One of the biggest challenges for any business is getting people to pay attention, and an even bigger challenge to inspire them to evangelize on behalf of your brand. In this article, I’ll discuss three great ways to get people talking about you so you can generate buzz and positive word of mouth for your business.
Ideas for providing interesting content
Send out a monthly e-Newsletter to your database of clients and prospects. Write a new blog post at least once a week. Why? The former will help you to stay in touch with your clients and prospects so you’ll forever be “top of mind.” The latter will help you generate new leads. Blog posts, if optimized correctly for SEO, can work wonders in bringing you leads and increasing awareness of your services among those searching the web (and just about everyone Google searches nowadays).
It’s important to ensure that the content in your monthly e-Newsletter and the blog posts you write will be useful and interesting to your target audience. So, these articles shouldn’t be sales pitches but instead valuable information that your prospects will enjoy. The goal of your content should be to position yourself as the expert in your field. Once people begin to see you this way, they’ll reach out to you and a new client will be born.
When you stay relevant and memorable in the minds of your clients and prospects, and when you’re publishing great content on the web, you’ll begin to ignite the word of mouth volcano. As a side note, a great CRM system will include a monthly e-Newsletter that’s pre-designed and written for you to send out to your database. Absolutely no work is required on your end in some cases to create the e-Newsletter.
Tips on offering referral rewards
A great referral appreciation program will help you increase your referrals and get people talking about you. An effective referral appreciation program will encourage people to refer your services by rewarding them when they do. You could, for example, offer a gift certificate to the referrer for a certain amount of money once the referee becomes a client.
Make sure that you promote your referral appreciation program readily and have information about it on your website. Emphasize how important referrals are to your business and that you like to show appreciation to those who refer you. A good practice is to provide examples of the types of individuals people can refer to you. This makes it easy for people to think of someone they know who may be able to benefit from your services.
Be social media savvy
Depending on your clients (and perhaps their average age), it may be beneficial to create a Facebook page for your business, as well as a business page on other social media networks such as Twitter and Google Plus. Of course, there’s not a whole lot of value in doing this if you know your prospects and clients are not using social media.
Social media will give you another way to stay “top of mind” with your prospects and clients and another communication channel for them to reach out to you. And being active on multiple social networks, especially Google Plus, will help you to be found more in search engines. If you do decide to create business pages in the “social media universe,” just make sure you have the bandwidth to log-in to these pages regularly and connect with people. Think of social media as a relationship building tool that, if nurtured over time, will produce dividends.
