Word of Mouth Marketing Online

"Word of mouth marketing doesn't work," the woman I was talking with said scornfully. And then thought a moment. "Except for you."

It's true that I had a marketing plan back when I first started my business, and haven't been able to implement it yet because I have too much work to do. I keep thinking that I need to do some email marketing or something, but I don't have time -- we're turning away work as it is.

This is a nice problem to have.

Here's the thing: I don't drive people to my website by shooing them over there with the broom of high-pressure sales and I don't then browbeat them (I guess I could use the same broom for that) into calling me by covering my home page with special offers. That's doing it the hard way.

Instead, I have a high level of online visibility, and I do my best to offer useful stuff here at my website, and to do a good job for my clients. The typical person contacting me with a job offer or a request for a proposal (and I get about three a week) has read something I've written or heard about me from someone, and was already interested in working with me before arriving at my website. My website offers enough evidence of what I do that prospective clients can feel pretty confident about me before they ever call or email with that offer.

That's enough about me. I'm only talking about myself like this because I know that some people feel as though word of mouth, online networking, inbound marketing -- whatever you want to call it -- doesn't work, and I know from my own experience that it does. I also know that seeing the statistics proving it works is sometimes less convincing than hearing about it from someone who has direct experience. Word of mouth, in fact.

Are you good at what you do? Then strut your stuff online. Have pictures of the things you make at your website, or case studies of the work you do if it doesn't lend itself to pictures, so your visitors can see for themselves that you're good at it. You don't have to announce that you're good -- let them notice it on their own. Let other people say it for you.

See the penguins up there? One is sharing the amazing experience he just had with his friends. One of those friends, excited about this great news, is sliding over to another group of penguins to spread the word. I just made that up, actually. I don't know how well word of mouth works among penguins. But I know that it works among humans, who are probably the majority of your target market.

Labels: online marketing