Referral Marketing is also known as “Word of Mouth Marketing”, and how you do this is as important as actually doing it. Creating that word of mouth buzz with your existing customers and trying as hard as possible to ensure that a sense of advocacy for your business is created is essential to achieving referral success. Word of mouth is the most powerful medium on the planet, and if you’re wise, you’ll review the processes within your business to ensure that whenever possible, every one of your customers is potentially in a position to refer you because of what is an overwhelmingly positive experience that was pleasant and that produced favorable results. Here’s a few quick tips to increasing your word of mouth potential with customers:
1. Review your customer process. Whatever business you might be in – assess whether your process of earning someone’s business and then seeing it through is creating a stress free, uncomplicated, and pleasant experience. As an example, is simply engaging with your business easy enough? You’d be surprised how often business owners get too caught up in operational effectiveness, that they lose sight of important things like initial responsiveness – think phone systems that make customers yell “agent” or maniacally dial 0 to actually speak to a real live person.
2. Ensure that you are reliable. Whatever you say you’re going to do, ensure that you do it. Don’t dissappoint.
3. Manage expectations. Ensure that your customers are fully aware of what’s involved when doing business with you, and never put yourself in a position where you’re making excuses or explaining why you didn’t do the second item in this list.
4. Over deliver when possible. If you can, this is one of the main elements of what creates a sense of satisfaction and makes people WANT to refer you.
5. Create a sense of importance. Genuinely care about the business you earn and treat each opportunity with a sense of respect and concern.
6. Ask for a referral. Encourage the passage of your information onto another potential customer through your existing one.
If you do these 6 simple steps, you’re positioning yourself for the greatest likelihood of a referral and you’ve graduated to being a word of mouth marketing expert. These logical suggestions make up the successful formula for retaining and growing business with no cost.