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SMALL TO FAST

3 ways to increase word of mouth for your business during challenging economic times

You’ve got to figure out how to enhance the “referability” of your product or service.

3 ways to increase word of mouth for your business during challenging economic times

[Photo: Mikhail Nilov/Pexels]

BY Julia Herbst4 minute read

During economically uncertain times, customers—quite logically—tend to delay purchases or insist on gathering more information before buying. But in a world where the average person is exposed to up to 10,000 ads per day, many of us tune almost everything out, except for recommendations from people we already trust. Indeed, one study shows 83% of Americans say that “personal recommendations” are their number one source for identifying new products and services.

That presents a quandary for marketers and any professionals who do business development: How can you make your products and services more likely to be talked about and referred to others?

In our consulting work, and as Dorie Clark describes in her book Stand Out, we’ve discovered several small things you can do to dramatically enhance the “referability” of your product or service, making it more likely that others will bring it up proactively to their social networks. Here are three guidelines to follow as you think through how you talk about your work:

Strive to be ‘minimally counterintuitive

We all know that using jargon is a turnoff when speaking with potential customers, leaving them confused or feeling condescended to. But we’ve discovered that professionals hoping to generate more word-of-mouth business should go a step further toward simplicity as they hone their pitches. One academic study showed that myths and folktales that were “minimally counterintuitive” (meaning that most of the story’s elements made logical sense, and only a few elements were fantastical) achieved a “memory advantage” and were shared more often than those that were “maximally counterintuitive” (meaning that most of the elements of the story were fantastical).

Simply put, when most of the content is something that we recognize with only a few innovations, we’re much more likely to remember it and share it. For instance, think of the “i” products from Apple (iPhone, iPods, iPad) which capitalized on brand recognition while adding a new element. Imagine the difference in adoption if each product had a completely different name. After all, “music pods” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. As you think about how to describe your offerings, focus on how you can anchor your description in familiar terms while explaining your unique twist.

Provide your customers with a framework

Customers facing a problem—whether it’s lagging sales, or an outdated diversity program, or the urgent need to expand in South America—often also face a conceptual “problem behind the problem.” It could be that others in the company just aren’t getting the urgency of the situation, or perhaps even that they themselves don’t have a clear way to think about the manifold challenges they’re facing. If you can provide a conceptual framework to help your customers or prospects understand and articulate their own situation better, that’s an enormously powerful tool that they’ll be grateful for, and will repeat to others. 

Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” and Adam Grant’s “Givers and Takers” frameworks are two popular examples of this phenomenon. Think about frameworks that have come up in your work with clients, or patterns that you’ve seen, and make a point of codifying and sharing them.

Create memory prompts

Ultimately, if you want someone to refer to your product or service, you need to ensure they remember it. Thus, it’s worth thinking through how to make our work more memorable. Four useful principles apply here (which Michael, in a meta-example, likes to call the “LESS Formula”—i.e., language, emotions, simplicity, and structure).

First, try to use unique language to differentiate what you offer (e.g., Starbucks’s choice to avoid small, medium, and large sizes in favor of “venti” and the like). Your adherents will remember and use your new language, which can serve as a conversation-starter with outsiders.

Second, studies have shown that experiencing heightened emotions intensifies your memory—thus the prevalence of heart-tugging or adrenaline-thumping TV ads. It’s worth asking how you can incorporate emotion into your own stories, perhaps through citing customer testimonials or telling your products’ origin story.

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Third, strive for simplicity. Remembering to pick up three items from the grocery store is significantly easier than remembering 30 items without the aid of a list. Our brains work the same way. In the field of neuroscience this is called “working memory overload.” Think of what you want people to share about you and then review it for the two to three most important elements. Trim the message down and you’ll have more people sharing it because they can remember it.

Finally, think about the structure in which your message is delivered. If you can turn your message into a “unit,” studies show it’s far more likely to be remembered and retrieved by listeners. (For instance, you can describe your process in discrete phases, or create a grouping like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”).

We’re all overwhelmed with marketing messages these days, so if you want your product or service to stand out, it’s essential to analyze upfront how you can make it easier for others to remember and talk about it. By following these three principles, you can maximize the chance that—even in a noisy and crowded world—your ideas will successfully spread.

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant who teaches at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. Her newest book is The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World and you can receive her free Long Game strategic thinking self-assessment.

Michael Roderick is a referability expert and the founder of Small Pond Enterprises, a thought leadership focused consulting company. He is also a former Broadway producer and the host of the podcast Access To Anyone. Get his free Referability Rater here. 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julia Herbst is a senior editor for Fast Company's Work Life section, where she covers the future of work, equity and inclusion, and workplace culture. Previously she worked as a writer and editor at Los Angeles magazine and BREAKER magazine More


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