Real estate agents get more new listings from the refferrals made by satisfied sellers, than they do from letterbox dropping flyers.

Hotel rooms are increasingly booked on the strength of previous guest reviews on Trip Advisor, not because of the room sizes and facilities published on their website.

New gym members are often persuaded to join by friends who are already members, while they mostly ignore the newspaper and TV ad campaigns in January.

We allocate marketing resources to promote our businesses in the places where we think our customers are paying attention, often without fully understanding the real impact of the investment we’re making or the potential of the opportunities we’re ignoring. It’s possible to overestimate the effect of lead generation tools and tactics while underestimating the power of a handshake.

How are your customers convinced?
Are you creating opportunities to meet and market to those prospective customers where they are?

Image by Garry Knight.