Chapter 5
Laser-Sighted Marketing through Social Media
Everyone is connected. Connect your business to everyone.
—Mitch Joel, author, social media expert
Marketing has been a passion of ours since we started our first business. We've always had an inherent awareness that the key to making any business truly successful lies in the marketing behind it. Many people will tell you that all the marketing you need can come from word of mouth. They claim that if you provide the best product or service, listen to your customers' needs and wants, and offer them fantastic service at every turn, their praise will take you as far as you could ever want to go. Word of mouth can have tremendous power, and it makes a lot of sense to optimize all aspects of your company to maximize word-of-mouth marketing. It is true; after all, that little is more compelling than a trusted friend's recommendation when it comes to making a buying decision.
But there is a reason why established, instantly recognized companies—such as McDonald's, Walmart, and Microsoft—continue to spend millions of dollars annually on marketing, even though people are already talking about them consistently. Word of mouth can only take you so far. For example, it might do the trick if you run a mom-and-pop operation in a small town and have no desire to grow beyond your current market. On the other hand, if you have visions of growing your business beyond limits—of taking your company from average to extraordinary and becoming a ...
