Get More Clients With Referral Marketing in 2021

Are you a photographer, videographer, artist, writer, graphic designer or you have a career in the creative industry? Do you want to get other people to refer clients to you without seeming desperate? This piece is for you.

If you running a traditional or online business, you will agree with me that the survival of such business rest on the number of clients or customers that give you their money for your services or goods. So if your business fails to bring in customers, your business is closer to the grave than you think.

Getting customers is one of the biggest headaches of businesses, especially people crafting a career in the creative space. Most business owners agree that marketing and sales are the most important aspects of their businesses. You must understand that these aspects could be difficult to crack if you don’t avail yourself to certain reality or ideas.

One of the ways to get more customers is via referral marketing. This involves imploring and encouraging your clients, friends, colleague and even family members to recommend you, your business, services or products to prospective clients.

Striving businesses understand the importance of referral marketing. They encourage their existing clients to recommend them via word of mouth. According to MarketShare, Word of mouth improves marketing for businesses by 54%. Besides, 92 per cent of customers, according to statistics, trust referrals from people that they know.

Five Things To Do Before You Beginning to Ask for Referrals

It is one thing to be referred to prospective clients, it is another thing to be referable. In other words, you need to be sure you have what it takes to map the process of referrals. You need to be prepared before you start your referral marketing campaign.

• Expand Your Capacity To Service More Client

Asking for patronage is the easy part of marketing, ensuring that you can fulfil this patronage is the hardest. The question is, do you have what it takes to meet the needs of your new clients when they start rolling in? Have you put things in place to ensure that you don’t get overwhelmed with demands when they start coming in. You don’t want a situation where your clients are angry because the people they referred you to are angry at your failure to come through.

• Streamline and optimize the referral process

The question here is how do you ensure that your clients find it easy to refer you to somebody else. Will they be able to direct the prospect directly to you, or via your website? If it is via your website, how easy is it to navigate and get through this process?. You have to do all it takes to make it easy for people to recommend you to prospects.

• Satisfy your existing client base

Well, it won’t be easy to get referrals if you fail to satisfy your existing client base. Surprise your client enough for them to tell people about your work. When you do this you, not only boost the confidence your clients have in you, you also build trust.

• Build Solid Relationship

Relationship in Business is paramount. So your ability to build and sustain a solid relationship would help you win over the confidence of those around you, including clients, friends, family members and even colleagues. Ensure your relationship with your clients at a personal level. If you can go beyond your business relationship to be close friends and supporters. This helps them build confidence in you enough to recommend you to somebody else.

• Work on Your Branding

Branding for your Business is key. It differentiates you from your competitors. Before you lunch out, ensure you have a solid brand structure that could be recognizable. Your ability to differentiate your business or craft, making it easy for those referred to your business to recognize and appreciate what you do.

So here are Ten Ways to get referral From Anybody, Including your existing Clients.

Offer Incentive For Referrals

People are move by incentives. They are looking for what they can get out of their efforts at recommending you. So ensure you have a rewards system in place that makes it possible for clients or anybody at all to get a certain commission for any clients they bring to your business. Some might be so engrossed in getting you clients because they get something in return.

Partner With Other Service Providers:

The importance of partnership cannot be overemphasized. You need to find service providers in your field that give corresponding services to that which you offer. For instance, if you work as a Photographer, you might want to link up with colleagues in the industry who works as a videographer. Your symbiotic relationship can help you both get more clients. He will get in touch with you when his/her clients need a photographer and via verse.

Employ Helpful Contents

Content is key, Employ contents that engage your clients and customers. The content you publish about your services on your website and social media pages can make referring you easy for your clients. They would be able to prove to those they are recommending to that you know what you are doing and you can help them. A blog post, social media content, video, a whitepaper about industry trends, free seminar or webinar can go a long way in getting you more clients.

Ask At the Right Time

Knowing when to ask for referrals is important. You don’t just ask at any time or anyhow, you must understand the perfect time to ask. Reports show that it is counterproductive to ask for referrals when you send in your invoice for a work done. It is better to ask during the project, especially when your client is beginning to see the beauty in your services.

Refer Your Clients

By helping your clients get more clients, you are making it easy to get referrals. Your clients would likely want to reciprocate the gesture when you help them get customers. For instance, your event planner client will likely recommend you to his/her colleague when you get him/her more clients.

Do something extra for your clients:

Unexpected help or value you create can get your clients pumped up to recommend you to others. For Instance, if you decide to share the content you have written or created for a client with your huge followers on social media, to give your client’s business more exposure, this can encourage your clients to refer you to other prospects. Giving a discount can also go a long way to get you a referral.

Ask For Referrals Indirectly

Sometimes clients might not be keen on referring you directly to others. For one reason or the other, they might not be ready to put words in for you. You can, however, encourage them to help you with testimonials, Positive Feedbacks, ask for online reviews. You can ask them to fill out a survey or become a case study. This can go a long way to get you more customers.

Join Referral Groups On Facebook or any other online platforms

There are groups on Facebook and other social media platforms that can link you up to more prospective clients. This is the reason social media marketing is key. Find this group, join them and engage, create helpful posts that can help you gain attention. You should also join groups where your potential clients hang out, engage them and pitch them ideas that can benefit them and their business.

Create a Referral Program For Your Employee

Your employees are the most valuable marketers. However, not all of them are employed to market your business. Some might be good in marketing, others might not be eager to market for your business. However, you can encourage them to get you more customers by rewarding them when they do so. This might go a long way to helping them become diligent ambassadors for your business.

Keep Clients Engage

Your ability to keep your client warmed up can go a long way to get your more client. Engagement via calls, text messages and most importantly email marketing is important for them to see that you sincerely care about them and their businesses. When they see your sincere concern for them and their businesses, they will most likely recommend you to other prospects.

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