Word of mouth marketing - not just about sitting back

Had a chat over a sandwich the other day with a chap who asked to pick my brains a bit about our marketing strategy. He runs a somewhat similar, but not competing, business, and is just starting out.

He had recently taken out a local ad campaign on the sides of buses. I told him that would almost certainly be a waste of money, above-the-line advertising is nearly always a waste of money in my book, word-of-mouth is where it's at.

He then said something that didn't really sink in at the time. Something like "so I should just sit back and wait for it to grow, rather than spend money on advertising?".

But it's not like that at all, is it? This word of mouth stuff? We rely massively on word-of-mouth to grow our business, but we don't just sit back and wait for it to happen. We work hard to first of all offer a good service that people will want to talk about, and then encourage, remind and sometimes cajoule (spelling?) them, at every turn, into telling people about it.

But there is so much more we could be doing. And this blog is part of that, I suppose.