Your business has a brand. You, as an individual, have a brand as well – your personal brand. Whether or not you want to incorporate your personal brand into your business marketing strategy is a decision you’ll have to make.
This is a simple concept that I covered on the podcast previously, but it’s a really big deal and I want to address it here as well.
You already know that one important step in earning more referrals for your business is by asking for them.
But have you ever thought about when the ideal time to ask your clients and customers for a referral really is? And have you created a system to make sure that it happens?
Every relationship ebbs and flows. There are high points and there are low points. And there are a lot of points in between. The relationship your business has with your clients and customers is no different.
It’s important that you understand what this looks like in your specific business. It’s important for many reasons, but it’s specifically important for our topic today because your clients and customers are far more likely to make a referral when they’re really, really happy with you.
For example, at Spotlight Branding, clients were universally thrilled with us when we launched their new website. They love sharing it with family and friends and hearing how great it looks. Consequently, they were very happy with us.
So we implemented a standard procedure that our account managers would ask for referrals shortly after launching a new site. And what do you know… we started getting more referrals!
What does that look like in your business? When are your clients and customers most thrilled and happy with you?
THAT point in time is when you should be asking for a referral. Don’t miss the opportunity to strike when the iron is hot.
The most popular item at any steakhouse is almost always the second-most expensive steak on the menu.
That’s because the second-most expensive steak looks like a bargain next to the most-expensive steak.
If you want to sell more of your $1000 watches, start listing them next to a $3000 watch.
This works because of a cognitive bias that’s built into all of us. We don’t judge prices objectively – we judge them comparatively.
The practical application of this is pretty simple. You should have a premium option on your pricing “menu,” no matter what you’re selling.
Most people aren’t going to choose that option, but that’s fine – the entire point of including it is to make the rest of your options look like great value by comparison.
Test it out and see what happens!
Some business owners are squeamish about marketing. They view it as disreputable or even unethical. This mindset will hold you back.
If you feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, or ashamed when it comes to marketing and selling your products and services, you won’t succeed.
Let’s start here: Do you believe that your product or your service is legitimately valuable? That what you’re selling is making the world a better place, even if it’s in a very small way?
If not – you shouldn’t be reading this blog right now, you’ve got bigger problems to solve.
But if you do believe that you’re selling something of value, then you have an obligation to market it boldly and well.
You’re providing products and services that add value to people’s lives.
You’re earning an income for yourself and your family.
You’re creating jobs and opportunity for your employees and vendors.
You’re creating tax revenue for your local community, your state, and your country.
Your business is making the world a better place.
Business isn’t a zero-sum game. When you make a sale, you’re winning, but the person on the other end of the transaction is winning too.
You have to be clear on this. Don’t let doubt, hesitation, or fear hold you back!
I built a million-dollar online branding agency. And you don’t need me to tell you that we live in an increasingly digital world.
So you may be surprised to learn that some of the most effective marketing I’ve developed involved physical, old-school snail-mail.
There are a few different reasons why “old-fashioned” snail mail still works well.
First, we’re over-saturated with digital marketing. Email, social media, search engines, re-targeting – it’s pretty much impossible to get online without finding yourself bombarded by advertisers.
As a result, engagement is declining. Email open rates and click-through rates are trending downward. Cost-Per-Engagement on most forms of online marketing are increasing. For example, the cost to generate a lead using Google AdWords has skyrocketed over the past ten years. It’s still a profitable channel for many businesses, but not nearly as profitable as it was in the early days.
Second, and this is probably a side-effect of digital oversaturation, people seem to gravitate and appreciate real, physical, tangible marketing more today. Handwritten notes stand out. Real-world events, which create a real sense of community and person-to-person interaction, are more popular than they’ve ever been. That’s one major reason I believe that “snail mail” is making a comeback.
Five Direct-Mail Lessons I’ve Learned the Hard Way
Who you’re mailing to is much more important that what you’re mailing. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your mail campaign is – if it’s going out to the wrong target audience, it’s going to flop. So it’s very important that you’re sending it to the right list.
There are a few different ways to go about this. The most common is hiring a list broker or a specialist to find a list for you, matching your target market as closely as possible. If you’re going this route, it’s important to work with an expert that you trust, because again, mailing to the wrong list is a waste of money.
Second, and this is my preference, is mailing to a list that you’ve built yourself. At Spotlight Branding, I built a list of thousands of solo lawyer mailing addresses over just a couple of years. I did this primarily by using funnels – basically, by offering to send them an amazing free resource through the mail. Once we capture the mailing address, we add it to our list for future mailings. This is my preferred way to build a list because you maintain total control of the process, and you guarantee that the people you’re mailing to have already expressed an interest in your business and your products or services.
But building your own list does require time and effort, so if you decide to use a list that someone else has created, I can’t fault you for that. But it’s critical that you work with a pro that you can trust. You get what you pay for, and it’s worth spending a bit more money to ensure that your message reaches the right people.
Always make a specific offer and create a clear course of action. This is an easy mistake to make. The temptation for most business owners is to include a whole bunch of information and a bunch of “action steps” for recipients to take. Visit our website, call us, ‘Like’ us on Facebook, etc.
Instead, your marketing should include a specific offer – i.e., a free copy of an exclusive report – and a clear way to act on the offer. That could mean calling you on the phone, visiting a landing page on the internet, or showing up at your location. Make it as simple, direct, and easy to follow as possible.
Create urgency. It’s hard to motivate people to take action. By nature, humans are set in our ways and prefer the status quo to making changes. So in order to motivate someone to respond to your direct mail advertising, you have to create compelling reasons for them to act, and you have to create urgency to make them act now. Because if they don’t act now, they’re not going to act later.
Typically, the best way to do this is to make a compelling offer tied to a deadline. And you don’t want the deadline to be a long time off – you don’t the recipient thinking that they have plenty of time to act. Another easy way to accomplish this is to provide a limited quantity of whatever you’re offering – only the first 100 people to respond are eligible, for example.
Don’t let your mail go straight to the wastebasket. When you go to your mailbox each day, what’s the first thing you do? You sort it, right? You throw out the obvious “junk mail” and open the rest.
Well, you absolutely, positively, can’t have your mailings sorted as trash and thrown out.
Postcards are one easy way around this problem. Skip the envelope altogether and make your most compelling offer right away.
Otherwise, you need to get creative with your packaging. One way to do this is to include something with some texture inside your envelope, in addition to the letter itself. I’ve included two-packs of Advil (“Bad marketing gives you a headache,”) small plastic bags full of shredded money purchased from the US mint (“Stop wasting money on marketing that doesn’t work,”) among other things. Check out LumpyMail.com for more ideas.
One of my favorite campaigns involved mailing a full-size poster in a cylindrical cardboard package. The poster was entitled “Ten Ways to Create More Referrals for Your Law Practice” and in addition to the poster itself, I included a sales letter with a strong offer. I guarantee you, 100% of those packages got opened, simply because nobody is going to throw that away without looking at it first. Now, I doubt that anybody put the poster up on their wall, but that wasn’t the point. I was successful in making sure that my message got delivered, and we had a great response rate from the campaign.
Create sequences, not one-off mailings. I found that results were significantly better when we sent our mailings in a sequence, including 2-4 mailings spaced out by about 5 days. Remember, it takes multiple touchpoints to create action in most cases. So your first mailing, no matter how strong it is, is going to be ignored by many recipients. But when the second, third, and fourth mailing show up in their box, they’re going to be more receptive.
As an example, I sent a sequence that began with a strong, oversized postcard. It was followed 5 days later by the poster I mentioned above. 5 days later, another postcard. 5 days after that, a sales letter with some sort of bulky insert to ensure that the envelope got opened. This performed much better than one-off mailings.
For Best Results, Integrate Other Marketing and Sales Channels Into Your Mailing Sequence
In my experience, mail campaigns work best when integrated with other channels as well. Specifically, I’ve used email and phone calls from our sales team effectively. The key is to build a sequence where every step is choreographed and timed.
As an example:
Day One: Postcard Arrives
Day Two: Email Sent
Day Four: Personal Phone Call from Sales Team
Day 6: Lumpy Sales Letter Arrives
And so on. When you hit your prospects through multiple different channels in a relatively short time frame, your response rate will increase.
Bottom line: snail mail isn’t dead. And even if your business is online, marketing offline can still be very profitable. For example – have you ever noticed that Google likes to promote its AdWords service with physical, mailed postcards? Ironic, right?
Direct mail still works, and it should be a part of your lead-gen strategy.
As discussed in our previous blog entry, in order to create referrals, you have to create top-of-mind awareness with your network.
That’s why even top brands like Coca-Cola spend billions of dollars in advertising for this purpose. Here are three tools you can use to make this happen in your business.
Referral Tool #1 – Your Email Newsletter.
Every business should have an email newsletter sent monthly if not more frequently. This is an easy, effective, and completely scalable way to stay in touch with your entire network – your clients & customers, past customers, referral sources, prospective clients, and more. Think of your e-newsletter as a way to keep people engaged for months or even years after your initial conversations. At Spotlight Branding, we regularly sign up new clients who we originally spoke to years ago. When we ask them how they heard about us, they say something like “I visited your website a few years ago and I’ve been getting your email newsletter ever since. And now I’m ready to work with you.” It happens all the time. I think of our email newsletter as a fishing hook – once someone takes the bait, sooner or later we’re going to reel them in.
But there’s a big caveat. If your email communications are boring or spammy, your recipients are going to unsubscribe or stop paying attention. So the key to an effective email newsletter is to make it interesting enough to your audience that they stay engaged. And the best way to do that is to pack it with valuable and practical information that they can use to improve their lives while at the same time reminding them of what you do and why it’s so important. So, at Spotlight Branding, we fill our weekly newsletter with practical marketing tips and strategies for lawyers. Our goal is to make our newsletter such a helpful resource that lawyers look forward to getting it each week. As long as that’s the case, sooner or later, many of them are going to consider hiring us. Even if they don’t, they may well refer other lawyers to us.
An email newsletter is one of the simplest, easiest, and most cost-effective marketing tools available, and every business should have one.
Referral Tool #2 – Social Media.
Whereas an email newsletter is a more robust type of communication, social media is ideal for creating a higher volume of very brief interactions. These types of interactions are valuable – research shows that it often takes between 5 and 9 engagements with a brand before a consumer will make a purchase. Social media allows you to create those brief engagements very efficiently.
But you can’t be self-promotional if you want to build an engaged following. The key to building an audience is to provide value for your followers – share content that is practical, educational, and engaging. When your social media channels become a source of legitimately helpful information for your target market, you’re going to be successful.
I recommend that every business have a presence on Facebook and Twitter. If you market to professionals, you should have a presence on LinkedIn as well. (But don’t discount Facebook, even if your audience is primarily professionals. They’re active on Facebook as well, and at Spotlight Branding we’ve had more success reaching lawyers on Facebook than on LinkedIn.) Instagram is a great channel as well, but since it’s a visual platform, it requires a bit more creativity. Channels like SnapChat, Pinterest, and others can also be valuable, depending on your market.
The bottom line is that social media is a great tool for creating and maintaining top-of-mind awareness, which leads directly to referrals. Make sure you’re taking full advantage.
Referral Tool #3 – Your Print Newsletter.
A monthly paper newsletter – printed and mailed – is a great tool for top-of-mind awareness. Some people think that, because of the explosion of digital marketing, that there is no longer a place for “old fashioned” mail. This hasn’t been my experience. In fact, as digital marketing has grown, physical mail has worked increasingly well for my business and for many other business owners that I’ve consulted with.
In fact, I think the explosion of digital communications has created a bit of a backlash – many people now crave and enjoy the simple experience of holding a letter or a book in their hand and reading it. I know I do – at my home and at the office, I have stacks of paper newsletters that I enjoy reading and highlighting.
So if you can put together a monthly newsletter that provides value to your audience, it’s a great way to stay in touch. The same concepts that apply to an email newsletter apply here – make the focus of your newsletter providing practical, actionable information that will help your readers improve their lives or their business.
Of course, print mailings have one significant disadvantage as compared to digital marketing – cost. It can be expensive to print and mail thousands of pieces per month! So a few recommendations – first, work with a print shop that you trust. I suggest going simple and low-cost – you still need to appear professional and stay consistent with your brand, but there’s no reason to go overboard with the design or the printed materials. Second, because a print newsletter campaign can be expensive, it’s important to closely track your results. Use a dedicated tracking phone number on your newsletter, so that you know when you’re getting phone calls as a result of the newsletter.
Earlier this month we talked about why referrals are the best way for most businesses to grow. Today we’ll dive in a little deeper in order to help you generate more referrals for your business.
There are two main ingredients present in every referral – understanding, and awareness.
Understanding. In order to make a referral, the referral source needs to know what you do and who you help. That’s why it’s so important that you can communicate these thoughts effectively. If someone doesn’t understand what you do, or doesn’t know who you can help, there’s no way that they can recognize an opportunity for a referral. Check out this blog entry if you need more help sharpening your message.
Top-of-mind Awareness. Referral opportunities generally have a short window. If the referral doesn’t happen within that window, the potential customer will find somebody else and the opportunity will be lost. So it’s vital that your referral sources recognize the opportunity and connect the dots immediately. That’s why top-of-mind awareness matters. You need to carve out valuable real estate in the minds of your referral network so that they think of you when the opportunity presents itself.
Most business owners think that they’re doing a good job in this area. But that’s because they underestimate just how difficult it is to maintain this awareness. People are incredibly busy. We’re all over-stimulated. Social media, text messaging, breaking news, constant notifications from our smartphones – we’re all busy and distracted, daily. Psychologists estimate that the average human brain processes somewhere between 10,000 – and 50,000 distinct thoughts every single day. So, unfortunately, it’s very easy for potential referral sources to forget that you exist.
It’s simply not good enough to make a great first impression on somebody. Give them enough time, and I can guarantee that they’re going to forget about you. The good news is that there are strategies and tools that you can use to overcome this challenge.
Educate, Re-Educate, and Remind
In a nutshell, that’s your challenge. That’s how you create reliable, consistent referral sources. Educate, re-educate, and remind.
Educate them. Explain to them what you do, how you make people’s lives better, and who you serve. And you let them know what a good referral opportunity looks like. For example, a good referral for a generic real estate agent is someone who is looking to buy or sell their home. But if you’re building a brand as a high-end agent, or if you focus on a specific part of town, then a good referral is somebody looking to buy or sell a million-dollar home, or a home in that specific neighborhood.
You re-educate them. People are busy. They’re distracted. They’re forgetful. So it’s up to you to proactively continue to explain what you do and who you help. They will forget if you let them!
You remind them. In addition to educating and re-educating, an important part of your referral system is simply reminding your referral network that you exist, that you’re still out there doing great work, and that they should continue to send referrals your way. You can’t depend on people to remember you. You have to continually remind them that you exist.
If this sounds like overkill, consider Coca-Cola. Coke is among the most recognizable brands in the world. In the United States, they have near-perfect market saturation. There are very few adults in the country that haven’t heard of Coca-Cola.
And yet… Coke spends over $500 million per year on advertising in the United States.
Why? Because they understand that maintaining top-of-mind awareness is a constant battle. They’re not introducing consumers to Coke when they advertise – they’re reminding them how much they love it. In hopes that, the next time the consumer visits the grocery store, a little voice in his head will prompt him to visit the soda aisle and grab a 12-pack.
If Coca-Cola, a brand that is literally recognized by 94% of the world’s population, spends billions per year in advertising to maintain top-of-mind awareness… don’t you think there’s a lesson for you and your business?
Now, you don’t have the advertising budget that Coca-Cola has. But you don’t need a huge budget to create awareness and drive referrals. Stay tuned for a handful of practical strategies to make this happen.
Referrals and word-of-mouth marketing may not be the sexiest way to grow your business, but it’s often the best way. Referrals are generally superior to clients and customers that come through other channels, for the following reasons:
Referred clients are cheaper to generate. It costs little or nothing to generate referrals. Instead of investing resources into expensive ad campaigns, you can create referrals by investing into the relationship you have with each customer and by delivering a product or service that exceeds expectations. In my business, we occasionally offer referral incentives or prizes, but even when that cost is factored in to the equation, our cost-per-lead for referrals is dramatically lower than any other form of lead-generation.
Referrals convert into clients and customers at a higher rate. When somebody is referred to your business, they are significantly more likely to become a paying client or customer. I know several lawyers who convert referrals into clients at about a 70% rate, while leads generated through other channels convert at about 30%. In my business, we convert referrals into clients at about twice the rate as other lead channels.
Referrals are pre-conditioned to trust you. The hardest part of creating a new customer or client is persuading them to take the “leap of faith” and pull out their wallet. This is true in person, over the phone, and online. And the more expensive your product or service is, the harder it is to overcome this “trust deficit.” People are skeptical, and understandably so. We’ve all been burned in the past and we don’t want to repeat the experience. But when someone is referred to you, they are pre-conditioned to trust you – because someone they know has already vouched for you. So that person transfers their credibility to you. You may still have to do some work to close the sale, but you’re starting from a much stronger position.
Referred customers and clients are easier to work with. We’ve all dealt with nightmare customers and clients. Not only are these people unpleasant and discouraging to work with, they also take a very tangible toll on your operation. They generally demand more time and effort than other customers. They create negativity for your staff, and sometimes they spread their negativity to other customers and clients. You don’t want to deal with these types of people. Fortunately, referrals are much less likely to go this route. They start the relationship in a better place because they have a personal connection to you. And if nothing else, they’re generally going to behave better because they don’t want to make the friend, colleague, or family member who referred to you look bad. Think about your three favorite customers or clients to work with. How many of them came to you through referral? Now think about your three worst customers or clients. How many of them were referrals? Every business is different, but most entrepreneurs that I talk to report a similar trend: referred customers are the best customers to work with.
Create an endless cycle of referrals. Statistically, a client or customer who comes to you through a referral is more likely to make referrals of their own, creating a cycle. I’ve heard this referred to as a “referral chain” and it’s the holy grail of marketing. If you can get to a place where every customer creates a new customer you can grow your business dramatically without any other lead-gen tactics. For the first several years at Spotlight Branding, nearly 100% of our growth was through referral. It allowed us to go from $0 to $1 Million in just five years!
It’s Time to Get Serious About Referrals
Referrals are cheaper to generate, convert better, make better customers, and are more likely to make referrals themselves.
It sounds like a no-brainer, right? There’s no better way to grow your business than through referrals and word-of-mouth recommendations.
But for whatever reason, most entrepreneurs and marketers look right past it. It may be because referrals seem “basic” or boring. It some cases, business owners may not realize that they can actually control referrals – they view referral marketing as a passive strategy.
That couldn’t be farther from the truth. There are a number of strategies and tactics that you can use to create and systematize referrals. It’s not complicated, but it’s effective. I’ve personally built a million-dollar business on the back of these strategies.
Referrals are the best way to grow your business. What’s your referral strategy?
The purpose of your marketing is to generate qualified leads.
But there’s a lot more to building an effective marketing system than a one-sentence objective may indicate. There are a multitude of different opportunities, strategies, concepts, and tactics that you can leverage.
As an analogy, consider the game of football.
The object of the game is simple – score more points than your opponent. But within a football team are many different players, playing positions with different purposes that serve the overall goal.
Every football team has an offense, designed to score points; and a defense, designed to keep the opponent from scoring. But even within each unit, there are many different smaller groups with different objectives.
On offense, it starts with the linemen. Their job is to physically hold the defense back, creating time and space for the quarterback. The quarterback must take the ball, scan the field, and throw a pass to a receiver. Those receivers must be fast, strong, and able to run away from the defense. At any given time, there are 11 teammates on the field, all very different from each other, with vastly different skills, each with different assignments, all working towards the same objective.
When it all works together, it’s fun to watch. But if any one person on the team fails to do their job properly, the team is compromised and the objective might be lost.
Your marketing is the same. There four main components, all serving the common goal of generating qualified leads, but in very different ways. If any one of them is underperforming, it’s hurting your business.
The four main parts are Branding, Referral Generation, Client Retention, and Cold Lead Generation. Below is a brief overview of each of them.
Branding
Branding is a concept that confuses many business owners. So here’s a simple working definition for you: Your brand is how your business is perceived by the outside world. Branding is the process of shaping that perception.
It’s defining “who you are” for the rest of the world to see and understand. Done right, it lays the foundation for your entire business. Branding includes visual elements like your logo and your color scheme, but it also includes your story, your unique selling proposition, your market positioning, your pricing strategy, and more. It’s your identity.
An effective brand positions your business as unique, memorable, and highly valuable. A strong brand attracts your target clients and customers magnetically to your business.
Referral Generation
Many business owners don’t take referral generation seriously – or at least, they don’t consider it a function of marketing. Instead they see referrals as something that happens organically as a result of providing good quality service.
It’s true that referrals can happen organically, but there is a whole lot you can do as a business owner to drive referrals. It takes intentional thought and strategy, but it’s worth it. At Spotlight Branding, most of our initial growth came through referrals from satisfied clients. As we grew into a seven-figure business, we’ve invested resources into many other forms of marketing, but referrals still play a key role in our growth.
As we dive into referral generation, I’ll share the strategies and techniques we have used to drive referrals – rather than just sitting back and hoping they happen.
Client Retention
Why are we talking about client retention in an article about marketing?
Because nothing is more difficult and more expensive than creating new clients and customers for your business. It takes significant time, effort, and resources to win new business.
It’s much easier and much more affordable to continue to win business from your existing clients and customers. Depending on your business model, that may involve moving your clients into monthly continuity programs. It might be selling your products to the same customers repeatedly.
Regardless of your business model, the reality is that it’s much harder and more expensive to win new clients, than it is to repeatedly engage clients that you’ve already won. And there’s a whole lot that you can do, from a marketing perspective, to keep your clients happy, engaged, and coming back again and again.
One of the most consequential breakthroughs that we had at Spotlight Branding was transitioning away from “one-off” services like website design, and instead creating continuity programs which included website creation, but was packaged with other continuous marketing services. Rather than getting paid once by a client, we are now paid each month on an ongoing basis. That’s a big deal.
Cold Lead Generation
Cold lead generation refers to creating new leads, from scratch, in the marketplace. This is where many business owners want to start with their marketing, but I consider it the fourth and final part of an effective marketing strategy for a reason.
Cold lead gen includes a wide variety of channels – pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, billboards, direct mail, commercials on TV, and much more. It’s a simple concept: you use some sort of media to generate leads, and when you figure out a formula that creates leads at an acceptable cost, you can ramp up your spend and grow rapidly.
But, figuring out viable lead-gen strategies usually requires a significant investment and significant amount of trial-and-error. It’s expensive and it can be risky. For that reason, until you’ve optimized the first three parts of your marketing system, I don’t recommend spending much money generating new cold leads.
However, once you’ve dialed in your brand, your referral strategy, your retention strategy, and you have the financial resources to invest… cold lead generation is like pouring fuel on the fire. It’s how you scale your business – fast.