The tendency is for organizations to put their head in the sand and hope that customer dissatisfaction and the negative word of mouth it creates will somehow disappear on its own. Customers who have taken the time and effort to let you know that something may be wrong should be embraced and serve as inputs to a continuous improvement program.

Acknowledge them and use their feedback to make changes. And be sure you tell them you did. They could become your staunchest advocates.

The conventional wisdom that it costs more to get a new customer than retain an existing one takes on more meaning when the economy is down. Now is the time for businesses to delight their customers and give them something to really talk about. Companies like Hyundai are thinking outside of the box and creating excitement about their brand, giving prospective a sense of comfort by offering to buy their cars back if they lose their jobs. It’s a bold move on Hyundai’s part but it is bound to give people something to talk about. It’s a sign of the times.

The leaders of the Big Three automakers received all kinds of negative press for flying individual personal jets to the bailout hearings in Washington DC. I’m sure if their marketing people had a say in the matter they may have done something different.

Imagine the positive word of mouth they might have created with a drive across America buzz campaign. They could have stretched the 8 hour drive over the course of several days using their most fuel efficient cars . They could have featured the men and women that work in dealerships and auto suppliers in each State along the way. They could have videotaped the trip and uploaded it to their websites, giving the public a sense of the very real people whose lives would be affected by allowing the Big Three to fail.

The marketing departments of the Detroit automakers may want to adopt a word of mouth marketing perspective especially as they begin to scale back some of their mass media programs, witness Buick ending its relationship with Tiger Woods, citing their economic situation. Word of mouth marketing cannot replace traditional marketing but it can be done more cost effectively and will be more credible.

Automobile marketers will have to find more cost effective ways to get the word out about their products and a word of mouth marketing perspective may be just what they need. All marketing should be designed to create positive word of mouth, and everyone would agree the Big Three sure need some positive buzz.

Public utilities know exactly who their customers are, where they are and how much they are using. Public utilities are in an ideal position to engage in the sort of one to one marketing that other service providers can only dream of.

Yet despite this unique relationship with their customers, many public utilities use one size fits all messaging in mass mediums to communicate about their various programs and initiatives. Having spent 19 years in the electric and gas utility business, I observed that the industry is very good at amassing, collecting and reporting data. Where it often falls short is in converting that data into insights.

A market savvy Chief Marketing Officer once told me, “If you don’t know who your customers are, use mass media advertising to reach them. If you know who your customers are, communicate with them directly”.

Utilities could better serve their customers by heeding such advice and shifting spending from wasteful mass media campaigns to direct communications with their customers. The lack of meaningful consumer insight is a primary reason utilities rely on one size fits all mass media campaigns. Careful analysis of existing data that results in the identification of discrete customer segments would enable utility companies to begin developing the right messages for the right customers at the right time.

By communicating directly with customers utilities would avoid the need to cut through the clutter of mass advertising to get their messages out about safety and conserving energy. Forward thinking utilities should seriously consider the increased utilization of Word Of Mouth Marketing tactics and techniques, such as leaning on webinars, email newsletters, and social media tools like Twitter and YouTube.

This is a classic example of a transactional mindset about customers. In this day of instant communications via phone, email, blogs company websites, it’s amazing that companies feel they can’t handle building relationships with their customers. Folks, if the customer was important enough to you when they initially bought your product, then they should be important enough for someone in the company to follow-up.

Some companies allow their CEO’s to handle this function. Which company do you suppose would get more positive word of mouth, one whose CEO follows up a sale or one who follows up with a disinterested third party? You make the call.

Well this was not a complete customer service disaster. I was pleased because of the story content this encounter provided and how it ended. As I was getting ready to pay for the replacement part, the cashier tells me that Craftsman has a lifetime waranty on replacement parts and that there would be no charge. Of course that made me happy and the cashier and Sears was somewhat redeemed in my eyes as a result.

Customer service across the board is disappointingly low, even though great customer service is a sustainable point of diiferentiation. While I believe that every employee in a company should be customer focused, employees on the front line especially need to be. A lot of word of mouth about companies is a result of experiences with front line employees.

Many small businesses have a hit-or-miss approach to marketing. There seems to be little rhyme or reason and no overall plan for the marketing. In fact, many small businesses conduct what I call “ego marketing”. They will put up a billboard on a well traveled highway with their picture on it, so every day when they drive by their ego gets inflated, the sign company gets rich and the small business owner gets zero sales from it.

Don’t get me wrong, outdoor advertising has its place, but in most cases it’s a waste of resources. In this highly competitive, high cost business environment, small business owners need to make smart investments in marketing. So what should a small business person do?

Well, before you spend another dime on a brochure, flyer, billboard or newspaper ad you need to just stop and take a careful look at what’s going on in seven (7) key areas of your business:

1. Customers- Who do you want to sell to and who are you really selling to?

2. Products- What’s your value proposition or why in the world would anyone spend money on what you’re selling?

3. Pricing – What’s your pricing strategy? ( Ah…yeah you should have a strategy for each of your targets and it shouldn’t be to make the most you can on everybody. A lot of businesses have gone out of business with predatory pricing. Subprime mortgages…nuff said)

4. Place – How are your customer’s gonna get your product? In the old days you needed to have a store to sell your wares. That cost a lot of money. Today, you could be selling to customers in Dubai and never leave Cleveland, or wherever you live, because of the Internet. Your distribution is part of your marketing (Betcha didn’t know that!!!!)

5. Promotion – This is what most people think marketing is all about. But if you don’t pay attention to the other Ps of marketing (there are 4), then you’ll end up with ego marketing or marketing that doesn’t do diddly squat to your bottom line. ( Yeah… I said it)

6. Competition – You gotta think outside of the box when it comes to your competition. Don’t think about just the other folks selling the same things you do. You got to consider everything your customer could be doing with their money and come up with a darn good reason for them to give it to you ( uh…that’s what your value proposition is all about, see how this all comes together?). Your value proposition is that compelling reason for a customer to select you and your product over all the other things they could do with their money, including the alternative of keeping it in their pocket and doing nothing. Sometimes customers doing nothing is your toughest competitor.

7. Branding -What do people think of when they think of your product? That’s what you brand is all about. For example when I think of Volvo, safety comes to mind, Walmart, low prices. Nordstroms, great service. They didn’t get this way by accident, but by consistently delivering on their brand promise over a long period of time. (Did ya notice I didn’t say anything about advertising or logos or any of that stuff when talking brand?)

So all you have to do is get your arms around these seven areas. The first step in doing so is to do an audit. Stay tuned to this blog for more information on how to do a “Small Business Marketing Audit: A Guide for Understanding & Managing the Marketing Mix” or better still “The Seven Secrets to Making Cent$ Out of Your Marketing”. Both of these sound like the titles to a book. Which do you prefer?? More soon.

Corporate types tend to be risk averse. It’s highly unlikely that a middle manager in Corporate America is going to be the first to try any new product or service, recall the saying “nobody ever got fired for using IBM”.  He’s going to call around and find out how others in his industry have fared. So yes, word of mouth works in B2B. In fact it has worked for years, it’s nothing new.

You can influence WOM in the B2B space by attending the conferences your clients go to. Get involved in the discussions, develop relationships and most of all listen. Submit articles to the trade publications your clients read and establish yourself as a trusted resource and get in the game of spreading the word.

An event celebrating company achievements can come off as self serving and may not generate word of mouth outside the company. However, events that celebrate customers is a much more effective way to spread word of mouth. Companies that use word of mouth marketing techniques find ways to recognize their best customers. These customers tend to be ardent advocates and evangelists for the company.

Customer appreciation events and celebrations help create a sense of community and belonging. They also foster the relationships you have with your customer.