Listening To Word Of Mouth Marketing On The Street

On my recent trip to Melbourne I found myself walking the streets of the main city area several times. I did my best to be a consumer like everyone else and enjoyed all the delights that a modern and wealthy Australian city has to offer. To cut to the chase – I ate a lot!

Maybe it’s because of my business mind or maybe it’s because I love to observe human behaviour (it’s probably both), I find it very compelling to listen to other peoples conversations. You might call it eavesdropping, but I prefer to call it “market research”. I especially enjoy analysing how word of mouth, from a business point of view, travels from person to person.

Word of mouth marketing as you probably know is the best type of marketing available to any business, as long as it’s positive of course! It’s effective because from the perspective of the participants it’s not really marketing at all. It’s just a conversation. Friends helping each other out by recommending or disqualifying services or products. That’s why it works too – people trust their friends and family and will make purchasing decisions based on referrals from trusted sources.

Other forms of marketing are much more obvious compared to word of mouth and that is why I enjoy listening to “live” word of mouth – I get to experience the actual dialogue and monitor how the messages travels. Advertising is very overt, you know it when you see it or hear it (unless you are dealing with a good salesperson). Word of mouth isn’t always obvious so keeping your ears open when in the public can be a great form of market research (I told you it wasn’t eavesdropping!).

For example while disembarking from my Virgin Blue flight in Brisbane I heard one lady talking to another lady, I think her mother, and she said something along the lines of the following –

“I’ve never been late with Virgin Blue. Jetstar though I have had problems with.”

Or another instance when two old ladies were in Myer enjoying a day shopping together I noticed that one started to buy tinned cookies as I presume presents (she had about 4 of them!). Her friend seeing her buy the tins then went and bought six tins of her own after the clear recommendation she was seeing (non-verbal word of mouth or peer pressure?).

Throughout my time in Melbourne I heard countless other instances of word of mouth, which, unless you are business minded (or just strange) you probably wouldn’t even think of as business referrals – just conversations. There was the young lady recommending a restaurant she went to. Or the people talking about how good certain comedians were at the comedy festival – and how bad some of the others were.

I wasn’t immune either, on several occasions I talked about one of my favourite eateries and a gourmet chocolate shop on Lygon street, how much I didn’t like my hotel – the Victoria Hotel, and how the weather in Melbourne wasn’t very good.

While all of these stories may seem like passive conversations – people simply chatting – each recommendation or discredit affects the potential buying decisions of the people in the conversation. None of the persons involved may realize it at the time, but in the future when they are thinking of where to go out for dinner on a Saturday night, that cool Asian Fusion restaurant in Noosa recommended by a friend may end up with some new patronage thanks to word of mouth.

Why I tell you this story is to remind you how important word of mouth is and to remember that in most cases you can’t really track it conclusively. Your job as a small business owner is to continue to provide the best service you can and to be remarkable. The more remarkable you are the better you chance of being the subject of a street story – just make sure you do something special that generates positive referrals and not the reverse because word of mouth can make or break your business.

Yaro Starak
Word Of Mouth Conduit