What’s Your Word of Mouth Potential?

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Customer word of mouth referrals is the holy grail of startup customer acquisition. Yet, in observing hundreds of startups and investing in 19 startups as of September 2024, I’ve observed that…

✅ For some startup products, customer word of mouth doesn’t flow as freely. ✅

Over the years, I have spoken to various startups that had a very lackluster go-to-market strategy. Yet customers were actively telling other potential customers about the startup. Thus, the startup was receiving inbound leads on the website, requesting product demos. On the other hand, I’ve spoken to some startups where word of mouth is virtually non-existent. The startup has to work extra hard to penetrate customer accounts and convert them into customers, with very little help from word of mouth kinetic energy. Why the difference?

I’ve seen that there are three postures that your customer could have that affects the potential of word of mouth.

✅ Does the customer feel…

1. …Possessive about the startup’s product?

2. …Ambivalent about the startup’s product?

3. …Evangelistic about the startup’s product? ✅

When I evaluate potential startups from an investor lens, I always seek to understand the word of mouth potential across these three postures because I find it to be critical to developing the startup’s Go-To-Market strategy. Let’s explore each of them, and how to navigate with each one.