain and retain more customers, the life-blood of any business, especially in these challenging economic times.

This White Paper is accessible to Platinum Members.

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