Word of Mouth Marketing.

By: TRO... Travel Research Online is a free service to all professional travel agents offering more than 450 destination guides, epostcards and other marketing and research tools.

Word of Mouth marketing is powerful, because it comes from third parties and carries an inherent credibility. While word of mouth marketing happens with or without you, there are things that you can do to amplify the process to ensure that it happens in such a way as to be heard by a maximum number of people in a compressed and manageable time frame.

For the next few Tips columns, we are going to discuss how to effectively and ethically promote word of mouth.

To get a grip on word of mouth marketing, you must first understand why people say nice things about you:

Reason #1:
They like your servicePositive word of mouth depends on people liking what you do and wanting to support your efforts. Practice insanely great customer service skills like the ones we discuss here every day. At the root of good customer service is your love of what you do. If you are inspired, you clients will be too.

Reason #2:
They are a part of your story.They don't think of you as a travel agent; they think of you as their travel agent. You have managed to incorporate them into your sphere of influence. They don't just like your services, they now associate you with the very idea of travel. When they think of "travel" they think of you.

Reason #3:
People like to talkPeople love to give advice, to talk about the things they like. When a person finds a great product or service, recommending it to others, being the first "in the know" makes them feel special.

Understanding why people talk about a product or a service naturally gives you an opportunity to craft the way they deliver the message. Better yet, you can do it quite openly.

The process begins simply, just ASK your clients to do it! Ask them for referrals and testimonials. Ask them to tell their friends about you. Ask your clients to spread the word. Ask them to hand out your business cards.

Word of Mouth - it happens with or without you, so ask for a little help from your friends.