Pitching a business that says word of mouth is enough

A roofer in Swindon, a hairdresser in Harrogate, a joiner who has been busy for twenty years. Ask any of them how they get work and the answer is often the same: word of mouth. Local businesses that get all their work by word of mouth can be perfectly good prospects for a web designer, but only if you approach them with some care.

The owner is not wrong. Recommendations are a strong way to win work, and a website will never replace a good reputation. Arguing otherwise is the quickest way to lose the conversation.

What word of mouth leaves out

Word of mouth is usually a chain of people passing on a name. The next step in that chain is often a search. Someone is told to ring a plasterer, and before they do, they look him up. What they find, or do not find, matters at that moment. It is an observation about how people tend to behave, not a statistic, and you should present it that way.

A few gaps tend to show up in these businesses:

• No way to check the recommendation. The friend said they were good, but there is no page showing the work, the area covered or what they charge for. The business is trusted by people who know someone, and invisible to everyone else.
• Details that only live in a Facebook post. Phone numbers, opening hours and prices buried in old posts are hard for a stranger to find. We wrote about why a Google Business Profile is not a website, and the same applies to social pages.
• Good reviews nobody can see together. Happy customers are praising the business in private messages and group chats, but none of it is collected anywhere a newcomer would look.
• Busy now, exposed later. A full diary today says nothing about next winter, or about what happens when the business wants to take on staff or move into a new town.

Check before you write

Not every such business needs your help. Search the name yourself. Does a stranger find a phone number within a few seconds? Is there a site at all, or only a social page? If the business already has a tidy site and a steady stream of reviews, leave it alone. If it has nothing, or a page that has not been touched in years, you have something specific to say. Our post on businesses without websites covers how to tell the difference between a business that is genuinely fine and one that is just quiet online.

Be ready to hear that they are full and do not want more work. That is a fair answer. Say thank you and move on.

What to say instead of “you need a website”

Lead with respect for what already works, then offer one observation. Something like: you clearly get plenty of work through recommendations, and when I looked you up to pass your name on, I could not find a phone number outside Facebook. That is a small thing, and it is true, and it does not tell them their business is failing.

Then make the offer small. A single clear page with the services, the area, the contact details and a few real customer comments is easier to say yes to than a full rebuild. Keep the first email short. The shape we suggest in one observation, one offer suits this audience well.

Avoid promising more enquiries. You do not know that they will get any. You can say the page will make the business easier to find and easier to recommend, which is the job it actually does.

Be honest about the limits

If the owner says they would rather not have a site, believe them. Some trades want a small, steady, local client base and nothing else. A pitch that respects that will be remembered more kindly than one that pushes, and people do change their minds after a quiet month, a new competitor or a customer who could not find them.

Keep a short note of who said no and why, and only come back if something changes, such as a new listing or a closed social page.

Finding them without scrolling for hours

Spotting word-of-mouth businesses by hand means searching trades town by town and opening each result. Patchscout does that search for a business type and UK location, flags businesses with no real website, including ones that only have an Instagram or Facebook page, and scores how well each fits you as a prospect.

From there our system drafts an email in your own voice, based on what it actually found, and you send it from your own mailbox. You still decide who to contact and what to say.