Frequent - 4:07 am on Sep 24, 2006 (gmt 0)

I would argue that good "word of mouth" referrals are the only advertising you CAN rely on.

Happy clients (even friends and family) are like gold. It takes hundreds if not thousands of dollars of traditional advertising to generate equivalent quality leads.

Entire industries are built around the referral system.

Insurance agents are a great example. If an insurance agent works his or her tail off for a few years to build up a client base they are on easy street. Business will literally come to them from customer referrals, and grow exponentially to the point that one agent can't handle the business. This assumes of course that their customers are happy enough with them and the company to make referrals to friends and families.

It was also the original premise of Google's page rank system and it worked very well until the mass manipulation and buying/selling of began.

Freq---