As a business owner with limited finances to work with, making the most out of your marketing dollars is essential. Your business relies on your marketing to bring in new customers. What if you could get your customers to help you out though? Getting your customers to refer your business to others is a great way to build your reputation and your business at the same time.
Leave Them With a Great Experience
If you want your customers to refer your business to others, you need to provide them with an experience worth sharing. Meeting expectations isn’t enough to earn a glowing personal review, and failing to meet them only results in others being warned away from your business. You need to go above and beyond as a business, exceeding customer expectations. Analyze your customer journey and identify ways you can improve it to ensure that they have a great experience every step of the way.
Foster Customer Loyalty
Customer loyalty does two things for your business. It earns you repeat customers who represent great earning potential, and it is more likely to earn you recommendations and referrals. Loyal customers are four times as likely to recommend your business to a friend. Customer loyalty doesn’t just create itself. You need to be proactive in developing it. Offer exceptional customer service at each contact point. Build personal touches into customer interactions to foster a stronger relationship with them. Give your customers a reason to be loyal to you and to want to share your business with others.
Develop a Referral Program
You don’t get something for nothing. Developing a referral program is a good way to incentivize your customers to refer others to your business. Designing an app for your business that keeps track of any points earned for your referral program can help build loyalty and make it easy to engage with the program. Make sure what you’re offering in exchange for the referrals is of value to your customers. Free products or discounts on purchases are some of the top incentives you can offer in exchange for referrals.
Your customers can be some of your best assets in growing your business. You can encourage them to refer others to your business by delivering an exceptional experience, building customer loyalty, and developing a referral program to reward them for their help. Your business will benefit from some very low cost marketing and toe opportunity to build your reputation at the same time.
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