The most powerful and sought after form of marketing for businesses, especially in our industry, must be word of mouth.
Word of mouth or social proof can come in many forms whether it’s someone raving about your business to their friends, written or video testimonials, reviews, recommendations or any way in which people find out about your business from your clientele. Whether it’s from a friend or family member or from a social media influencer they’ve never met, hearing someone else’s experience of your business is an extremely powerful in helping them decide if they’d like to buy from you.
With search engines, social media, and the many other ways people find your business come just as many ways that word of mouth can be shared. Here we guide you through a simple way to navigate word of mouth and harness the power of it to grow your business.
So how can we generate word of mouth for our businesses?
Firstly you need to wow your clients, then you need to give them a platform to shout about you!
Simply put you need to offer great customer service, find ways to hold each client in mind and make them feel valued, and finally share your knowledge with them to empower them to heal themselves. Chris Phillips, Sports Massage Therapist and Principal of the Academy often says the best way to grow your business is to make yourself redundant to your clients. Meaning you work with them to find long term solutions and empower them with enough knowledge to prevent their issues recurring. The goal is for each client to need to see you less and less often! These clients will then take care of you in return being a cheerleader for the fantastic work you do - and what a wonderful way to work.
On the flip side we can’t please everybody all of the time and we are only human. For the times we don’t quite get in right we have an opportunity to really turn it around. Simply being accountable and transparent is equally as impactful. If things don’t go well try to work creatively with your clients to find a mutually agreeable solution. If you can’t help and need to refer that is a truly valuable service too.
Knowing your niche can really help. It can be incredibly overwhelming to try to serve everyone and feeling you need to be an expert in every client compliant you come across. Find the key people you want to work with and nurture word of mouth in that niche. Chris gives a great example of when a client came to his sports massage clinic recovering from a hip replacement surgery. ‘It wasn’t something I had any experience of, so I was learning with them. I sought advice and did the research, we worked together and I was very open about this. We found ways to help and made a real change to his pain and movement. He then told everyone he knew and before I knew it I was the go-to-guy in the area for hips!!’
If you can find influencers in your niche who will talk about the work you do then that’s fantastic but equally putting the time in to go above and beyond for every client you already have pays dividends. We talk a lot at the Academy about offering your free case study slots to people you want to work with after qualification. All the better if you know they are the kind of person who will tell everyone they know how amazing you are!!
The key with this kind of marketing is to make sure you let your clients know how they can help you. The work we do changes lives. The knowledge we share and the space we hold for our clients leaves them with so many wonderful things to say! Capturing that feeling and bottling it can be tricky though. Find a way to simply say how you’d appreciate their help.
Here are 3 simple ways to ask for feedback:
- Social media & search engines - Facebook and Google make it easy to gather reviews & recommendations with little effort. Just by having a Facebook profile or google listing for your company (imperative for anyone in our industry!) you can collect reviews that show each time someone searches for the service you offer in your area. You can even send a link to people to direct them to where to leave the review!
- For clients who aren’t so tech savvy simply have some feedback forms or a space for client feedback on their consultation form. Add a little note or tick box to check they are happy for you to use their words for marketing your business.
- Refer a friend schemes to offer a reward for any recommendations that gain you new clients can also be helpful. Although explaining your treatments and sharing your knowledge empowers clients to share their experience which will be just as powerful. If they understand that their posture, lifestyle and emotion is causing their pain or discomfort and you have given them treatment and aftercare advice that has brought about real change they will know to advise people in their lives who present with the same problems!
Now let’s not pretend it’s easy to ask for reviews, testimonials or recommendations. As therapists it’s in our nature to rather offer help than ask for it!
But here goes… We would really appreciate it if you could spare a moment to share your experiences of studying with us here at the Academy.
Tag is in a video testimonial on Instagram.
Thank you.