How To Easily Get Clients Online If You Rely On Word Of Mouth Marketing

81% of people check a business online before they buy.

Word-of-mouth isn’t enough to grow your business. To scale, you must combine it with online marketing.

In the next 3 minutes, you’ll find out why and how you can do this to get clients to come to you like bees to honey.

Let’s start.

Why Word Of Mouth Isn’t Enough

Lots of local businesses believe they don’t need to do anything online.

They believe they get most of their clients through referrals and word-of-mouth, so why waste time on social media?

That’s the kind of thinking that stops your business from growing. Here’s why:

While word-of-mouth is enough to keep businesses alive, it is extremely hard to grow by word-of-mouth alone.

If you stick with just word-of-mouth, you will stay stuck with the same number of clients, the same revenue numbers, and the same number of clients you can help. How can you grow a business that way?

Plus, the earlier statistic of 81% of people checking a business online means that even those who are referred to you will see you online.

So if you’re serious about growing your business, keep reading to find the best way to combine referrals with digital marketing.

We’ve made our own strategy for exactly this issue, and we call it:

Operation Wizard

And it’s called that because you want to be known as the local wizard for your service.

As a word-of-mouth business, you don’t have to reach your customers by advertising to them. Customers come to you; you don’t come to them.

So when they come to you, you should look like the local wizard who can solve their problems. Be like Merlin.

Let’s go into how you can do this using 2 methods:

Method 1 - Rise To The Top (Of Google)

Imagine your roof is leaking. You feel the water droplets against your head, and you need to find a roofing company now.

What do you search on Google? Probably something like “emergency roofing near me”.

And who do you check first? The companies that come up first at the top.

That’s where you want to be.

There are 2 ways to do this:

Submethod 1 - SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). This is when you do things like using keywords (“emergency roofing)” on your website so when people search those words, you come up. The problem with SEO is it takes 3-6 months for Google to start liking you and making you show up first. So, method 2 puts you at the top within a few days:

Submethod 2 - Google Ads. This is when you pay Google to be shown at the top when people search for a keyword. Think of it like SEO on steroids, plus you only pay whenever someone clicks your link. That’s a good sign they’re interested and will become a customer.

For both of these methods, you’ll need 2 things:

1 - Good Reviews. Show off your reviews so customers know they’re making the right decision. This improves your chances of showing up at the top (submethod 1 - SEO) and of convincing customers to buy (for both submethods above)

2 - Fast Loading Speed. This lets customers express interest in buying from you without having to wait 10 years for the website to load. This is especially important for method 1, as your website speed is a major factor in Google putting you at the top.

Either way, both of these methods prove you’re the wizard to go to.

Let’s go into another hidden weapon you can use to do this. This method convinces customers to buy from you by building trust.

Method 2 - Prove You’re An Expert Through Blogging & Social Media

These are both powerful methods to prove you know what you’re talking about.

For example:

• “5 Signs Of A Leaky Roof” - this makes you trust a roofer.

• “3 Signs An Overgrown Tree Is Dangerous” - this makes you trust a tree surgeon.

Let’s go back to the example of the person whose roof is leaking from earlier - if they see a company publish an article about signs of a leaky roof, and the signs match their situation, they would think, “This company wrote this exactly for me!”

And when that’s happened, it’s easy to choose that company over competitors.

That’s the power of content that shows you’re a wizard.

With blogs, you should write posts about common issues where you can show off that you’re an expert (like the 2 examples above).

With social media posts, you can show off before-and-after pictures of client projects and testimonials, proving that you can also do what you’re talking about.

Both of these also improve your SEO (remember from earlier?) rankings, as a blog proves to Google that your website is up-to-date, and makes Google think, “if others trust them, then I should too.”

When you master these methods, potential customers think of you as the wizard to go to when they or someone they know needs your service.

So not only do you attract new clients, but you also convince people who were referred to you to buy!