Who are your people?
Study after study tells us that no channel - not digital advertising, not influencer marketing, not your Net Promoter Score - can match personal Word of Mouth when it comes to finding new customers. Not only are consumers 77% more likely to buy a product recommended by a friend, but new customers referred via word of mouth stay customers longer, and are much more likely to refer new business themselves.
But here's the trick: just 5% of your customers are responsible for nearly all of your word-of-mouth business.
Of course, if you're already running a Net Promoter Score (NPS), finding this 5% should be easy, right? You're directly asking them if they'd recommend your product. The ones who say "yes" must be the heroes, right?
Unfortunately, no. Studies also show that only about 1 in 4 customers who say they'll recommend a product actually do. NPS measures product satisfaction, not behavior. It aligns with their appreciation of your product. In order to recommend it, they require two more ingredients:
- Personal trust in your brand.
- Incentives.
That's the ballgame: build a trusting relationship with consumers who appreciate your product and have the capacity to find new customers, and give them a reason to do it.
Unlock your secret weapon.
At Conway Consulting, we have decades of experience applying the tactics of political organizing to businesses. We help organizations turn their loyal customers into product evangelists recruiting new customers. And what's more, it costs a fraction of the price of ads and influencer marketing. Here's how we do it:
- We listen closely to understand your business goals, culture, and risk landscape.
- We analyze the data to identify the behaviors and systems that separate passive customers from active advocates.
- We build internal tools, workflows, and communication practices that instil personal, human-to-human trust and connection.
- We operationalize incentives - primarily social proof - to encourage and reward customer referrals.
Our corporate contracts typically take one of two forms:
- Strategic partnerships, where we work alongside leadership to align systems, communications, and decision-making over time.
- Targeted engagements, where we diagnose and repair a specific breakdown in trust, credibility, or internal alignment.
If you’re not sure which is right for your organization, that’s okay.