Transforming Word of Mouth into Business Growth

Harnessing the Power of Word of Mouth for Business Growth

In this episode of the Quality of Life podcast, host Erin Olson guides listeners through the art of leveraging word-of-mouth to gain repeat customers. Erin shares practical advice on how excellent customer service, timely follow-ups, and personal touches like handwritten notes can turn even the most dissatisfied customers into raving fans. Real-life examples from Erin's own business experiences illustrate the importance of positive customer interactions. The episode wraps up with tips on creating effective referral programs and warnings about the pitfalls of easily-abused coupon codes. Listeners are encouraged to consider these strategies as cost-effective ways to boost their business.

00:00 Welcome to the Quality of Life Podcast
00:31 The Power of Word of Mouth
01:59 Turning Negative Feedback into Positive Outcomes
05:22 Creating an Excellent Customer Experience
07:21 The Importance of Follow-Ups
09:04 Getting More Reviews and Referrals
10:26 Referral Programs and Their Benefits
14:04 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Thanks for listening! I'm glad you're here.

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See ya next week!
Erin

Transcript

Erin: 0:00

Hey guys, welcome back to the quality of life podcast. I'm your host Erin Olson, and my goal is to get you from your business idea to big business. This episode and a couple of them actually are now available on YouTube, not only just audio. So check it out. Check us out if you haven't yet on youtube. com and I will link it below in the show notes. Last week we talked all about distractions and I'm just telling you distractions a real deal. I did give us some homework for the next three weeks to before we go to bed writing down our three to five biggest things that we need to Get done the next day and then tomorrow doing those before you do anything else today we are talking all about how to get repeat customers and how to get via word of mouth. Now word of mouth is a very powerful tool. It can work for you or against you. now what exactly is word of mouth and how does it work? How many times have you asked somebody or told somebody where the best place to get a good burger is, right? So just think about that for a moment Where do you get your hair done? If you're a girl, where do you get your nails done? You know, there are so many things that us as women and business owners tell other people when we see somebody who's doing it well, right? Well, what makes you tell somebody? the quality of the products, the quality of the service, and the way you felt when you left or when your service was completed. Last year, we had a new roof put on our house and I will tell you The customer service of that company was excellent. They had a ton of touch points, a ton of places where they were making sure that we knew exactly what was going on. And they wanted to make sure we were comfortable with all of the steps. And I will tell you, I have told so many people how great of a job they did. Now, when it comes to word of mouth, like I said, there is positive and negative parts to word of mouth. We all know that there are the Karen's, the ones who want to see your manager because they are not happy about the quality of their food, or, you know, the people who just want to complain about everything. Those Karens can be one of your most powerful tools. Those Karens can be harnessed to become one of your biggest mouthpieces. Now, I apologize in advance if your name is Karen, but we all know who the Karens are in this world. you can turn the most unhappy customers into the most raving fans. Okay. So how do you do that? Now, I'll just tell you a story. Back in Hay Chix, when we first started, we had a company creating our products outside of the business and they made a mistake and it was a very big mistake. our seams in our nets blew out within the first week of use. That's one of the things that made our nets work so well. And so when those seams blew out, we tried everything we could to get ahold of the people received our first products. Now, way back a few episodes ago, I talked about the importance of, uh, collecting customer data. This is the thing that I was talking about because we couldn't find all of our customers. So we went on Facebook and we searched for people talking about our products And we actually announced that we had made a mistake and we found One customer out there who was complaining like crazy that our products were not up to snuff and buyer beware and stay away from us, right? So what we did was we figured out who she was. we found out a way to contact her via DM and we made it right. And that woman turned around, used the product. We sent her new products out. We, she used the product and she loved it. You know what she did? She went from telling everybody how bad we were to telling everybody how amazing our customer service was and how we made it right. And I will tell you that alone made us grow so much. We had another problem years later when some, it happens once in a while, when you have people who are shipping products who don't care quite as much as you do. We had somebody receive the wrong product and it was a very wrong product. So what we ended up doing when we adopted a policy that when we had a product below a certain threshold of dollar amount, we would just have them donate that product to a friend who could use it or to a rescue who could use it and we would ship them out the product for free. Now, That was a little selfish because if we were going to pay for them to ship it back because it was our mistake, it actually would have cost us more than for us to have them donate the product. And when we did that and had them donate the product, there was a new customer who was receiving the products that they could use and they loved them. And then they became raving fans. It's amazing because the studies show that bad news travels way faster than good news, right? And that people are going to be so much more willing to give you a review. if your product is bad than if it is good. so how do you make your customers want to talk about you? Well, you need to create an excellent customer experience. Now, when it comes to customer experiences, I'm talking about everything from how easy it is to purchase products on your website And how fast it got there and what it looks like when they open the box. we've all seen those trends back a few years ago of, box opening videos on people who got new products and they've kind of became viral for a little while, but just keep that in mind. everything in your package needs to be done like a gift. I loved shipping our products. I made sure that when they opened that box, it was perfectly in there like a little gift and that we put a handwritten thank you card on the very top. So when they opened that box, the first thing they saw was us saying, thank you for being our customer. And you know what? I will tell you that goes a long way. Is it easy? No. And I will tell you that a handwritten card is completely different from a card that is printed off to make it look like it's handwritten. People know the difference. They know that if you took the time to write a card to thank them, that you actually care about them. and there are some other things that make a big difference. One is the speed. your fulfillment needs to be quick. In today's day and age, people are expecting prime type delivery on everything. I'm talking about a couple years ago when prime was a new thing and you got your stuff either in a day or two days. It was awesome. Unfortunately, it has also made our customers a lot more impatient. So you need to make sure that your fulfillment is as quick as possible. if it's not going to be quick because it is a custom made product. or a service where you have to be scheduled, just be sure to be in contact with them so that they know that and have realistic expectations about how quickly your product or your service is going to get to them. Follow ups are another thing that are so important. An email sequence on ConvertKit or constant contact or any of those type of platforms are very easy to make up. and what you do is you set that sequence in motion the moment that they buy their product. And what I suggest doing is having a,"Hey, your product is being made right now." Of course, that's so easy bounce back on Shopify or any of the other shopping cart platforms, but it is so easy to say, Hey, here's what you can expect when you receive our product. Here are some hints and tips to help you make your product work best for your instance. You can do it in one week when they are anticipated to receive their product. You can do it in three weeks. You can give hints and tips. You can do videos. Videos are great, especially in emails, but I will tell you the best thing you can possibly do is a check in from a real person, whether it be a phone call, Or an email or a text message to just check in one month, three months, six months, just to see if they are still happy and if you could have done anything better. I will tell you, when you show that type of fortitude, people love it. They really know that you are not just about making a sale and that you really care about how well your product or service serves them and this is a perfect time to ask for them to review your product. Now, I know that, you know, whenever you go to buy a product off of Amazon, what do you do? You look at the reviews and as a small business owner, it can be kind of hard to ask people to give you a review. So here are some tips on how to get more reviews. first ask them, when you finish your product or your service or they receive their product or service. It is so easy to send a link to a Google review or a Yelp review and just let them be honest. another thing you can do is that in the three or six month check in calls or emails, you can also put a link in there. Now, if you haven't gotten a review from them in the third month or the six month checkup, you can offer them an incentive, like a 5 Starbucks gift card or a couple dollars off their next purchase. If this is something that would work for them, if they just bought a new roof, it's not going to make sense for you to offer them a percentage off and their next purchase. But you could also work with other businesses that offer complimentary products and you can help them and they can help you to barter discounts so that you can offer a friend's discount to a company that you would like to support and they can do the same for you. It's a great way to branch out, meet other businesses and to work with them so that you guys can grow together. It also creates an alliance. So the word of mouth is easier to be spread. Now, when you ask for that review, there is another way that we found in Hay Chix to grow our product and our customers exponentially. And that is with a customer referral program. Now we did it a very labor intensive way to start. when we first started, we offered a dollar amount, kind of like SkyMiles for whatever products they purchased or their friends purchased, they would get in actual, product from us. So say they referred a friend and she bought a hundred dollars. then the person who referred them would get 10 worth of free product and so on and so forth. It became very difficult when we had thousands of people who were referring customers to keep track of all of this and who had cashed in their referral box. And so it became very, very labor intensive. So what we did was when we changed to Shopify as our platform, we ended up finding that they have Tons of third party programs that work to do this seamlessly. now there are loyalty programs and there are customer referral programs the customer referral program worked great for us because we did not have a readily consumable product. we had other products where they would want to purchase in the future. Now, if you have a easily consumable product, like toilet paper or something like that, then a loyalty program might work best for you. and that would be where they get rewarded for their own purchases, but that's not going to help you really grow your customer base as much as it's going to keep your current customers happy. So a referral program is really good. Now there are lots and lots of referral programs out there. And we ended up using referral candy, which is very user friendly and. what we ended up doing that worked best for us was to give potential customers a discount when they were given a referral code. And the person who gave them that referral code got an actual dollar amount off of new product. And we had products ranging from 5 all the way up to a couple hundred dollars. So if they didn't need another product, they could get a hat or a sticker or something like that. And that was a great way to also advertise for us. Now, I do want to warn you that when you have coupon codes or referral programs, it is very easy for people to kind of take advantage of that So beware if you have coupon codes floating around like save 10 or something that's very easy to guess or something that is repeatable. The thing about referral candy is It can give your customers a one time use code and those are so handy because people can't just use them over and over again. We ran into a problem with people putting our codes out on Facebook and so they would get tons of dollar amount which In the long run, we ended up getting way more customers, but it also cheapened the value of our product because it was so easy to get a 10 percent coupon code online anywhere. And we've all been to those sites where you can get coupon codes to save on shipping or whatever. And so you don't want to be that company that is so easy to discount your product because it does cheapen your value. there are other ways to grow your customer base and to get new customers like affiliate programs and sponsorships. Now, I'm going to get into that in our next episode, but for now, we're just going to tell you that that is a completely different way to grow your customer base and it's usually a little more expensive. So referral candy and, uh, referral programs are a great way to get your foot in the door. If you don't have a lot of capital laying around and you can't afford to sponsor somebody to say that they love your product. the bottom line here, guys, is that word of mouth is a great tool and asset, but you are in control of how your customers perceive their experience from the second they get on your website, how easy it is to find their product all the way down to their follow ups three, six, even a year later. It is awesome to send out a card to thank them again for their service. If you get a card a year later from a company who maybe put a new roof on your house, you will remember them and tell everybody because they actually thought enough of you to send you a card a year later. that my friends is a great way to show them you care. well, guys, I hope that this episode helps you to maybe get a little better word of mouth advertising out there because it is cheap, if not free, and it is the most powerful thing you can do for your customers and to get new customers. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining me today on the Quality of Life podcast. Be sure to like, share and subscribe and hit that little bell to make sure that you get notifications when we have new podcasts and stuff out. Thank you so much. And please share this with anybody you know who is in a small business that needs some growth, which is everyone. Because my goal is to get you from your business idea to big business. business. I will see you next week on the quality of life podcast. Thanks so much. See ya.