Spread The Word When your customers talk...people listen. So why aren't more business owners using the cheapest and easiest form of advertising?

Trucks, shovels and flats of flowers are Fred Anderson'stools for designing and installing custom landscaping. But when itcomes to marketing, he has only one tool: the human mouth.

One hundred percent of Anderson Landscape ConstructionInc.'s clients come from referrals, either from professionalarchitects and builders or from former clients. That makes thefive-person Lancaster, Massachusetts, firm an extreme example ofwhat marketers have always known but are beginning to rediscoverand re-emphasize--that word-of-mouth is one of the best tools inany marketer's arsenal.

"It's the most effective form of advertising anybusiness can have," says Murray Raphel, president of RaphelMarketing in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and co-author of themarketing guide, Up the Loyalty Ladder (HarperBusiness)."You have unpaid salespeople selling to others, encouragingthem to use your goods and services because of their pleasure withyour service."