Seven Reasons Word of Mouth Marketing Isn’t Working For You

A recent poll found that 82 percent of small businesses use word of mouth to grow their business, and that 15 percent rely almost exclusively on word of mouth.

Word of mouth is the “Holy Grail” of professional service firm marketing. There is no other better client referral than the enthusiastic  recommendation of your firm by an impassioned existing client to another potential client.

Let’s face it…word of mouth referrals are like cocaine.  Doesn’t your pride  and your chest swell when a new client comes through the door and specifically wants YOU on the case and they want YOU specifically because one of the client’s most trusted friends, associate, advisor etc. has recommended you? Doesn’t this validate your expertise, your charm, your skill? Doesn’t it prove that your firm is on the right track?

Plus…word of mouth is inexpensive, convenient, easy to do (i.e. you do nothing but HOPE that some word of mouth gets around) and it doesn’t require ANY kind of thinking on your part.

Perfect isn’t it?

Then why aren’t you getting all the new business you’d like to have?

Relying on word of mouth marketing is a tactic that is loved by small and large law firms alike. Relying on word of mouth (the way you are probably doing it anyway) is a guaranteed way for a small to mid sized practice to stay small or mid sized.

Here’s why:

1. Word of mouth is eratic. You cannot control when someone will make a recommendation about your firm. If you can’t control frequency…you can’t control or predict when new business is going to come walking through the door.

2. Word of mouth is limited in scope. Your existing clients can only refer you to their limited circle of friends, acquantances and business associates. If your current specialty is IT business structuring and you want to move into biotechnology patents your current ” word of mouth ” network is probably going to leave you and your kids pretty hungy!

3.  Word of mouth is easy to “screw” with. Your competitors (especially) if you’re operating in a cut throat environment are busy out there generating their own NEGATIVE word of mouth campaign about you through their own networks.

4.  Word of mouth is non-scalable. By that I mean…you have one partner in your firm who is “Miss Personality.” Your other partners and staff are “Tomatos.” Miss Personality brings all the new business through word of mouth. How do you teach everyone else in your firm to develop “likeable” dispositions EXACTLY like Miss Personailty’s?

5.  Word of mouth is subjective in nature. The person referring you obviously “likes” you. In a B2B environment “like” is not a quantifiable metric. It’s important to be sure…but…at some point in the sales cycle you have to be able to “talk the talk and walk the walk.” You probably can’t! Word of mouth marketers tend to get lazy and forget that there’s more to business than glad handing and backslapping. Can you still make presentations on par with the “hungriest” firms in the neighbourhood?

6. Word of mouth gives control of your business to your clients.  When you’re hot and everything you touch turns to gold your clients are enthusiastic and you can do no wrong. Referrals flood in! What happens when something changes in the business environment that negatively impacts what you do? Simple example: You were the genius mortgage lawyer who got your clients into that million dollar home that they couldn’t really afford 6 years ago. They were going to get rich on leverage and appreciation. Now they have negative equity, are facing foreclosure and personal bankruptcy.

How’s your word of mouth network going to look now after a hundred or so of your past clients tell the entire universe about your overly “aggressive” tendencies?

You didn’t “pay” anything for your word of mouth network. If you didn’t “pay” anything…you can’t control the message that comes out of the network.

7. Word of mouth is not a SYSTEM. To me a system means that if you do “A”….”B” will result EVERYTIME.

It’s predictable, controllable, replicable and repeatable.

It may or MAY NOT be inexpensive.

Inexpensive is a relative term. If I spend five million dollars to make a return of five hundred million dollars…the five million was inexpensive.

If I spend NOTHING to make NOTHING…well…that was the most expensive “nothing” in your business because you’re not acquiring new billings at the rate you could be.

In business you want to control as many of the variables as you possibly can.

Word of mouth is the LEAST controllable marketing approach you can adopt.

Maybe that’s why it’s the CHEAPEST!