But, My Business is Purely Word of Mouth!

While writing this, I have been building websites for two decades.

If I had a dime for every time I heard, “Our website isn’t that important, as our business is all word of mouth,” I’d be absolutely rich.

So, with that said, I figured I’d write a post dispelling those myths in hopes to convert every single one of those folks to being interested in building a website! (It’s a good goal, right?)

Indirect referrals

Over coffee, your friend says: “Oh, you should go check out John’s company, Scoutly. They do awesome work.”

You drop a question in Slack asking your team for recommendations. Someone responds: “I’ve worked with Buildify before and I enjoyed it.”

You text a friend: “Hey! I know you just went through a big roofing project. Who did you use, and did you like them?” Your friend responds: “I really liked King Roof – they were quick and had a decent price too.”

Recommendations aren’t always coming through a friend’s 1:1 email directly connecting you.

A lot of recommendations are made in passing, over a meal, or in the middle of a different conversation. Those people who hear about you are either going to:

1. Google your company name and find the website, or

2. Look you up on LinkedIn.

That is the first impression.

Yes, it assuredly helps that someone they trust gave them your information – I have built my business off of word of mouth as well. When a referral goes to your website, I want that person to think: “Oh, they really do look like they would do a good job for me.”

Showcasing your team

If you have a relationship-driven sales process, the people on your team matter. All too often (especially on the B2B side of things), I see websites covered in stock photography and testimonials that are nameless and faceless.

In a relationship-driven model, I want to see your real team put on display. Heck, I want to see the ability to directly schedule with the right person who can solve a specific customer’s problem.

• Have a technical lead on your team? Put their calendar on technically oriented pages.

• Have a creative strategist on your team? Put their calendar on any of the design/creative pages.

Sure, it may lead to some spam meetings put on the calendar – that’s a simple problem to solve – just delete the events and move on with your day. If it ever becomes too much of a problem, add some extra fields to the form to filter unwanted people from getting past it.

Referenceable content

I want to see you have such a robust website that when questions come up during the sales process, you have the ability to link potential clients back to the site to have those questions answered.

Case studies should:

• Showcase team members who worked on the project

• Walk through the problems they came to you with

• Calls to action throughout the page

• Not be in PDF format

Blog posts should:

• Talk about a very specific pain point your clients have

• Show who on your team authored the post

• Have a call to action

When you are thinking about creating new content for your site, I want you to think: “How can I use this during the sales process to help guide my client through their questions?”

If referred customers stumble into that content while they are doing their research, you’re giving them assurance that you can solve their problem.