Free consult & free copy of book

E-Myth – “Why most small businesses don’t work & what to do about it”

Contact Us

Stars

Most 5 star CPA Google reviews in Canada

Read Reviews

Chartered Professional Accountants E Myth

1 Fixed Monthly Fee - Planning | Accounting | Taxes | Consulting

Helping Canadian businesses beat the odds!

Edmonton Business Consultant | Lies About Word of Mouth Marketing

Think most of the company that I tell you, oh we’re so good. We don’t ever have to advertise. It’s all word of mouth. A lot of times they’re lying to you.

Yeah, I can see why with the two I can be [inaudible] cause it’s not.

Hi, thanks for joining us for another episode of ask Spurl CPA today is in business coach. We’re talking about the lies about word of mouth marketing. Again, as the evident business coach, we’re talking about the lies about word of mouth marketing. I have Michael here with me. Michael, have you ever heard of business say that they’d built everything based on

word of mouth marketing? If you’ve ever heard that come from somebody before? No.

No. Okay. Uh, well I have a, I think some people out there have have heard it too. Michael’s probably more of a realist where you think people should advertise, right? Yeah, yeah. But some people think that you should have the thought. Here’s the quote that I’m going to give you. It’s the Gary Vaynerchuk quote and he says, your number one job is to tell your story to the consumer wherever they are. And preferably at the moment they’re deciding to make a purchase. And you know, 50% of all Canadian business will go to business the first five years. And 42% of these failed business owners will list their inability to attract enough customers is one of the primary reasons for their failure making the inability to attract enough customers as the most, uh, you know, significant reason for business failure. And the story that we have here, business owners think that profitable companies, successful companies don’t advertise, oh, we told them this myth, but this is what they’re hearing.

Edmonton Business Consultant, so Michael knows that they need to advertise it. These guys don’t. So Michael, what are the questions that these companies, you know, what these people should be asking are companies who often say they don’t advertise often not line. Yes. So companies who say that they don’t advertise, they’re lying most of the time, 99.99% of the time they’re lying. I’m going to show you that. We’re probably going to talk about a couple of examples, but you know, I think most of the company that I tell you, oh, we’re so good. We don’t ever have to advertise. It’s all on word of mouth. A lot of times their line to you.

Hmm.

Why should you look at the vehicles of companies who say they don’t advertise? This is my favorite one. We don’t advertise everything’s on word of mouth, but yet they have a $5,000 auto wrap on their truck or their car or something else, and they’re telling you that they’re so good, but they never had to advertise. And you go and take a look at their vehicle and they’ve auto wrapped their car and spent thousands of dollars to AutoRap a vehicle or put deckels on it. You know what the phone number asking for people to call a, that’s the first. That’s the first thing to, to catch one of these people who said they build everything on word of mouth alone. Why should you look at their print materials? So then there’s company who says they build everything. They’re so good that they do everything. Word of mouth and they hand over the print materials.

They printed this glossy brochure with a, you know, uh, they have pictures of before and after they got testimonials, they’ve got a fancy contract, uh, there and they have all kinds of print materials. Their business card, it’s got some, you know, it’s got some metallic lettering on it or the fancy thick stock that they have, but yet they don’t spend any money on marketing. It’s all through referrals. So again, you see on the vehicle, you starting to see their print material that they’d given you or they have lying around in their office and they’re telling you it’s all based on word of mouth. And now you’ve seen two examples of how they’re lying already. Why should you look at their website of companies? St a known entity? Well, they’ve said they do everything based on word of mouth alone, but yet they need a website.

Websites cost money, right? You’ve got to pay for domain hosting. And someone updated it and summoned up upkeep it a, and they’re saying everything’s based on word of mouth, but yet they have a website and they got a form to fill out for prospective new customers and they probably got testimonials from old customers on there and they got an offer and there’s scribing their products and service and they’re advertising the qualifications of the team that they have and their experience. Edmonton Business Consultant, that doesn’t seem like word of mouth to me. That seems a lot like marketing. Edmonton Business Consultant, but again, that’s one of those other examples that I think these big companies, you say it’s all based on word of mouth. It’s an easy way to catch them in that lie. Do you often see companies whose posts we don’t advertise at trade fairs? Yeah, this is one of my favorites.

So whether that’s a business built on referrals, so really only do work word of mouth. And they’re actually saying this at a trade fair where they paid thousands of dollars for a booth to build and pay their employees to Wa to sit there and talk to potential customers. But yet it’s all based on word of mouth. So you know, we just see these examples over and over again. They’ve auto repped a vehicle. They spend a bunch of money on, on print material to give to prospective customers. Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, they, they developed this, spent thousands of dollars on a website. They have, you know, spent thousands of dollars to be at a trade fair and develop a booth. But yet it’s all based on word of mouth marketing alone. They are lies, lies, don’t follow them. And if you want to build a successful business, let’s look at what they’re doing, not what they’re saying.

Uh, that’s the key. Is there a limit to how big your company can grow by word of mouth alone? There is because there tends to be like a circle. You have like a circle of your raving fans and you can only touch so many of those raving fans. You might be able to get more peripheral customers, right? But your ability to generate referrals outside of those raving fans are going to get smaller. And it’s harder to get those, those, uh, uh, raving fans, only a certain percentage of all customers who even have the, the, the psychology behind them to be those raving fans and to actually go refer people to your friends and family. So if you just, you know, hope that, you know, you get to your, your capacity and then you’re going to have, I’m afraid and fast to generate referrals, it’s generally not going to happen.

Uh, so your ability to grow your company, a scale of, you know, the, you know, to larger levels and to be truly scalable, Edmonton Business Consultant it’s not going to happen by word of mouth alone. Do the biggest companies in the world advertise? Yeah, I mean the person putting it, let’s look at the chevrons. Lets look at the apples. Let’s look at the Microsoft’s. Edmonton Business Consultant, you know, let’s look at the Facebooks and the googles of the world. They’re advertising, you know, apple advertising. They spend millions upon millions of dollars in advertising and they’re the biggest company in the world and people love them. People line up around the streets, uh, and they have raving fans that tell their friends and tell their family, and this is why you should use it. But yet, the biggest companies in the world still advertise. And some people are thinking that, you know, the successful companies, uh, word of mouth alone, I encourage you, first of all, you know, look really skeptically at any company that ever tells you that.

And look at those, you know, a couple of basic things that I already told you that they’re likely doing. Edmonton Business Consultant, and then looking at the biggest companies of the world and ask yourself, the biggest companies, the most successful companies are the ones with the most raving fans already. We’re generating the most referrals already. Advertising. Why shouldn’t you do people mistakenly thing the customers will, they’re desperate. They advertise. Yeah. A lot of people think that, well, if I advertise, they’re gonna think I’m desperate for work. Edmonton Business Consultant, so, but I don’t think that’s the case. I mean, I mean, Michael, have you seen the apple advertisements? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have an apple or Samsung phone? I have a Samsung. You have a Samsung. So you’ve seen the Samsung advertisements, right? Do you think Samsung is desperate? Would you qualify the, classify them as desperate for your business?

No. No. But yet they advertise to you. Right? It generates that awareness. And I would think, I would think that it’s kind of the opposite is the businesses that don’t advertise, it’s probably because they can’t afford to advertise and they’re probably desperate because they can’t even afford to run an ad. A, they can’t afford to, you know, develop a piece of print material. Uh, so customers think that, you know, people think that, oh, they don’t want to toot their own horn. Um, you’re going to need to toot your own horn as a business owner. And the customers aren’t going to think that you’re desperate. You’re just going to be top of mind is a lot of clutter out there and you’ve gotta be top of mind and they’re not going to think that you’re desperate. They’re just not going to forget about you. And if you don’t advertise, they’re going to forget about you.

Will advertising help you convert for the mouth referrals? Yes. Yeah. And that’s one of the other things that people think about is that they have a real strong word of mouth program. They’re generating a lot of referrals, but they forget that the non of mouth advertising initiatives help convert those word of mouth initiatives. You know those word of mouth, you know, referrals come to you look at the Google reviews and they see that you have them before the decide 88% of them will, you know, look at your Google reviews before they decide to do business with you. And that number doesn’t change. If it’s a word of mouth referral, that same person is going to look at that. Your website that you put thousands of dollars in, you know they were referred to you by their friends are found, but they’re still going to look at the website and then they could potentially be retargeted by your retargeting ads and they’re going to look at your content that you put on Youtube.

So even if you, you know, re word of mouth referrals is one of, you know, higher up in your advertising initiatives. You have to realize that all of those other initiatives that you’re doing help support and convert those word of mouth referrals. If you don’t advertise, we’ll employees think that their ability to advance is limited a lot of times. I think so, yes. It so if you don’t advertise, your employees are going to look and think that well, Hey, this company can only get to a certain size. The only business that ever comes in here is the business that the owner meets. They play golf with their friends and then they went to a kid’s birthday party. That’s the only business. How am I ever going to grow? You know, they start looking at both, you know, how am I ever going to move up in this company because this company can never reno generate a single piece of business that the owner isn’t directly tied to.

So myself as an employee, you know, you start to connect the dots and see that your advancement is limited. How will the inability for employees to move up generally affect quality? So then you have employees who feel that their advancement is limited and they realize that this is just a dead end position. So now we’re tying it all the way back. So we’re thinking about why you only do word of mouth advertising. Employees start to see that, you know, every piece of business only comes in, they do business with the business owner. They think, well, I can never be at that level. I, I’m going to have to go elsewhere and do this myself. But if they see leads that are coming in and they’re not tied to the business owner, they see that there’s a scale and we’ll advertise the initiatives that are working here.

They realize that they can get to a completely other level a for staying with this company then going out on their own because they go out on their own. It’s gonna be really tough for them to build those automated marketing initiatives that actually work. So, Edmonton Business Consultant, you get these motivated employees who realize that men, uh, you know, I should produce a higher quality because someone is going to be necessary to play key positions in this company. Because this company is growing. Um, you know, and I, I’d better put my nose to the grindstone here because what I do here matters and it’s going to help me advance my career because someone is gonna move up in this company. I hope it’s me. Edmonton Business Consultant, so I think that’s what we have here today. Thanks so much for tuning in. As always, please hit the liken subscribe button, some continued delivery tips on how to beat the odds at business. And as always, please leave us some comments so we can respond back and use your input for future videos. Thanks very much.