Conversation Starters: Creating your word-of-mouth message.

Part 5 of Build Your Marketing Plan Series

This is part five 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 – (You are here)
Part 6: Word of Mouth Playbook
Part 7: Courting Customers – What You Say
Part 8: Where to Promote – The Media Spotter Matrix

“Word of mouth is lazy. You’ve got to help it along if you expect it to go anywhere.” – Andy Sernovitz, Word of Mouth Marketing

Forget about chance. Chance is not an option for obtaining word of mouth. Conversation doesn’t just happen. It’s part of a well-designed plan.

You may have heard that word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing. Yet have you ever seen a small business that had a word of mouth marketing plan? Why not? Subscription to the myth that word of mouth just happens. But it doesn’t. Word of mouth can be encouraged and influenced. It’s influenced by what you do and how you do it.

There are two rules to creating conversation about your business: give people something to say, and give them the opportunity to say it. Ask yourself this question: What is the most important, and interesting, thing my customers should say about me? That’s the first key to key to earning word of mouth.

In this installment of Build Your Marketing Plan, you are going to identify the message of your word of mouth. To get the conversation started 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.

When you have your message, you’re ready to put it into action. See part 6 of this series: The Word-of-Mouth-Playbook. If you have questions or comments, click the comment link below.

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