Small business promotion: 5 dynamic ways to get more referrals

By Fadi Azba

Operating a successful small business in today’s economic climate demands a departure from traditional business guidelines. To be able to sell a service or product, companies can no longer rely upon old-school product sales techniques. Potential customers are extremely distrustful of the conventional sales hype. They are busier than ever before, plus they have access to more information than in the past. Consequently, small business owners need to master a brand new group of techniques to make product sales. The important thing is to begin with strong referrals. Listed below are five dynamic ways to get plenty of strong referrals.

Just ask
Wait, hang on. Before we proceed any further, have you even done the obvious, most straightforward, and perhaps the most effective word-of-mouth technique of all? Have you even asked your pleased customers to tell their family and friends about you? Remind your customers after speaking or doing business with them. Add a note on statements or receipts. Send follow-up email messages that include a request for a testimonial or review. Include easy sharing links in your checkout confirmation webpages. Seriously, just ask. It is that easy. Pleased customers will be happy to talk about you.

Discover your centers of influence
Along with customers; you need to add in centers of influence within your referral technique. Centers of influence are simply those who are influential with many other people. They can have a huge impact on your business, especially if you take advantage of their power. Usually, a center of influence will work within a business relevant to your industry, providing a complementary service. For instance, if you are a personal trainer, then your centers of influence consist of dietitians, family doctors, orthopedic doctors, chiropractors, local gym owners as well as physical therapists.

Work with social media
Social media enables customers and prospects to communicate with your business and with their followers about your business. Using social media is really a long game and that means you do not get referrals instantly. Instead, you create and nurture relationships with prospects and customers by providing information and expertise that makes you a trusted resource. Simultaneously, you may also build social links within your online presence. If somebody just bought a product, provide them with the chance to post something on top social networking channels.

Generate word-of-mouth interest by being excellent at what you do
The most crucial way to get more referrals to your business is to be worthy of these referrals and obviously you do this by being excellent at what you do, no matter what it is. Through providing exceptional service or outstanding products at a reasonable price and by truly helping the customer, you are going to make sure that people will want to refer other people to you.

SEO with word-of-mouth marketing
Even though word-of-mouth marketing is an efficient way to receive business referrals as well as build up your reputation, it is not really a method to grow your business. Word-of-mouth recommendations aren’t a long-term marketing strategy that may increase business growth. So what is SEO or search engine optimization?

SEO is the ideal complement to word-of-mouth marketing and with each other, SEO plus word-of-mouth marketing could be part of your long term marketing strategy for your business growth. Because referral marketing requires minimum effort, putting in a couple of minutes of time to improve your SEO to obtain even more customers is going to be well worth the investment. Taking simply five minutes to improve your SEO is more beneficial than doing nothing at all. Think about it; better SEO equals far more leads that will then equal more clients. These clients can then turn around and make reviews that will equal more referrals for you. Do you see the cycle here?

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About the author: Fadi Azba is an experienced entrepreneur and the founder of BlueHat Marketing, a leading Canadian digital marketing firm. Throughout his years of cutting-edge work in the digital marketing, web design and tech start-up fields, he has successfully developed multiple business ventures and become an authority on search engine marketing and optimization.

12 comments

  1. SEO + Viral Marketing ? It is really nice idea. Thank you for this blog post.

  2. John Carry says:

    You can also use promotional products for marketing and branding for small business.

  3. Jason Hughes says:

    Marketing is the very important aspects for small businesses to grow with a good speed.

  4. Hello Author !

    Great post ! I knew it that , Your website will get maximum visitors if you update it consistently and consider contents as the king. I noticed some website which have beautiful design but didn't update from the last couple of years or months which cause ran away visitors. Your blog post is pretty helpful for bloggers to understand the value of keeping update a website. The experience of different widgets and plugins for website updates is also a good idea.

  5. Thank you for sharing! I really enjoyed reading the post.

  6. SEO Checker says:

    Thx,
    Great insights!

  7. venkatesh says:

    great article i think its very useful
    thanks for sharing with us

  8. Barry says:

    I tried signing up for more local and global company pages where I am able to create a company page and promote my brand. I think it sort of like helps you get traffic from people who know they need what you are offering.

  9. very valuable information

  10. Your work is really influential. Your information in this blog is very helpful for every visitor of this page. Thank you very much for share such a great information with us.

  11. You have uploaded great information in this blog. I love this post. I would love to recommend it to others as well. Thank You soo much

  12. This is some solid advice, thank you for sharing! Thanks a lot!

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