SPI 932: How to Get Shares and Word of Mouth Growth

SPI 932: How to Get Shares and Word of Mouth Growth

Pat Flynn: Alright, I want you to do something for me. I want you to think about the last three things that you bought online. It could be anything, a course, a book, a gadget, whatever it might be. Okay, you got it in your head? Now, here’s your question. How did you discover those products or services? I’m willing to bet that at least two of them came in from a recommendation.

Maybe a friend shared it on their Instagram story. Maybe a YouTuber you trust mentioned it. Maybe somebody in a Facebook group said, hey, you have to try this. This is word of mouth marketing. And here’s the crazy part, it’s not just the most powerful form of marketing, it’s also completely free. No ad spend, no fancy funnels, no complicated automation sequences, which are important, we’ve talked about these things before, but just like people talking to people about things they love, this is a marketing strategy that works.

And today we’re going to go deep on how word of mouth really works, why it’s even more powerful today in our digital age than it was when your grandparents were passing along recommendations at the local diner, and most importantly, how you can spark it for your own business. How to get your people to share your business via word of mouth.

I’m going to share some real stories from my own journey, including how a single podcast listener turned into my biggest advocate and brought in over $100,000 in revenue just by talking to her friends. And man, you heard that right. $100,000 from one person’s word of mouth. So whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been in business for years, stick around because this episode might just change how you think about growing your audience forever.

And in my opinion, this may be one of the most important episodes because of the age that we live in now, the age of AI, because that’s, man, making it very difficult to do all these traditional digital marketing things like SEO and, you know, funnels and things like that, which again are important, but I think this is more important.

Let’s do this. Let’s start, however, with a little history lesson, because I think understanding where word of mouth comes from is going to help us understand why it’s so powerful today. And before there was Google, before TV or even radio, how did great ideas spread? How did people discover new products, new services, or new opportunities?

Word of mouth, right? Pure and simple. Think about it. Every major movement in history started with conversations. The renaissance spread through scholars talking to each other in coffee houses and things like that, right? The American Revolution was sparked by people gathering in taverns and sharing ideas.

Even the early days of the internet were built on word of mouth. People telling their friends about this cool new thing called email. Or when I was going to college, this new cool thing called Facebook. And here’s what’s fascinating. Even though we live in this hyper connected digital world where we’re constantly being bombarded with thousands of marketing messages literally every day, word of mouth is still the most trusted form of marketing.

Nielsen research shows that 92 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know over any other form of advertising. 92%! That’s huge. Yet we continually get fed all kinds of advertising every single day. So let me put this in perspective. If I run a Facebook ad, for example, maybe 5-10 percent of people who will see it will trust it enough to click.

Not to mention then go to a sales page and trust that enough to click to a checkout process and then trust that enough to then actually make a sale. But if your friend recommends something to you, you’re going to at least check it out, right? Now I experienced this firsthand when I started my Pokemon YouTube channel, Deep Pocket Monster.

Now I wasn’t trying to build a business. I was just sharing my passion for collecting cards. I was opening packs, doing this with my family and some friends and talking about the hobby, sharing what I was learning as I was going. And I was just having fun with it. But, then something magical started happening.

People began talking about the channel online. In their own channels. On groups. On Facebook. On LinkedIn. On Reddit. They shared by videos and Discord servers. Parents would tell other parents about this family friendly Pokemon content that their kids loved watching. And then they were hooked and would tell their friends as well.

And I’ve never, ever paid for a single ad. I never did any influencer partnerships back in the day. I never even asked people to share my videos. The entire channel, which now has over 2.25 million subscribers, it grew purely through the algorithms, yes, but definitely through word of mouth. People always tell me that they share the channel with their friends, they have groups of friends over and they watch the videos together.

And this word of mouth marketing, even though it’s in the digital world, even though it’s on the algorithmic platform of YouTube, we’ve gotten people excited. We’ve gotten people to want to share this content with others. They can’t help but do so, and that’s the power of what we are talking about today.

When you create something that’s genuinely entertaining, genuinely helps people, they become your marketing team without you even asking.

Now, let’s dig in a little bit deeper on the why. Why is word of mouth so powerful? I think there’s three main reasons. It’s trusted, right? When your friend recommends something, there’s no ulterior motive. There’s no getting paid. There’s not anything. They’re not trying to sell you anything and get paid for it.

I mean, there is affiliate marketing, and that can be done in a genuine manner as well. But most of the time, people are genuinely believing it will help or entertain you, or at least solve a problem that you have. Second, inherently, it’s targeted, because your friend knows you. They understand your problems, your interests, your situation.

You’re probably friends because you have some stuff in common already, and their recommendation is naturally relevant to your life. And third, it’s emotional. When someone shares something with you, they’re not just sharing information, they’re sharing an experience. There’s context there. There’s a feeling, a maybe even transformation that they’ve had that they want to pass forward.

They’re saying, hey, this made me feel something and I think it might make you feel something too. Now, the internet didn’t change the fundamental principles of word of mouth, but man, it kind of like gave it rocket fuel, right? Before the internet, if you had great experiences at a restaurant, you might tell 5-10 people around you.

Today, you can post about it on Instagram and reach hundreds of thousands of people almost in an instant. You can leave a review on Yelp that stays on there forever. You can make a TikTok video that goes viral and reaches millions of people. But here’s what most people seem to miss. The internet also made word of mouth more complex.

It’s not just about one person telling another person anymore. It’s about creating content that is so valuable, so, in the words of Seth Godin, remarkable, that people feel compelled to share it with their networks.

So let me share you a story that perfectly illustrates this. A few years ago, I got an email from a woman named Jennifer, and she’s been listening to the podcast for, you know, less than a year, actually.

And then she joined SPI Pro, our community. It’s no longer known as SPI Pro, but this is when we launched it back in 2021, no 2020. We launched SPI Pro in 2020. We were going to launch it in 2021, but we fast forwarded that because of COVID, because people were craving connection. Anyway, that’s a different story.

Anyway, she’d been listening to the podcast for a while, joined SPI Pro, and that was our premium membership. Today, it’s just the SPI Community with the Superfans system embedded inside of it. But Jennifer didn’t just join quietly and consume the content. She was so excited about the value that she was getting inside of this that she started talking about it everywhere.

She mentioned it in her mastermind group. She shared screenshots of helpful advice inside of the Facebook group that she owned and even groups that she was a part of. She even brought it up at local networking meetups that she was a part of. The crazy thing was I didn’t know any of this was happening at the time, but over the next year, I started getting emails from members, new members, who mentioned Jennifer.

Hey, Jennifer told me about SPI Pro. Jennifer, Jennifer, Jennifer, like I didn’t know she was this, quote, influencer, and in her eyes she wasn’t an influencer, but in a way we all are influencers, and that’s the beauty of this. Any one person that you connect with has their own ring of potential influence.

And if you offer something of value, something that maybe they were looking for that they hadn’t found yet until they found you, something that is entertaining enough that resonates with their circles as well, that’s how word of mouth can spread. And by the end of that year, I remember I could trace at least, I don’t know, 10 to 15 new SPI Pro members directly back to Jennifer’s recommendations.

And with our pricing at the time, and, and, you know, some of those people are even still in the community now, that’s well over $100,000 in revenue from one person’s word of mouth.

This happened back in the architecture days. You might remember the story in Superfans. Somebody who was a student of mine or who purchased my ebook study guide, who then shared that guide with every single person in her firm and made sure to make sure that they purchased my guide.

And then she didn’t just share it and gave it to them. She made sure that everybody else in her firm purchased my guide as well. That one person ended up turning into dozens of sales. The crazy part is I didn’t ask any of these people to do this. I never paid them, although I did send them thank you cards and also some cookies, but I never knew it was happening until people started mentioning it.

That is crazy. That is the power of word of mouth in the digital age. One person’s enthusiasm can create a ripple effect and it might not be so obvious at the time. Sometimes it is, right? One person finds you and they happen to have a large following and they share it and boom. And that is of course like a holy grail when that happens.

But you create great content, you show up consistently, you build relationships, until that happens naturally. You don’t want to try to manufacture this. You show up and you make it an inevitable.

Today’s word of mouth happens now across multiple channels. Social media shares, stories, private group chats, DMs, email forwards, comments, reviews, podcast mentions, video testimonials, YouTube, Reels, Facebook, Snapchat, and even face to face conversations, conferences.

The key is understanding that each channel works differently. A share on X is different from a private text message, which is different from a YouTube comment, which is different than a private Facebook group. Your job as a business owner is to create content and experiences that fit naturally into these different sharing contexts.

So let’s dig into the psychology of it. Why people share. This is crucial to understand as well. They don’t share because they just want to help somebody. There is a lot more to it. It’s not random. And if you understand why people share, you can create content that naturally gets shared. So first, people want to look smart or helpful.

Sharing is a very selfish thing. It’s interesting to think about it that way, but it is. I think sharing is great. I share all the time and I want to help people, but also I know that helping people also helps me too. That is a byproduct of it. If that’s the reason why you do it though, if you consciously go, Ooh, I’m going to share this because I know I’m going to get something back in return.

Well, then it’s a little bit different, right? There’s a little bit of a gray area here, but. When someone shares something, they’re essentially saying to their network, Look what I found! I’m the person who discovers this valuable thing, and now I want to share it with you. They want to be seen as a curator.

Somebody who’s plugged in and finds the good stuff. And becomes a resource for that. That helps with status, that helps with authority, and it also helps you feel more connected. And those aren’t bad things. Second, speaking of connection, that’s what they want, you know, sharing creates bonds. When I share a podcast episode with a friend, I’m not just sharing information, I’m sharing hey, I thought of you when I heard this, and this reminded me of your situation.

It’s a way to strengthen relationships. So if you can create content that helps people strengthen relationships, that’s gonna be incredible and helps you and helps the word of mouth gain velocity. And third, they want to be a part of something bigger, right? People love being early adopters. This is an important one.

They love being early to share something. They want to be the first to let people know, the announcer, being part of a movement, being in the know about something special. When they share your content, they’re inviting others. To join something they’re excited about, but it doesn’t have to be big. It could be, like, just take, for example, anybody who comes to California to meet a friend and you go to In N Out, what does that friend who has been to In N Out before, who’s treating you for the first time, say?

They say, oh, I gotta tell you about something. It’s the secret menu at In N Out. You can get your fries animal style, you can get your burger animal style, it’s not on the menu, but man, let me be the person to share with you this really cool thing. And yeah, we want to do that because maybe our friend would want something animal style, but it also shows that we’re in the know.

And that’s just a clear example of how things happen online. Now the secret sauce, so to speak, is that people only share things that make them feel something. And I learned this lesson the hard way early in my business. I was creating what I thought was valuable content, right? Tons of lists of tips and strategies and how tos.

It was great information, but it really wasn’t getting shared much. It was informative, but it wasn’t really emotional. And then I started sharing some more personal stories. I talked about getting laid off from my architecture job and how scared I was. I shared my struggles with imposter syndrome. I opened up about the challenges of balancing business and family, about the time I almost quit because a hater was attacking me online, the time that my wife and I got pregnant without any health insurance.

And what was crazy was people started to share those stories. A lot. Why? Well, because these stories made them feel something. They could relate. They saw themselves in my struggles and in my victories. And they thought, hey, if Pat can overcome this, maybe I can too. And that’s exactly what happened.

The most shared piece of content I’ve ever created wasn’t a how to guide or strategy post. It was actually a vulnerable story that I captured on a podcast episode. Episode 122 of the SPI podcast here with Shane and Jocelyn Sams. My absolute most shared and listened to piece of content. Why? Well, it’s interesting because I’ve interviewed other people like Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk and those episodes with big name celebrities on the show combined don’t add up to the number of listens and shares on Shane and Jocelyn’s story. Shane and Jocelyn Sams, who I will be forever grateful for because them opening up and sharing their story about being teachers in the Midwest and feeling so trapped and actually having a story that I shared in my book, Lean Learning, where Shane found that a person at a daycare was abusing the kids and scaring the kids to death.

Yet his job was not allowing him to go out and help. It really made them investigate the idea of working for themselves and building a business. And then they told that story and they became millionaires. That was a very shareable story.

So what makes a piece of content shareable? I’ve identified five key elements over the number of years I’ve been doing this. So let me share it with you.

First, it’s remarkable, right? Literally worth making a remark about. It’s different. It’s unexpected or surprising in some way. And this is very important because a lot of us are just sharing stuff that has been shared before. We’re doing stuff that other people are already doing as well.

But what makes it remarkable? Let me list that again. It’s different. It’s unexpected or surprising in some way.

Second, it’s useful. It might solve a problem or answers a question that people have. Some content may have all five of these things. Some may just have one, but do it really well. First, it’s remarkable. Second, it’s useful.

Third, it’s emotional. It makes people feel something, some level of joy, inspiration, even anger, surprise, whatever it might be. It makes people feel. And if you can move people emotionally, you can move them into a call to action of any kind.

Fourth, it’s easy to share. And this is important.

A lot of times when we create stories or other things like this, we don’t actually have a mechanism. This is what was difficult with podcasting. It was often hard to share unless you knew what you were doing and you know, you had an email list and all those kinds of things because podcasting people don’t just like click a button to share it often as much as they do social posts.

Having it be easy to share, the mechanics of sharing being simple. And you’ve made it clear, you’ve actually given a call to action to share. That makes it easy to share. And fifth, it makes the sharer look good. Sharing it reflects positively on them and their judgment. The best content hits multiple, but the most viral can hit all five.

So now let’s get practical, right? We’ve talked about the more psychological level of sharing and word of mouth and what makes content explode, but let’s now get a little practical. How do you actually spark word of mouth for your business? I’m going to give you some strategies that I’ve used and seen work.

Strategy number one, finding those remarkable moments. Now, I don’t mean you have to do something crazy or expensive. I mean, you need to exceed expectations in small but meaningful ways.

So let me give you an example. When somebody joins our community at SPI, right? You don’t just get access to the content and you’re kind of left on your own. You’ll see an onboarding process. You feel welcomed. You feel connection. You get information to share where to go to find people and see more immediately, why you belong. It’s the equivalent of if you were ever a freshman in the dorms and in college and you go in there, how scary that can be because you’re coming from an outside place and there are people there and it can be scary, but the moment a person welcomes you, maybe an RA or maybe another person who’s in the dorm, they welcome you. You immediately start to feel safer. You start to believe that you’re in the right place because there are other people like you in there.

Here’s another example. At Card Party, right? These are the live Pokemon events that I host with 8,000 to 10,000 people. We don’t just have vendors selling cards. We have a stage show. We have surprise moments. We create opportunities for fun things to happen on stage, right? Games like Price is Right style. And people share those. They love those. They talk about those. In the first two Card Parties, we actually did some group world records, Guinness world records. So actually everybody who attended those first two events could go home and say that they were a Guinness world record holder.

We do big giveaways. There’s live entertainment. We take it up a notch and we make it remarkable. People can’t help but post about these unexpected experiences because it’s so different than other events they’ve been to. They’re pulling out their phones or taking videos, sharing stories, because we gave them something to talk about.

And the key is to think about every touch point in your customer journey and ask, how can we make this moment worth talking about? The next strategy is to make sharing rewarding. There’s a few ways to do that. You could train your audience that when they share you, you can thank them for that. And if you’re a smaller brand, this is great because you can do that with more people.

With a larger brand, it’s almost impossible to hit everybody who replies or comments or shares and thank them for that. But if you’re small, I mean, send a direct message to people who just quickly share your stuff because, man, that can start a really long term relationship with them. Give people a reason to share that makes them look good.

Don’t just say, please share this, that’s generic and self serving, right? Instead, say something like, if you know somebody who’s struggling to start their podcast, share this with them. It might be exactly what they need to hear today, right? You’re not asking people to do you a favor. You’re asking them to help others, and that’s a much more compelling request.

And again, thank people who share your content. Even if you spotlight just one or two people. It demonstrates that you are paying attention and are, in a way, rewarding, with a sense of belonging, with a sense of attention to those who do take action with you.

Next, build a community, not just an audience, right?

Audiences consume, communities participate, and by participation, they by proxy also share. In the SPI community, we don’t just share content, we facilitate conversations, we ask questions, we encourage members to help each other, we celebrate wins together. When people feel like they’re a part of something, they naturally want to invite others to join.

The members share wins with each other every single week, and we love it. And oftentimes, they do it on their own, and we celebrate that.

Next, tell stories worth retelling. Stories are the original viral content. Memorable, they’re emotional and they’re easy to pass along, but not all stories are created equal.

The best stories for word of mouth, they’re relatable. Your audience sees themselves in the story. They have a clear transformation. There’s a before and an after that people can understand. They’ve either gone through it themselves or they want to go through that themselves too. Those are the stories that people will remember because again, they’re relatable.

If it’s not relatable, why would they remember it? And if they can remember it, they are likely to retell it. Another strategy is to ask for the share, but do it in a right way, right? Don’t be afraid to ask for shares, but connect the sharing to value for others. I mentioned this before, but I’m reiterating it here.

Try something like, this strategy helped me double my email list in three months. And if you think it could help somebody in your network, feel free to pass it along. Or maybe, I wish somebody had told me about this when I was starting out. So if you know somebody who’s just beginning their entrepreneurial journey, would you share this with them?

So you’re positioning the share as a way to help others, not as a way to help you. That makes all the difference.

Now how do you measure something as organic as word of mouth? It’s definitely trickier than tracking ad clicks, but it’s not impossible. So looking for direct referral traffic to your website, if you’re looking at the analytics, people typing in your URL or clicking links that aren’t from your marketing campaigns, that’s one way to potentially gauge.

It’s not a perfect way to do it, but it is a signal. You can look also in your analytics for people who are searching up the name of your brand in Google, right? They’re not going to the domain directly, but they’re using search terms with your brand name or real name in it to then find you. That’s another way that’s similar to determine if word of mouth seems to be working or not.

And the more that people are doing that, the more word of mouth is happening. Again, it’s not a perfect gauge, but it’s something that can help you understand. You can look out for comments. This isn’t, again, something that is scalable, but it is something that, yes, AI can help you with. Look out for comments that say things like, my friend told me this, or somebody recommended your podcast.

You know, you could survey, of course, and find information that way about how they discovered you. That’s also great. And there are analytics on social media that you could pay attention to as well, from shares to saves and those kinds of things. I also pay attention to the language people use when they contact me.

When somebody says, I heard about you from, or somebody in my mastermind group recommended, again, a signal that word of mouth is happening in real time. When you identify your word of mouth champions, this is very important, the champions in your brand, the people in your brand who consistently share and recommend your work, nurture those relationships.

Find out who those people are. These are your superfans, and they are worth their weight in gold. Send them early access to new content. Ask for their feedback. Feature their success stories. The more value they feel, the more they’re going to continue to advocate for you. Right?

Like Jennifer, the person who I mentioned earlier, who brought in over 100, 000 in revenue to the SPI Community, or through the SPI Community. You know, I remember sending her advanced copies of my book and asking her for input. And she’s moved on from the SPI Community now, but she got exactly what she needed out of it.

And I know you could, too. So come over to the SPI community if you haven’t already, SmartPassiveIncome.com/community, because I’d love to build a relationship with you. And we have Liz there, who you might’ve heard in the last couple episodes, who’s amazing. She’s getting super involved with helping foster this incredible and growing community that is SPI.

Because we want to help you build your community. And find your superfans as well. So let me wrap up with the key takeaways, because I want you to walk away with actionable insights that you could literally use right now. So first, word of mouth, still the most powerful form of marketing, and the internet has made it more powerful than ever, right?

It scales that ability to have word of mouth happen. One person’s recommendation can now reach hundreds of thousands of people instantly.

Second, people share things that make them feel something and make them look good to their network. So, focus on creating content that’s emotional, relatable, useful, and remarkable.

Third, you could spark that word of mouth by creating a remarkable moment and making it easy to share, having a call to action to share, but making it not a favor for you, but something that can help them look good, something that helps others. Give those something amazing to talk about.

So, here is your challenge for this week. Pick one piece of content that you’ve already created, maybe recently, and ask yourself, would I share this with a friend? Why, or why not? I want you to reflect on that, because in most cases, we haven’t thought about these kinds of things, and it’s likely going to be a why not. But I want you to learn from the content that you have.

There might be a way to re engage with that content, or resurface it, or recycle it in a way that allows you to include a yes, I would share this with a friend. And then I want you to take one action that makes it more shareable. Just, just do that. Make it more shareable. Maybe it’s adding a personal story that makes it more emotional.

Maybe it’s creating a quote graphic that makes it easier to share. Maybe it’s simply asking your audience to share it with somebody who needs it. Remember, every movement starts with a conversation and is your stuff worth having a conversation about what will your audience be talking about this week? How can you incite that conversation?

Now, before you go, I want to leave you with this final thought. In a world full of ads, algorithms, and artificial intelligence, authentic human recommendation is more valuable now than ever. Your job isn’t to game the system or trick people into sharing, it’s to create something so valuable, so helpful, so remarkable that people can’t help but talk about it.

When you focus on serving your audience at the highest level, when you create genuine value and build real relationships, word of mouth happens naturally. And that’s when the magic really begins.

Thank you for listening, everybody. I really do appreciate you being here, and I look forward to catching you in the next episode.

If you haven’t listened to the previous couple, Liz and I joined forces in some joint conversations about some things that may be important for you to listen to as well. So listen to 930 and 931. This is episode 932. And I look forward to serving you in 933 and beyond. Thank you.