How can you close the gap in your business? Don’t miss these referral marketing “dos” and “don’ts” that will help you proactively convert happy customers into reliable revenue-drivers:
- Do give customers the tools they need to promote your company.
For referral marketing to work, you can’t expect your referral partners or customers to invest time and energy into developing tools and assets to support your brand. Instead, you need to make the referral process as simple as possible. Most importantly, your referral partners need to know who your ideal customer is and how you can help them. Next it needs to be easy. This might mean having regular catch-ups with your referral partners, creating a hashtag that customers can share online, or developing email templates that ensure referral partners use the right language and share the right landing page URL.
Regardless, decreasing the effort required to deliver a referral is a critical piece of the referral-marketing equation.
- Don’t expect customers to always be thinking about you.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make with referral marketing is assuming customers always have their brands on the top of their minds. If you’re not constantly looking for opportunities to engage your most loyal customers so you’re staying front of mind with them, then you’re missing a huge opportunity to encourage and incentivize conversations about your products or services.
- Do think about who (and how) you ask for referrals.
To operate a successful referral marketing program within your business, you must consider who you’re targeting, where those people are most active, and which potential referral partners already have a relationship with them.
Regardless of where your customers fall on that spectrum, it’s critical to truly understand their motivations and preferences before you reach out.
- Don’t “set it and forget it.”
Once you start building your team of referral partners and get a referral coming in the door, it’s easy to fall into the trap of assuming the engine will run itself. Like all strategic marketing initiatives, referral-marketing requires your continuous engagement to work. It doesn’t have to be hard, and simple is always better. Make sure you’re touching base regularly with your referral partners and customers so you remain front of mind.
Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/254516