When was the last time you bought something that you didn’t hear about from a friend? I’d venture to say you’re having a tough time thinking of an example. The value of a successful referral strategy for your business or practice simply cannot be understated.
Referrals get you more paying customers, the obvious benefit, but what’s often tossed under the rug is the fact that you get better customers.
Are you someone who clearly sees the value and need for referrals but for whatever reason has struggled to find an effective plan? Take advantage of this guide to make sure you’re putting yourself in the best possible position to be referred often and spoken highly of for the value you bring to the table.
Simply Forgetting to Ask
Seemingly the most obvious but often the most easily overlooked is simply forgetting to ask for those important referrals. Over 70% of salespeople don’t even ask at all in fact, and this both a huge mistake and a missed opportunity. It’s human nature to put off asking and for many people, it can be a tough fear to overcome.
But the juice is well worth the squeeze when it comes to asking for referrals. Having your customers speaking highly and often of your business is something that you need to have happening to maximize your chances at new business.
If you’re struggling to ask, a crucial action step is to create a plan and a dedicated incentive for yourself to do so. Outline how valuable the new business would be to your success and quantify it to the point of making it a no-brainer. Dive into the referral automation world if you’re interested in fully automating the process and streamlining to create time for other parts of your business.
Dial-Up your Follow-Up Strategy
So you’ve taken the time to reach out and ask for referrals. you were crystal clear on the value you can provide, and you’ve gotten nothing but positive response from your efforts. And then you play the waiting game and hope your hard work pays off with an abundance of new business flowing into your bottom line. If only it were that easy.
It takes 45 days for your network to forget you exist.
This is precisely the situation you must avoid in order to see success from your referral efforts.
Crafting a well thought-out and timed follow-up strategy is absolutely essential to keeping your referrals engaged and actively speaking positively about your business. You’ll want to systematically reach out to your referrals through ultra-personalized emails in order to nurture that relationship.
Spend time each week engaging with your referrals via social, especially on LinkedIn, invite them to relevant events, and connect them to others you think would be valuable to them as well. This goes a long way in furthering that relationship and building trust.
Let’s Get Personal
In a world where we receive seemingly endless emails per day, standing out in the noise is essential to making sure your referrals remember you, associate your name and face with your value-prop, and be someone they would want to refer business to.
Take advantage of tools like BombBomb which allows you to send video email’s which make sure your referrals literally see you and it allows your personality and genuineness to shine through. You will instantly standout, get more replies, convert more of those leads, and gain the trust you need to get that impactful new business.
Keep your emails ultra-personalized, stay consistent with your follow-up, be clear and concise about the value you add, and your referrals will be well on their way to referring you new business.
Define Your Referral Funnel KPI’s
Tracking your referral strategy effectiveness should be an integral piece of your overall referral marketing plan. Like many good things in life, success with referrals takes time. Being as deliberate as possible using KPI’s to define what is and what isn’t resonating with your referral prospects is key to understanding how to tweak your messaging and strategy going forward.
A great way to accomplish this is by defining the KPI’s that make up your referral funnel. Some of these might include measuring the effectiveness of your incentives. Are your potential referrals seeing enough value in the incentive to actually refer you? Keeping a close eye and testing new incentives vs. each other is a great way to make sure you’re on the right path.
Tracking your call to action messages and their effectiveness is another important metric to hone in on. Are they strong and enticing enough to prompt consistent clicks and get the engagement you need to get those referrals? Always be tweaking your email copy and CTA copy to make sure your value-prop is shining through and getting your prospect excited about hopefully referring you.
A/B Test Your Referral Emails
A/B Testing has become an absolute staple for marketers everywhere who test a barrage of different lead generation campaigns. The same principle should be applied to your referral strategy.
It’s a simple process: When you reach out for a referral, you send out multiple versions of the email with different copy to see which performs better and gets you more engagement and ultimately conversion.
You want to get very granular and test as many elements as possible such as your general copy, subject lines, CTA copy, email format, tone, and anything else editable in your emails. This allows you to fine tune, very precisely, the details that add up to your prospects converting into referrals.
Make Automation your Best Friend
Are you regularly asking your personal network to do business or connect you to others who will?
What if you could send out highly-targeted and personalized emails to and watch qualified referrals flow to your inbox. This is the power of referral automation.
With software like ReferMe IQ™ , you are able to truly leverage the power of your personal and professional network to automatically (with a little upfront work of course) get the referrals you’re looking for. There’s no more feeling guilty about forgetting to ask or wondering how you’re going to track your referral results. Automation for referrals is truly the game changer you’ve been looking for.
Hopefully, this guide has shown you some actionable ways you can get the most out of your referral marketing efforts. With a nimble KPI-centric strategy paired with the right automation software, you should be well on your way to receiving consistent referrals that will positively impact your business.
