The word of mouth has long been known as a powerful marketing tool. Have you considered using online reviews to spread the word? Reviews are very successful for Amazon. Why not use this marketing strategy for your business? Yelp offers a fantastic online review forum to market your company. This online marketing tool allows your customers to share their experience with your company by writing reviews, be it positive or negative. In addition you can communicate back and forth, post offers and announcements and add photos. And it’s free! For details take a look at http://www.yelp.com/business?country=US.

This is another great tool to add to your marketing portfolio.  It provides a great opportunity to listen and nurture your customer relationships. To get started, offer your customers an incentive to write a review. With their receipt or invoice, produce an invitation with the information needed to write the review, plus an incentive on the spot, like a freebie of some sort or coupon (Who does that? You just exceeded their expectations – that’s excellent!) And in your next e-newsletter or marketing e-mail invite your customer to write a review, give them a coupon incentive upfront too. Let everyone know that another special offer will be waiting on your Yelp profile.

To make it an even better marketing experience, make it a habit of responding to all your reviews. Set time aside each day or week, depending on your review volume. Customers love to know that their review was noticed, even if the review was negative. Negative reviews are opportunities to improve what you do and often result in a more loyal customer.

Word of mouth marketing is powerful. An online review forum makes it even more powerful. I hope you like this marketing tip and take advantage of it.

Cheers!