Tag: Referral

3 Business Referral Marketing Tips

Finding the best referral marketing tips for your business will likely be a short series of hit-and-miss attempts before you find the perfect solution for your particular product or service offerings. To formulate your own referral marketing style you can check out the tips and ideas others have used in the past.

Networking

Networking may be the true key to referral marketing. Interacting with people in the local community as well as reaching out to those all over the globe through tools like social networks is all very vital elements for generating a network that can be an endless source of referrals for your business.

The point with all of the available networking options is not to badger any one of them needlessly. When utilizing all of the available networking opportunities such as conferences and events, word-of-mouth suggestive marketing and social network sharing, business owners should be able to bring in a healthy amount of consumers who are there because they are already looking for what that business has to offer.

Business Partnering for Referrals

Find businesses that offer products or services that are complimentary to your own. These partner options can benefit both parties, help reduce cost by sharing them, and be an endless source of personal branding and referral consumer growth. A business that washes cars may want to team up with the business that sells a product that cleans glass or upholstery to offer a sample version of the cleaner to those who visit the car wash.

The reciprocal option could be that the upholstery cleaning business can offer a free car wash to those who purchase the cleaning products. In this way, both businesses have a give and take relationship that can benefit all involved with fresh new referrals. Some cities have networks set up for this type of partnering benefits. Check your local chamber of commerce for referral marketing tips businesses or conferences.

Incentives

Incentives are the icing on the cake in all cases. You may always have consumers who so enjoy your product or services that they are willing to shout it from the roof tops for no benefit to themselves. However, although some of your consumers may thoroughly enjoy what you have to offer, they too, have busy lives, maybe their own businesses to run, and just may not be able to dedicate the time it takes to help you get even the most well-deserved referrals.

This is where incentives come in. When you offer incentives such as discounts or gifts you are buying a few moments of the consumer’s time. Once you have their time you have their attention. Once you have a consumer’s attention, you have only to impress them with your offering. The chance to impress a consumer with your offering sometimes only comes through offering to let them try it in some discounted or beneficial form that drives them to give it a moment of their time. Incentive referral marketing tips are very helpful to this type of plan.

Building Your Business Marketing Plan and Referral Marketing System

Recently I had a conversation with a client about their business, their marketing plan and their referral system. Their question was, Should we be working by referral only, or should we consider other aspects of marketing? My feedback was simple; you should not be doing either with out a plan.

Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, services, organizations, and events to create and maintain relationships that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives.-Contemporary Marketing Wired (1998) by Boone and Kurtz. Dryden Press.

How does your marketing plan relate to your business plan, your mission statement or your vision statement? Your company’s business plan provides the environment in which your marketing plan must flourish. The two documents must have continuity between them according the American Marketing Association.

Inside your marketing plan, you look at all aspects of how you get your message to prospects that might be in need to your product or service. For instance, you may have advertising as one of your marketing activities. Under advertising you may have, TV, Billboard, Coupons, Radio, Google Ads, and so forth. For each of those you need a budget, a timetable to implement, a system to measure results, and a target market.

Your referral system should be part of your overall Marketing Plan. Unfortunately, most people do not have a plan for referrals. They might implement a reward system for people or customers who send them referrals and they stop there.

A good referral system should have a target market, a timetable for implementation, a budget, a training system for your referral partners, and a system for tracking your results. Your referral-marketing plan should be part of your over all marketing plan.

Should you be By Referral Only that is really a question that you must ask yourself. There are many business professionals who are by referral only, because they know they have plenty of work, many good clients and they know that referred clients have a longer shelf life, spend more money and are more likely to refer others to them.

  • Building your business by referral takes more time than money. (remember time is money) Relationships and trust take time and cannot be rushed or bought.
  • Advertising, PR, and many other forms of marketing take more money than time.
  • Both must have a plan.
  • Building your brand and your business takes a combination of both.

Business must stop letting referrals happen by accident, and they need to look beyond the “customer referral” to actually developing a plan to find, train and reward referral partners. Having a quality referral marketing plan will increase the quality and quantity of referred prospects. Organization like the Referral Institute work with business across the nation to develop their Referral Marketing Plan while the American Marketing Association supports a variety of professionals who can help a business develop their marketing plan.

If you are a new business owner or an established business owner, make sure you have a plan and review it often.

Exit mobile version