Why you can’t rely on word of mouth

In this Vlog, Grant explains that whilst people still talk face to face and on the telephone, today the nature of word of mouth has changed and business can’t ignore it.

Word of mouth ain’t what it used to be.

Years ago, many businesses would rely on word of mouth and not do any proactive comms. But if you think about it, most word of mouth would happen over a telephone or face to face. I don’t recall many people writing letters or asking their colleagues for recommendations.

Of course people still talk face to face and on the telephone, but today the nature of word of mouth has changed. So much of what we share has gone online and of course, therefore, that’s true of word of mouth. They’ll look at likes, reviews, testimonials and who’s in contact with whom, in order to decide which companies they want to approach – often without asking a single person.

Of course, all of that is still word of mouth, but it’s baked into the online ecosystem without having to ask someone face to face. So companies today that rely on word of mouth, can no longer just avoid communications. They have to have a web presence, write content which will be shared, get reviews, elicit testimonials to make sure they’re seen in our ecosystem when someone is, defacto, looking for a recommendation. So when we say word of mouth ain’t what it used to be, we don’t mean that businesses can’t rely on it, we mean they can’t be passive anymore.
That word of mouth has gone online and, therefore, in order to get it, it has to be part of a proactive communication strategy.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English