Remind me again, why am I doing this?

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One magic question that could turn your business around

You've probably heard the saying about marketing - half of it works, the problem is knowing which half. Although we now have more data than ever before, marketing is still a black hole for most small businesses (and many larger ones). We're constantly bombarded with ways that we can spend more money promoting our businesses - but most of the time we're making decisions blindly. However, there is a fairly simple method that can help us evaluate our current marketing and guide future decisions...

You simply need to ask customers;
"How did you hear about us?"

Not clever, not perfect, but also not difficult.

And if you're not already doing this, asking this simple question really can transform your business.

Of course, there are a thousand reasons why this is difficult to do in your own business, but let's forget perfection and realise that having some data (imperfect as it may be), is an enormous improvement on having no data. Here are a few ways that this can be implemented easily within any business (including yours);

• Include an extra column in your bookings book - there's a hairdresser I know that does this and uses a single letter code for her common sources of customers (this same hairdresser continues to swear that she gets 10-12 new clients every week from WOMOW)
• For online orders or computerised bookings include a field in your data structure to capture this information
• If it's too much to ask every customer, run a week-long drive twice a year and focus on asking every customer during this period only. Involve staff and make it fun to quiz customers on how they came to be using your services (I know a restaurant owner that does this with great success)
  
• Spend a day on the coal-face yourself (or if you're already there, give some focus to this subject for a few days). Question each customer you come into contact with as to how they first heard about you - even customers that have been using you for a while.
  
• Remember to drill into responses - if someone says, they found you 'online', ask what website they were on or what they were searching for. Likewise, if someone says 'word-of-mouth', ask who it was that referred them (you might find that certain customers are key referrers and it would be a great idea to send a thank-you)
  
• Build the question into your forms so that sales/customer service staff will remember to ask the question (if this field is left blank, you should be asking some questions!)
• If you're a retailer and can't easily build this into your POS system, consider running a mini contest between sales staff to see who can collect the most responses. Or put a prominent reminder on top of the bags or packaging so that staff are prompted to ask this question while they're chatting to customers. You can just have them fill out an paper sheet listing the purchase amount with the source of the customer.

Of course, marketing is not quite this simple as various elements usually work together and often it's not until a customer has seen you in several places that they decide to actually use you. Nevertheless, this simple question can give you some great insight and may provide some unexpected results. One mechanic I spoke to recently said "I never thought that so many people would be looking online for a mechanic - boy was I wrong!"

Be warned though, the results you get from asking customers how they found you will usually raise more questions, and you'll probably need to get a bit more scientific to answer those (which we'd encourage you to do). But likewise, it's an area where the Pareto Principle usually applies, meaning that you'll get the bulk of the benefits from this small snapshot of data. So it's an extremely worthwhile business discipline that you can implement this week!

Good luck and feel free to drop us a line to let us know how you go.

The Best Startup Business is...WOMOW - Word Of Mouth On the Web!

Last week, we were thrilled to hear WOMOW announced as the WINNER of the MyBusiness Best Startup Award!

We've now been running for 3+ years this is further evidence of the impact we're having on the Australian business landscape.

The Best Startup award was sponsored by ANZ and the judges were impressed by WOMOW's unique, word-of-mouth marketing platform, and by the win-win value proposition we offer to both consumers and businesses.

In 5 years time, we hope you'll be saying "I was onto WOMOW before most small businesses even understood what 'online reputation' was!"

Look out for us in the November MyBusiness magazine.


(Photo: Fiona Adler accepting the Best Startup Award from ANZ)

Marketing doesn't work like that!

The inspiration for this article is a conversation I had this week from a business cancelling their Happy Customers Program on WOMOW. Their reason? They had "tried it for a month and it hasn't worked" - that's right, they said one month! (And in fact, it was slightly less than that.)

I'm sorry Mr Premature Evaluator, but Marketing just doesn't work like that!

As much as we'd all like a magic tap that we could turn on and off as our business needs changed, I've been looking and I haven't found one yet! Yes, there are a lot of campaign formats that can be turned on and off easily, but the effect that they have on people is almost always cumulative. Occasionally, it happens that someone sees an ad for the first time and places an order, but that scenario is rare.

Most of the time, marketing tools work in conjunction with each other, and involve some repetition and time. For example, a prospect might;

• hear about you through one medium, but promptly forget the name of your business
• later, when they have a specific need, they search online, come across your business and click as it sounds familiar
• then they do some more searching to see what kind of a business you really are
• and finally decide to call after finding some information that convinces them you're a great business
  

Another prospect might;

• search online for your service because they have a specific need
• come across your business and be impressed by your stellar reputation and professional website
• promptly get distracted (ie check Facebook / read an email / attend to children / answer the phone)
• later hear about your business through another medium, remember how impressed they were when they found you, and decide to call (and then it still might take a meeting, proposal and several emails and phone conversations before they actually purchase!)
  

The paths customers can take are rarely straight forward or linear so the key is to choose several key marketing tools and get them working together. This is combination of tools is your marketing strategy. Yes, you should definitely track and measure your marketing, but you definitely can't do this over one month!

Using WOMOW to promote your business is all about using word-of-mouth to;

1. Make sure that when people search for your business or, more importantly, for a service that your business provides, that they find you
2. Present your business in the best light possible - with great reviews from your customers (the most trusted form of marketing there is)

And it should be noted that the more reviews a business has, the more traffic they get and the better this works (the Happy Customers Program also helps businesses get customer reviews).

So, Mr Premature Evaluator, with just one review and a 1 month trial, is a loss to WOMOW but sadly, his loss is far greater. I'm sure that word-of-mouth on the web would have been a fantastic way for this business to get more prospects and earn their trust (incredibly important in his industry), but unfortunately, he will probably never know and will probably continue to waste time and money trying various different things, without really trying anything at all.

There are plenty of businesses successfully using WOMOW as their only form of marketing, but they've built their profile and reviews up over a few months. Here's one we heard from this week...

"We get 90% of our work from WOMOW and we're growing fast! We don't have a shopfront, any signage on our vehicles, or even a website, but with WOMOW heaps of people are finding us online every week. On average we sign up 3 new customers a week and now have over 200 clients with regular cleans. WOMOW has been the best thing we've done for our business!"
Sandy K from Let Us Do It 4 U Cleaning

WOMOW is not a gimmick. It is part of a long-term marketing strategy to build a place on the web that shouts your praises and helps people find you. It will not (necessarily) work overnight, but with some time and some reviews, it will almost certainly help any business that provides good service where trust and word-of-mouth are important.

WOMOW a finalist in the 2010 MyBusiness Awards

WOMOW.com.au has been announced as one of the top 3 Start-Up businesses in the 2010 MyBusiness Action Coach Awards.

Thanks for your support and keep your fingers crossed for us!

WOMOW Video: How to Turbo Charge your Word-Of-Mouth Marketing

Watch this to see how you can ramp up the word-of-mouth for your business, manage your online reputation, and win more customers.

Put your word-of-mouth on steroids and let your customers become your best marketing tool yet...

WOMOW stands for Word Of Mouth On the Web. It helps businesses get found on the web and promote themselves with word-of-mouth. Did you know that most people trust consumer recommendations over ALL other forms of advertising and marketing and also that customers that read reviews are much more likely to purchase? Check out the video to see exactly how this can work for your business.

WOMOW outperforms Yellow Pages, a hairdresser tells

Natasha Varga, owner of hairdressing salon Green Butterfly, was surprised and thrilled to find that some of her customers had entered glowing reviews on WOMOW.com.au. "That was the first time I'd heard about it - when I received an email saying my business had been reviewed. I later joined the Happy Customers Program and I haven't looked back." "The majority of our new clients now come from WOMOW - way more than Yellow Pages. Plus, they're coming from all over Melbourne, not just our local area. I particularly like it how they come with a level of trust and positive expectations - it sets our relationship off to a great start and makes it easy to keep the good vibes going! Almost all of the customers we get from WOMOW will re-book straight away and most go on to become regulars so it's having a big impact on our business."

When joining though, Natasha says she was still a bit skeptical, "To be honest, I was very surprised that WOMOW would work so well for us as I'd heard that women were less trusting of the internet, but our experience here has proven that to be wrong. There are heaps of women (and men) searching the internet and finding us on WOMOW every week! Lots of our clients tell us they use WOMOW for everything now."

"We love it when we get a new review - I'll print it out and stick it up in our back room. We're particularly chuffed if someone mentions one of us by name!"

When asked what their secret is behind providing great service, Natasha says that "we haven't got any particular secrets (I wish we did!). We just try to be honest, give as much of ourselves as we can, and enjoy what we do. I think this genuine care rubs off on customers. Plus, it's much easier to provide great service when we have such great customers!"

"Since joining WOMOW's Happy Customers Program we're almost always booked out a few weeks ahead. For any businesses that wants to promote themselves with word-of-mouth but hasn't yet joined WOMOW, I'd highly recommend it. It's excellent value and it has changed our business for the better!"