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By: Kahlia Hannah

Ever wonder why your ad didn't work? It probably had nothing to do with the ad, but with the people you were aiming it at. The average person gets bombarded by more than 1,000 ad messages each day. In no time at all, most of us learn to filter out all but a few of those messages.

On top of that, a lot of people just don't believe most of the advertising they see and hear. Your ad copy can be just right, produced to get attention, and placed on network TV and as much as half the audience simply won't believe your claims.

There is one way around all this. Good old fashioned word-of-mouth solves both problems. You can get word-of-mouth on its own, or combine it with advertising for the mother of all promotion.

We all pay attention when a friend tells about a product or service they like. We also tend to believe what our friends, relatives, and co-workers say.

You have the most powerful promotion power available when one friend tells another. As much as 80 percent of all sales depend on the advice of someone the customer knows.

The formula for getting word-of-mouth is simple. Give customers more than they expect.

If you buy a window washing gadget with the expectation it will clean your windows, you will be doubly impressed if it cleans especially well without much effort. You will pass the word on to neighbors, people at work, and family members.

That is only the first step. The second step comes when those people tell even more people. Studies have shown that 100 or more can eventually hear your story.

Don't cancel your advertising. You can use word-of-mouth along with your advertising for one giant wallop of promotion. For many years we have known that when someone says they heard something on the radio, saw something on TV, or read it in the newspaper, they most likely heard it from a friend.

Most of us get so much information each day that we forget where we got it all. It is often the case that the new product we think we read about in an ezine was actually introduced to us by a co-worker who read about it in an ezine.

Media experts call this principle multi-step flow. It's one of the main ingredients of what can make media so effective. Tailor your ads and PR to create talk. The more your audience talks about your information or offer, the more word-of-mouth it will create.

There are plenty of cases down through the years where one ad started word-of-mouth, snowballing into widespread awareness that resulted in lots of sales.

Launch your own word-of-mouth campaign by first providing customers and prospects with MORE than they expect. It could be a better price, a bigger helping, or simply friendly advice. Then run ads that will get people talking, often by showing how you provide more than expected.

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