Which marketing strategy do you think brings the most returns on investment? Is it PPC ads? Or Email Campaigns? Or maybe Inbound Marketing?
Well, the real answer to this question could depend on the type of campaign you are running, but referrals are almost always going to be somewhere on the top of the list. Yes, referrals are probably the most overlooked strategy that can bring the most valuable leads to your business and doesn’t require you to spend tons of money, unlike other forms of marketing.
But there’s a catch to it. Most people don’t have the right approach to go about referrals. With the right factors put into their places, referrals can give you big results that too from important leads to your business.
Why Are Referrals So Important?
Let’s start with the statistics fetched from Social Media Today, which highlight some interesting finds regarding referrals:
- Almost 80% of the B2B marketers admitted that referral programs generate excellent and valuable leads.
- More than 50% of marketers believe that referral programs generate a large volume of leads.
- Around 54% of marketers said that referral programs have lower cost-per-lead.
- Referrals, according to marketers, are the 2nd highest lead-generating source.
So how do you go about getting better at referral strategy? Below are some of the working tips that can help strengthen your marketing.
1. Don’t Waste Any Time in Asking For Referrals
Let’s dive into the wrong approach first – Asking the customer for a referral with them using the product or service for a while.
The reason why this is not the ideal approach is that you have to ask the customer for a referral in the beginning without having to waste any time. The theory behind this is that when a customer has bought your product, that’s the time when they’re most excited about it. They are, at that time, fully convinced that what you do or your product has value and it is the perfect time to get a referral.
Every type of business can get a referral in one way or the other. Whether it’s word of mouth or referral programs for your product. But referrals are crucial for your business. So, try and pursue your customers in a warm way to refer to you.
2. Ask For The Referral Again!
Of course, it is possible that when you ask for a referral, customers might not give you anything valuable. And, this is what you need to do about it.
First, get over it. People are going to straight-up decline or say they’ll think about it when you will ask them for a referral. And, that’s normal. Since they have already purchased your product, you’ve succeeded. A referral is just making a potential future sale.
Second, ask for the referral again. You might feel awkward doing this or this may annoy the customer. But out of every 10 customers, it is found out that 4 will give you a referral if asked twice. So, if those are your numbers then you should probably go for it!
Again, it is absolutely possible that asking twice might irritate your customer. But that’s okay too. Keeping your focus on the right approach to asking them for a referral would make all the difference.
3. Email Referral Template
Getting your referrals without putting in much effort is just easy business, and that works sometimes. Always remember that your customers are doing you and your business a favor, so you should help in any way you can.
One of the most efficient ways you can do this is by using an email template for referrals. For example:
Hey Joseph!
I want to connect you with Jack — his company, CRMpro, built sales CRM tools that’ll help in the automation of emails and predictive dialing to increase the productivity of your sales team. I figured you may be keen on knowing about it!! I’ll let you two be in contact here to explore more.
Best Regards,
John
Send the template to your customers and tell them they’re free to use the template or create their own. Don’t forget to thank them for the help with the referral. Some customers might use this template, others might not. It doesn’t really matter as long as you’re getting in contact with another potential lead.
4. Connect The Referrals
It’s a good thing to get a referral from a customer. But moving past that, the game starts when you are able to secure multiple leads from a single customer. But how do you go about it?
Simply, by making sure that you appreciate your customers for giving you the referrals. Not just by you though, but also from the people they refer to you. You just have to make sure, if you make a sale from a referred lead, to just drop an email to their referrer appreciating the refer.
It could go like:
“Hey! I remember that Jack referred you to us. Would mind dropping a mail to him quickly saying thanks? So he knows that you appreciate it?“
Again, they might use your given template but in most cases, they might just spitball it quickly. Either way, your work is done here. This might seem like an unimportant step to do but it makes a huge difference for customers in knowing their referrals are doing good for the company as well as themselves. Hence, they’ll keep on sending you leads.
Referrals – One of The Highest Source of Generating Quality Leads
Referral marketing tactics don’t really need to keep up with the marketer’s top lead sources such as trade shows and events. If you have been attentive in the past few years, you might have noticed how many organizations and businesses have started to give more value to various growth channels like – email marketing, SEO, webinars, and more. With these practices emerging in the market as growth channels, most marketers still believe that the referral system is the 2nd highest quality growth channel.
Tip: Categorize your leads into different growth channels that you practice such as content marketing, retargeting, etc and observe which one is working out for your business. Also, take into consideration how it would affect your business to have the 2nd highest quality lead generation if you don’t have referrals.
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