Conversation Playbook: Creating opportunities for word of mouth

Part 6 of Build Your Marketing Plan Series

This is part six of an eight-part series on how to build an exceptional small business marketing plan. This series is a condensed version of my 17 week coaching program. Each “lesson” of the series contains a background article, down-loadable worksheets and a slidecast. You can also have this information presented to your organization as a full-day workshop, DIY Marketing for Small Businesses.

Part 1: The Brand Promise
Part 2: Your Signature
Part 3: The Customer Experience Theme
Part 4: The Customer Experience Map
Part 5: Your Word-of-Mouth Message
Part 6: Word of Mouth Playbook – (You are here)
Part 7: Courting Customers – What You Say
Part 8: Where to Promote – The Media Spotter Matrix

“Amazingly, marketing success is determined more by the time it takes your customers to decide on your product, than any other factor.”
– George Silverman, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

One of the most powerful things you can do for your customers is make their buying decision easier. Do that, and you shorten the time it takes them to purchase from you.

We consumers are a cautious lot. We don’t like to make mistakes. While we don’t mind hearing stories of bad purchase decisions, we don’t want them to be ours. So we take our time and check things out. When we finally have our fears soothed, we pull out our wallet. But how long does this take?

Even if you have a good reputation for providing an excellent product, service, or experience, it can take longer than you want. But instead of letting the wheels of fate spread your good news, why not help out? Word of mouth would be easy if everyone always talked about their purchase decisions. But they don’t. So take some steps to create conversation opportunities.

In this installment of Build Your Marketing Plan, We are going to pull out the Word-of-Mouth Playbook. In Creating Customer Evangelists, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba laid out six tenets of creating customer evangelists. These are six tactics, or plays, that you can call to stimulate conversation about your business.

To decide which play you want to call, download the two PDF worksheets below and print them off. Just right click and save them to your computer. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Then watch the slidecast below for details on how to use these conversation creation tools.

After you download the worksheets, watch the slidecast below and make sure your audio is turned up. If you cannot see the slidecast in your reader, click here.

If you have questions or comments, click the comment link below.

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More from The Marketing Spot on creating conversations:
This Is How You Build A Community
Ties That Bind: Three Concepts of Customer Relationships
Getting Involved With A Cause: A Marketing Perspective