Is Your Business a Well-Kept Secret?
| Share |
Everyone has one. It might be a favorite restaurant, or a bar that only you know about. It’s a great little place to hang out, it’s never crowded and the people are friendly. The food is good and the drinks are cheap. The service is personal and the place is always clean.
In five years, that place is going to change. It’s going to become crowded, expand, hire new staff and raise their prices. Either that, or it’s going to shut it’s doors for good.
You see, in business, it’s never good to be a well-kept secret. You need loyal customers, to be sure; but you need a certain amount of them to become, and remain successful.
You might have a couple dozen die-hard fans at your website who think you’re the dog’s bollocks, but if that fan base doesn’t grow your site is going to tank.
After all, that’s why we spend so much time trying to drive traffic to our sites, isn’t it? That’s why we do article marketing, comment on other blogs, use and abuse social media and pay for advertising.
The problem is this: that well-kept secret restaurant of yours might be located on a main thoroughfare. There might be plenty of people who drive by it every day, see the signs, and never stop in.
Why is that? Because the restaurant is an unknown quantity. They don’t know whether the service sucks or whether the food tastes horrible. They need something else to convince them.
That’s where your couple dozen die-hard fans come in. The oldest and best proven marketing technique in the history of business is simple word of mouth. You need to recruit those fans, get them to talk about your site, your product or your business. Get them to rave about it on message boards, convince them to tell their friends and coworkers.
Word of mouth alone doesn’t lead to more sales. However, when you combine it with increased traffic, you’re bound to see an upswing.
These two elements – customer loyalty and customer recruitment – are the twin imperatives of any successful business marketing campaign.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
John Cow dot ComIs Your Business a Well-Kept Secret?Posted: 11 Nov 2008 12:35 PM CST
Around the Web Building SEO Momentum by Using A Consistent Site Structure …Is Your Business a Well-Kept Secret?Everyone has one. It might be a favorite restaurant, or a bar that only you know about. Its a great… Link Building and Blog Pitching Euphemisms Today with blog pitching for link building and awareness you just can
I like watching food network a lot. Watching the show Kitchen Nghtmares is great because Gordon Ramsey takes the staff from these restaurant into the community to create buzz for them.
Its a really cool way to create excitement especially if they are going to freature a new dish or a signature dish that is simple.
I think the idea if using business cards is good because they just seem to float around endlessly.
+1 for the cow. My friend, traffic is there and will always be there, but how do you get people to stop by and take the time have a look at what you have to offer? I agree, word of mouth helps a lot and that’s why you have to pump good content on a consistent basis. You can’t just be good once in a while, because when a new visitor comes in and see your content of the day and that day happens to be an average day, then it’s not going to convert into a returning visitor or that visitor is not going to talk about you.
If you’re going to pump crappy stuff, don’t pump, keep the good stuff until you have better or equal content to replace it.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but that good content will get noticed and it is exponential after that!
I have one favorite restaurant in Indonesia. I love to eat there. Before thats restaurant become my favorite, i get recommendation from my friend.
I cool, the ‘gossip’ spread like quickly.
She (the owner) not marketers in formal definition. But in fact, she can make her restaurant familiar and word to mouth working exelent.
Just imagine that my visitor can help me to spread my blog and share the benefit to the other.
Still learn how to do that…
thank’s for remembering me again
Funny, this reminded me of Gordon Ramsay too. Maybe your use of the word “bullocks” in the post eh?
Either way, I think the blogging community in general is good about spreading the word in this manner.
Many bloggers are not only supportive, but vocal about it too.
Vocal bloggers draw mad traffic.
Fritz
“That’s why we do article marketing, comment on other blogs, use and abuse social media and pay for advertising.”
These are the elegant traffic driving tactics at its finest
Article marketing has worked the best for me, you write a great article and it gets picked up by other sites then other sites pick it up from them and it goes on from there. Commenting on blogs has also worked well especially this blog, I enjoy reading your post. Thank You.
It is hard when the well kept secret is making you lots of money and by giving it out you will lose money to the people who you are teaching.
But I see what you mean…some tips on this would be a great idea….please
Hi Jhon, it’s true that you say. The problem is try to make that our fans o loyal costumers, visitors, etc speak about our product or service. We need motivate to do that!
Sorry for the bad english
. Reggards from Peru
This is a very good analogy. I was stressing about my main blog for ages as I had some good followers but could not get further than that.
However I realized that it wasn’t a good business model so in some ways it could be said that I almost shut the doors.
However I continued with other business and now my main blog, which I mainly just blog on for fun, has started to trickle in more income without me realizing!
If something isn’t working I suggest you just put it to the slow and occasional pile… you never know it may just perk up one day without you realizing!
I have more aggressive business models for some of my other blogs and that works too.
Thanks Mr Cow., great post.
Good Point There , making a loyal costumer/visitor is a must in business i’m i right
So true John, you got keep plugging away with great content and ever increasing traffic otherwise you just gonna die. Now all I’ve got to do is find someone like Ben who can post great stuff to my blogs while I’m on the beach and I’m home free
Google and Business are plainly popularity contest. You could have been the Finest kickball player but if no one points to you, you don’t get picked.
I agree. People like John Chow get more traffic mostly by word of mouth. A blogger can increase his fan-following mainly by following their blogs and rewarding them.
It’s funny you wrote this because the other day my son was in a college class and some guy was telling his friend how he bought a laptop from this website, and my son recognized it as one of my niche sites. The guy went on and on raving about the site and how much money he saved while recommending it to his friend. That was very cool and shows you what a small world it really is.
JR – That would have been pretty funny.
When someone else, mentions your site or blog, you feel some sort of joy.