Referral Do’s & Don’ts.

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Referrals are too valuable to waste. Follow these rules to avoid costly mistakes.

Do

  • Provide excellence in products and services.
  • Constantly seek better ways to serve your customers.
  • Be energetic, enthusiastic and sincere in your business dealings.
  • Offer ongoing training and coaching to your customer-contact staff.
  • Keep in touch with friends and business colleagues every 30 days.
  • Provide referrals to others who deserve them.
  • Offer something of value for good customers to offer their contacts.
  • Make you and your company a low-risk referral.
  • Use business social media to build contacts and referrals.
  • Be a good person—it works!

Don’t

  • Think you can buy referrals—but be sure to promptly offer your heartfelt thanks and inform the referrer of the outcome.
  • Offer an incentive for prospects that you generally make available to the marketplace.
  • Underestimate the discomfort many people feel in asking for referrals—find ways to make it easier!
  • Snub people in lower positions—they move on to bigger and better things.
  • Give referrals solely with the intention of getting them in return.
  • Be nice only when you need to be—make it a habit.
  • Fail to work at gaining referrals everyday.
  • Forget about people who are important to you.
  • Lose sight of the customer’s perspective—make referrals beneficial to them and easy to do.
  • Think referral programs are built in a day.

Keeping in Touch. One of the slickest systems we’ve seen is SendOutCards®. It’s a web-based program that lets you send a printed greeting card with your message, in your own handwriting if you wish, in less than 60 seconds. All you do is choose your card, write your message and click send. SendOutCards prints it, stuffs it and mails it, all for less than a greeting card at the store. You can even upload your own images as well as include high quality food and gifts for special occasions. For a quick, one-on-one demo and an opportunity to send a free personalized card to a friend or colleague, we refer you to Kei Narimatsu.

— by Larry Bauer

Staying Visible.

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maptoon-250All marketing programs require an investment of money as well as time. Referral marketing programs often require more of the latter. Add to that tactics designed to keep you in touch with clients, associates and prospects and you could be looking for an eight-day week. So let’s choose wisely. Below are some handy tools to consider working into your everyday processes and some that will require more ongoing effort on your part. No matter what tools you use, keep these three thoughts in mind:

  1. Stay in front of your clients, associates and prospects.
  2. Stay relevant.
  3. And above all, make sure your clients are happy, otherwise—no referrals.

Printed Cards

In this age of e-everything, you can stand out from the competition by using printed cards. The trick is to just be speedy about it. Afterall, if you can get it there within 24 hours, you’ve beaten most emailed follow ups.

In addition to SendOutCards®, which we mentioned in the previous article as a quick and inexpensive tool, you should also keep corporate thank you cards handy and use them liberally after initial meetings, final project deliverables, and of course, in response to referrals. If you’re meeting a client or prospect out of town, take some cards with you, write a quick thank you and pop them in the mail before your plane takes off. If you wait until you get back to the office, you’re less likely to remember the little things that made the meeting great and worthy of a thank you.

Personalized letters are very effective too. But added levels of personalization can definitely improve your outcome. According to a study reported by Marketing Profs in which researchers sent a survey to busy doctors with three different cover letters, each produced a dramatically different result:

  • A printed letter generated a response rate of 36 percent.
  • A printed letter with a handwritten message on it raised response by one third to 48%.
  • A printed letter with a handwritten message on a Post-it® note increased the response rate to 75%.

Corporate Blogs

How frequently do you update your corporate website with timely and relevant information? Thought so. Your website is necessary, of course, but may not be the most powerful tool you can use to increase your online voice. Having an online voice that’s frequent and relevant allows your clients more options to refer folks to you.

And not only that, group blogs expand your network exponentially. Invite guest bloggers to post on your blog. Of course, their followers will follow them and in turn, discover you. Likewise, offer to write guest blog posts for your associates’ blogs. Just be sure y’all are linking back to each other’s blogs and websites.

Social Media

Microblogging tools like Twitter have become the defacto way many folks maintain conversation with friends and associates as well as meet new ones. It’s about being part of the overall conversation and that conversation is not always about personal interests. Many folks also join Twitter Groups to meet others with similar interests. For instance, did you know there is a business Twitter Group for every city in the US? So get out there, create your Twitter persona, and look for a Twitter Group with similar interests. Or create a Twitter Group for your specific niche.

And don’t forget LinkedIn. It has a built-in tool that allows others to recommend you.

Monthly Newsletters

Whether printed or emailed, monthly newsletters are always a great way to stay in touch, so long as you follow these simple tips:

  • Don’t skimp on quality writing and design.
  • Don’t skimp on valuable content.
  • Be relevant.
  • Your newsletter should be targeted to both customers and prospects—especially prospects whom you haven’t met and aren’t necessarily on your mail list.
  • Create an editorial plan but be flexible so you can take advantage of timely topics.
  • Include a Send to a Colleague link.

Also keep in mind emarketing fatigue is increasing. In order to keep readership up and expanding, you’ve got to maintain a high degree of interest.

Co-Branded Opportunities

In a carefully planned co-branded situation, both partners share the resource burden and expand their clients and prospects reach. Keep an eye out for marketing and promotional opportunities that would allow you and your partners to benefit. Just make sure you’re partnering with a company with the same or better level of customer service and quality as your own.

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • Co-Branded Blogs: You could always take a leadership role in developing a co-branded and topical blog that allows contributions from one or several of your best associates. This is different than a corporate blog.
  • Co-Branded Monthly Newsletters: Of course a newsletter can be created and implemented solely for just your company, and it is a very powerful way to stay in touch with clients, prospects and associates.
  • Co-Branded Webinars: Conducting co-branded webinars of interest to your contacts and your associates’ contacts provides a mechanism for pooling all the prospects.

You can also maintain your own corporate blog, newsletter and webinars. Co-branding may or may not work for you depending on your business. If you need help determining what tools would be most helpful in your niche, just give us a call.

— by Julia Moran Martz

2009’s Top Ten Marketing Resolutions

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  1. 10resolutions-4blog1Get out more—develop a social media plan. It’s relatively inexpensive and moves you into a fast developing marketing arena. To get up to speed, check out “Integrating Social Media”.
  2. Lose weight fast—clean your marketing database. If there were ever an incentive to improve accuracy and reduce excess pounds in your database, this is the year. And don’t forget about your email database, which can really pack on the pounds quickly.
  3. Reduce stress—get your brand’s assets organized. A study conducted a few years ago asserted that marketers spent approximately 30% of their time finding “stuff” — images, copy, documents, etc. There’s really no excuse with the wide range of asset management tools available.
  4. Reunite with old friends—spend more time with clients. We all know that the best source of new business is from existing customers, yet most companies continue to devote the largest share of marketing dollars to prospecting. This is the year to break bad habits.
  5. Quit smoking—smoke your competition instead. Nothing will get you further than developing true competitive differentiation. Commit to breaking free from “me too” products, services and marketing campaigns.
  6. Improve your finances—increase your marketing ROI. Justify your marketing expenditures with a measurable return on investment. Prove to your company’s executive management team that your marketing campaigns more than pay their own way.
  7. Help the environment—green your marketing program. Here’s the good news: You’ll likely save money in the process. Be sure to consider the entire marketing supply chain and make key vendors part of your environmental team.
  8. Serve others—develop a unique and timely product/service. There is opportunity in any market. Now is the time to show your ingenuity with a product or service that’s right for the times. Not launching anything new? Focus on showing how your products/services are clearly the best investment over the longer haul.
  9. Try something new—launch an innovative campaign. You need to break through the clutter more than ever, especially if you’re products/services fall into the discretionary spending category. Anyone can market through the good times when money is flowing, but next year presents an opportunity for you to separate yourself from the ordinary marketing folks.
  10. Save money—allocate your marketing budget more strategically. This approach is the opposite of being penny wise and pound foolish, which often happens during lean economic times. Spend more money where you can get the greatest return on your investment (like more dollars for a better booth space or page position) and cut the marginal stuff, even if it’s a personal favorite.

Looking for a Support Group?

Sticking to your marketing resolutions can be a tough, lonely road. MondoVox® Creative Group can provide all the strategic, tactical, creative and moral support you need to turn over a new marketing leaf. For more information, email Julia Moran Martz. Then relax, turn off the digital devices and enjoy a wonderful holiday season.

— by Larry Bauer

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