5 referral and word-of-mouth marketing nuggets that will help to propel your business and your profits!

word-of-mouth

Long-standing Entrepreneur’s Circle member Barry Allaway recently got busy implementing and launched his own information product, with accompanying book, focused on helping business owners with their referral and word-of-mouth marketing.

Barry, a seasoned networker, knew that out of every 100 business owners, only 3% had a plan in place to maximise their current customer base and prospect list, and that there was a large untapped market for something that would help the remaining 97% maximise the return on their investment from the relationships they’d worked hard to build. So Barry has given us a Circular exclusive that will give you a sneak peek at some of his favourite referral nuggets.

Sneak Peek # 1: Know your audience…

Knowing what makes your contacts ‘tick’, so to speak, will enable you to mould your communication in accordance with their personality. As a result, your approach will stand out from the majority of businesses who do not know how, or can’t be bothered, to incorporate these niceties.

Sneak Peek #2: It’s all about them…

Would you be more inclined to buy a product from someone who takes a general interest in your well-being and keeps in touch regularly, or from someone who you only ever hear from when they want something?

Remember that to make it all about you, you must firstly make it all about them.

Put your contact’s needs ahead of your own so that they feel they are being treated as a friend rather than a prospective client.

Entrepreneur’s Circle Members David and Judith, of The Scottish Shutter Company, are a great example of this, with David’s Multiple E-mail to One (MEMO) concept we saw highlighted at the recent Basingstoke national event.

Sneak Peek #3: Make it a habit of a lifetime!

As with Nigel’s 90-minute chunks, it’s a great idea to set aside in your diary two 30-minute slots a week. One to focus on driving the implementation forward on your database development (adding, deleting, promoting, relegating and fine-tuning your contacts), and a separate 30 minutes actioning elements of your keep-in-touch plan, be it working with suppliers on your next direct mail piece, ordering those personalised cards and ‘bulky mail gifts’ for Valentine’s Day, or sending a Random Act of Kindness to one of your VIPs. Without implementation your pipeline will only be a pipedream.

Sneak Peek # 4: It’s not who you know, it’s who they know, that matters!

You won’t be surprised to discover that most people know around 250 people who they know well enough to strike up a conversation with. So, if you know 250 people, and each of those 250 contacts know another 250 people, that is 62,500 people within your contact sphere who could help you grow your business through an active referral network! That’s a great pool to start developing for little or no cost.

Sneak Peek # 5: Segmenting your database

An Entrepreneur’s Circle favourite – segmenting your database will allow you to effectively target your contacts and give you an enormous head start over others within your sector through the development of a planned ‘keep–in–touch’ programme.

VIPs – Your top 20 (customers, clients, or those who refer quality customers to you regularly).

Golds – The next 50 most influential contacts.

Silvers – The contacts you are in the process of building stronger relationships with.

Developing Relationships – The contacts in your prospect field/herd who are yet to ascend your ladder of referral success.

Remember that the level of communication you have with your contacts from each category will differ, so through knowing your numbers, you will be well placed to build an effective marketing programme to each segment.

To continue to help build your own customer pipeline for a lifetime using referrals and word-ofmouth marketing as one of your marketing pillars, pop over to www.referralmaster.info where Barry has created some additional nuggets.