Moving beyond the 'Referral mindset'

Dealing with many businesses from a broad range of industries there is a common thread I come across on a daily basis....

It is when I ask business owners "How do you aquire new business?" The answer more often than not is "Oh we don't really advertise... most/all of our business comes via referrals". Most deliver this message with great pride... and why not?! After-all they must be keeping customers happy and doing things right to gain new business from referrals and ongoing business from existing customers.

According to Nielsen, 92 per cent of people trust recommendations from friends and family over other forms of marketing, making it an avenue you really can't afford to ignore.  

What I would like to highlight though is that to simply rely upon referrals and repeat business is often a passive way to run your business and actually has you falling behind in the market-place if you are not proactively working on your products/services, marketing your brand at the same time.

So what to do?

• Inject energy and attention into existing referrals. (how can you nurture the referral process?) Consider email marketing to existing customers to keep your brand top of mind. Perhaps an incentive or value-add to existing customers to refer your business/brand. (Consider what is it that motivates your customers and what would make them refer your brand?).
• Be present in order to be referred. These days alot of socialising and 'social interaction' happens online. 'Social Media'. So make sure you are present in all of the social media channels in order to keep your brand top of mind along with nurturing your relationship with customers and your target audience.
• Now move beyond the 'referral mindset' and consider sound product and service strategy to make sure your offering is positioned correctly in the market with a lucrative target audience and then get proactive with your marketing!
  
  

  My best advice at this stage is to generate content that is relevant to your target audience in all the various forms of media available these days and ensure that your content:

• Raises awareness of your company, your brand and its people
• Exposes and demonstrates your expertise and/or your brand's benefits
• Differentiates you/your brand from your competitors
• Brings clients to you who are already "sold"
• Generates new business & reduces your reliance on referrals.

Publish, broadcast, advertise your content through various channels that are suitable to reach your target audience. There is no 'one size fits all' on establishing the right media mix for your brand.

Give us a call if you would like to learn more about generating more leads for your business to grow to the next level of success.