Associated Mail & Parcel Centers Blog

We all know that the best advertising is word of mouth. Referrals and testimonials by far work the best. We trust our friends and relatives to be honest in their recommendations. After all, we will be seeing them again. A portion of a chart from www.emarketer.com from a survey done by Lightspeed Research is reproduced below. The complete chart is at the end of this article.

As you can see, the truth is that we trust our friends and relatives and they are credible sources for business referrals.

The failing of word of mouth advertising is that there is only one mouth at a time promoting your business. One person is giving a testimonial to one other person at a time and that person may or may not need your product of service. What if word of mouth advertising could reach 1000’s of people at once?

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A new customer decides to change a habit and visits your store, Mail & Stuff – her experience is a good one and she tells her sister Jolene about your service, convenience, and kindness. Jolene decides to give you a try and arrives with a preconceived notion that she will be treated well. This alone puts you at an advantage. She already has a favorable opinion of you from her sister, whom she trusts explicitly.

The next thing you do is make sure Jolene is treated well, not disappointed, and given the value of your services. You want her to come back and maybe she will tell a friend.

Jolene has a Twitter account and she has a few dozen friends she chats with there – just a bunch of social jabber. Most of her tweets are about everyday things like the kids, shopping, hairdos, vacation, dinner, work, or other friends. She happens to mention in a tweet that she shipped a package, made a few copies, and bought some stamps at a very welcoming store called Mail & Stuff.

Among the people who follow Jolene on Twitter is her friend Hazel who works at the Chamber of Commerce. Hazel is followed by the 1,872 members of the local chamber. As an employee of an organization whose mission is to promote businesses and business in general, she decides to re-tweet Jolene’s experience at the Mail & Stuff to her followers, almost all of which are involved in business in one fashion or another, plus many of them have sisters.

Mail & Stuff then hires Jolene’s son to help with the rush of new business.

Word of Mouth is changing and it’s getting very powerful. Mail & Stuff’s cost for this Word of Mouth on Steroids: $0.00.

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Mail & Stuff decides it’s time to look at Twitter as a simple, inexpensive way to notify their box-holders that the mail is up and sorted and promote an occasional special on color copies. Mail & Stuff of course follows and is followed by Jolene, who is not really interested in whether somebody else’s mail is up and sorted. But one day Mail & Stuff posts that dinner was exceptionally good at Fat Matt’s Barbecue last night.

Jolene’s husband, Lloyd loves barbecue and they take Mail & Stuff’s recommendation and go out for dinner. Lloyd mentions to the Fat Matt’s manager that they heard about them from a Twitter post from Mail & Stuff. Fat Matt’s Barbecue signs up with Twitter and posts about their upcoming beer tasting and stain removal clinic.

Fat Matt’s Barbecue starts following Mail & Stuff on Twitter. Fat Matt’s is a chain and they have been going to the Post Office to overnight the payroll to Wisconsin every week. Not any more.

Oh, and oh yeah – Fork & Stuff will be catering the next Chamber of Commerce event. They will be feeding 1200 people who, like the Chamber, also host catered events.

Word of Mouth works both ways.

If you don’t want to use social networking to advance your business, if you think it is a waste a time, or that it’s a teenage girl cell phone thing, my sorrow is not for you, but for the wasted potential for your business and the businesses in your community. Businesses accelerate each other. If the guy at the hardware store is doing well so is the appliance guy, and then the car dealer, the movie theater, the mail and parcel store, and so forth.

The examples I have given here are happening every day to thousands of businesses across the planet. It is real and it is free. If you spend about one hour a day at this you will get good at it and it will work. I guarantee it, or your money will be cheerfully refunded.

For another perspective (agreement, of course) go here.

Sometimes free is difficult to give away.

What interests me about the chart is the low ratings for celebrities and politicians.