By Jeff Dostal

Ask almost any small business owner what the best form of advertising is, and you’re likely to hear, “Word of mouth.” “It’s the cheapest form of advertising” they’ll say, “And the most effective.” And they’re right. Sort of. If you have customers singing your praises and referring you to their friends, family, co-workers and neighbors, word of mouth can be a powerful and inexpensive advertising tool. But let me ask you this. How often do you tell others about a business exchange you were involved in? How often do you go out of your way to urge others to do business with someone?

Think about it. When you thrill your customer with that “magic moment” experience…they might tell a few others. Might. Provide average service or an average experience…they won’t be talking to anyone about you. But, fail to put your best foot forward. Fail to provide exceptional service. Fail to do the little extras many customers have come to expect and allow your customers perception of their experience with your business to be a subpar one….they’ll grab a megaphone and scream to everybody they know…even people they don’t about how they would never do business with you again.

Let’s face it; word of mouth is slow…even if it delivers good news about your enterprise. But, it can be lightning fast when delivering a story about the experience that was less than what the customer expected.

So is there a solution. There sure is. Effective advertising. Effective advertising is word of mouth, it’s just that it happens much faster and everything that is said about your business is positive. It’s exactly what you want consumers to know about you. Effective advertising accurately informs consumers about what they can expect when they do business with you.

You can control word-of-mouth when you make certain that every customer gets rock-star treatment. But, even with that, word of mouth just doesn’t travel quickly enough. Don’t rely on word of mouth to grow your business…it just won’t happen.

A good advertising campaign is like great word-of-mouth on steroids. It gets the right message…to the right people…to help turn consumers into your customers.

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Tags: word of mouth, advertising, small business, marketing