The Best Advertising Form in the World

This is a radio advertising site. So, you probably think I’m going to jump right out and declare radio king. Well, you’d be wrong. Radio is great, and so are countless other advertising forms when used correctly. But, the best advertising you will ever receive is free. What is it? Word of mouth.

Every single advertising medium relies heavily on word of mouth to be successful, but they never talk about it. Most small businesses know who their best customers are, and often they can trace back multiple new customers to them. These people are gold. They work for you for free. Actually, they pay you for the chance to work for you.

So, why advertise?

Hold on for moment. Word of mouth advertising is fantastic, but it requires an accelerator to make it work at peak capacity. That’s where paid advertising comes in.

When you meet with a media sales rep, they’ll often tell you about their reach/cume/listeners/viewers/impressions etc. These are the people they can prove they have a direct line to. The numbers are usually pretty huge. Obviously, you aren’t going to capitalize on all of them. If you grab 1% of them you’re doing pretty damn good. This group of people will account for some immediate sales. Your task is to turn this 1% into an unpaid sales force for your business.

Word of mouth only happens if you’re business is worth talking about.

This comes back to the old “teach a man to fish” adage. If you serve a client ok once, you’ll get one sale. If you serve them exceptionally once, you’ll have a customer for life. Plus, they’ll bring in more customers for you to indoctrinate with your excellence. Keep in mind, word of mouth can work against you if your service stinks. So, just make sure you’re really great ok? Cool.

Spread it like a vicious disease

You want the whole city to know about your business. Maybe you want the whole world? If you don’t use advertising, word of mouth will have a very slow burn. If might get you there eventually. It’ll just take decades instead of years. Mass media will allow you to pan for gold quicker. Instead of finding your best clients organically, you can pull them out of the river fast.

A new measurement of success.

That’s what this all adds up to. Don’t measure the success of your advertising campaign by how many dollars you cram into the till on a weekend. Measure it by how many champion customers you bring in to the fold. If you grab a few on each campaign you run, you’ve probably added a dozen in the future. If your service/product is fantastic, those dozen will turn into a dozen dozen more... and on... and on... and on...