If you want to develop an effective word-of-mouth campaign, you’ll need to have an arsenal of credibility-enhancing materials at your disposal to make the most of every networking opportunity.
Below is a checklist of items you may already have available or wish to begin assembling, which can be used as collateral materials in developing your desired image.
- Testimonial letters from satisfied clients
- Photos of yourself and your office facilities, equipment and products
- Photos of your key customers
- Photos of awards and certificates you and your staff have earned
- Articles in which you’re mentioned
- Articles you have published
- A one-page, faxable flier
- Audio or videos you have used
- Any of your new-product announcements or press releases that have been published
- Copies of other display advertisements that you’ve used (text from radio or TV spots)
- Advertisements that you’ve run
- A list of your memberships and affiliations
- Product catalogs you use
- Current brochures, circulars and data sheets
- Question-and-answer sheets
- Logos, trademarks, service marks, patterns, designs you’ve used
- Your letterhead and stationery
- Your annual report, capability statement and prospectus
- Newsletters or news-type publications you use
- Your motto, mission statement or service pledge
- Client or customer proposals and bid sheets
- Survey results by you or others
- Presentation notes or slides and PowerPoint presentations
- Marketing letters you wrote to clients
- Generic materials developed by your associations
- Articles on trends affecting your target market
- Posters, banners and display materials used at trade shows
Be sure to store your networking materials in a bin or a set of shelves built to make it easy to retrieve frequently used documents. This equipment greatly aids any company’s word-of-mouth campaign and ability to respond quickly when necessary.
Note: This is not a complete list of items needed to market your business. The items in this list are focused on enhancing your networking activities.
![[Facebook]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[LinkedIn]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[Mixx]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/mixx.png)
![[Reddit]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Technorati]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Twitter]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Yahoo!]](https://networking.entrepreneur.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
20 Responses to “Have You Made Your Word-of-Mouth Campaign Checklist?”
Leave a Reply
April 15th, 2010 at 6:36 am
Its great to see such a comprehensive list. I think the challenge is how do you manage and organize all of this content. Any thoughts about software tools for this? Bins and shelves are great, but would probably be better to have an electronic management system.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:53 am
This is an excellent list! I better get to work on gathering all this stuff! I DID need something to add to my TO DO list
LOL…Thanks Ivan!
April 15th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
Ivan, great list. I love lists like this because it provides a good foundation to start with. Not all items on this list would be applicable to all businesses, but at least it helps steer the mind toward alternative word of mouth means whihc would of never been thought of if not for lists like this. Thanks.
April 15th, 2010 at 12:43 pm
Ivan, I read through your list with great interest, but I was shocked when I reached the end and you said to “store your networking materials in a bin or a set of shelves built to make it easy to retrieve frequently used documents”. In this day and age I would agree to have all of these things at your fingertips, but in electronic format to be instantly fired out to contacts without the need to generate any more paper than is necessary. Also fax is a dying medium, and while I agree material should be easy to read with lots of white space, faxing promotional material in my circle is generally frowned upon and seen as unprofessional or old fashioned.
I would also add to your list to have material that is mobile device friendly, as in easy to read in a generally accepted mobile format. Also have material ready on your mobile device available for you to e-mail from anywhere.
April 16th, 2010 at 1:00 am
Thanks for providing us with this wonderful list; it got my brain going. It’s a great idea to start thinking of all the collateral you’ll need even as you’re starting your business. I’m curious about how to get access to customer surveys that are in your market but that you haven’t conducted yourself.
April 16th, 2010 at 6:01 am
The list contained some new ideas I never thought of before. Good post and should be useful.
April 18th, 2010 at 12:02 pm
Ivan, great list. I love lists like this because it provides a good foundation to start with. Not all items on this list would be applicable to all businesses, but at least it helps steer the mind toward alternative word of mouth means whihc would of never been thought of if not for lists like this. Thanks.
April 18th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Ivan, I read through your list with great interest, but I was shocked when I reached the end and you said to “store your networking materials in a bin or a set of shelves built to make it easy to retrieve frequently used documents”. In this day and age I would agree to have all of these things at your fingertips, but in electronic format to be instantly fired out to contacts without the need to generate any more paper than is necessary. Also fax is a dying medium, and while I agree material should be easy to read with lots of white space, faxing promotional material in my circle is generally frowned upon and seen as unprofessional or old fashioned.
I would also add to your list to have material that is mobile device friendly, as in easy to read in a generally accepted mobile format. Also have material ready on your mobile device available for you to e-mail from anywhere.
April 18th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Amy – yes of course keeping this on your computer is a good idea. However, many people also keep real, actual, touchable, 3 dimensional, hard copies of some marketing materials such as brochures. It is a good idea to have these hard copy material in one place.
Ivan
April 20th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
Thanks for the list, at first blush a little daunting but one piece at a time is always my rule of thumb.
Lateef mentions electronic storage rather than bins, and I’m all for keeping paper to a minimum. There are a fair number of programs available that can handle this nicely. My personal favorite is PaperPort by Nuance. Low cost, easy to use, easy to e-mail, fax or PDF documents right from within the product. Also, I find the OCR function is great for quickly converting text in an image into a text document and the ability to search on any text in a document great features. The trick in any of these things is making sure you are set up your filing properly to start.
April 24th, 2010 at 1:27 pm
The list contained some new ideas I never thought of before. Good post and should be useful.
April 25th, 2010 at 2:18 am
This is an excellent list! I better get to work on gathering all this stuff! I DID need something to add to my TO DO list
LOL…Thanks Ivan!
April 25th, 2010 at 6:04 am
Thanks for providing us with this wonderful list; it got my brain going. It’s a great idea to start thinking of all the collateral you’ll need even as you’re starting your business. I’m curious about how to get access to customer surveys that are in your market but that you haven’t conducted yourself.
April 26th, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Thanks for the list, at first blush a little daunting but one piece at a time is always my rule of thumb.
Lateef mentions electronic storage rather than bins, and I’m all for keeping paper to a minimum. There are a fair number of programs available that can handle this nicely. My personal favorite is PaperPort by Nuance. Low cost, easy to use, easy to e-mail, fax or PDF documents right from within the product. Also, I find the OCR function is great for quickly converting text in an image into a text document and the ability to search on any text in a document great features. The trick in any of these things is making sure you are set up your filing properly to start.
April 27th, 2010 at 12:27 am
Thanks for providing us with this wonderful list; it got my brain going. It’s a great idea to start thinking of all the collateral you’ll need even as you’re starting your business. I’m curious about how to get access to customer surveys that are in your market but that you haven’t conducted yourself.
April 27th, 2010 at 7:45 am
Ivan, great list. I love lists like this because it provides a good foundation to start with. Not all items on this list would be applicable to all businesses, but at least it helps steer the mind toward alternative word of mouth means whihc would of never been thought of if not for lists like this. Thanks.
April 27th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
Ivan, great list. I love lists like this because it provides a good foundation to start with. Not all items on this list would be applicable to all businesses, but at least it helps steer the mind toward alternative word of mouth means whihc would of never been thought of if not for lists like this. Thanks.
April 27th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
The list contained some new ideas I never thought of before. Good post and should be useful.
June 16th, 2010 at 1:08 am
[...] Get the whole checklist at Dr. Misner’s Networking Now blog at Entrepreneur.com. [...]
June 16th, 2010 at 2:49 am
[...] Get the whole checklist at Dr. Misner’s Networking Now blog at Entrepreneur.com. [...]