Getting your customers to talk about you

If you are a bank or an insurance company you may feel that being seen as ‘safe and trustworthy (and perhaps a little boring)’ is not a bad place to be. After all, your customers want to trust their savings, bank balances and insurance cover to someone who is sober, reliable and who they believe will be there when they need them, not someone seen as risqué, daring or amusing who might not be around very long.

But the problem with being ‘safe and trustworthy (and perhaps a little boring)’ is that it does not make for a product that people instinctively want to tell their friends about. Can you imagine a bank customer interrupting his friends discussion of ‘Making a Murderer’ or the latest ‘Star Wars’ epic to announce ‘I have just gotta tell you all just how much I love my bank’?

No, well neither can I.

So if you don’t remind your customers to refer their friends and family and give them the right tools and incentives to do so, then chances are they won’t tell anyone about you. In fact, let’s say that the chances are