The key is to keep what’s being said about you positive.
“Word of mouth, often called referrals, is a special marketing niche because it is in fact so powerful,” wrote entrepreneurial expert Steve Strauss in USA Today (June 13). “Referrals are great because your best customers – those folks who love your business, products and brand – become your advocates, your unpaid cheerleaders.”
Strauss refers to John Jantsch’s book, The Referral Engine, which features a step-by-step guide to creating a systemic, ongoing “referral machine.” Jantsch actually identified a marketing gap that small business owners must address: While 89.6 percent of business owners said most of their business came from word of mouth and referrals, only 26 percent acted on it by working to generate more referrals.
Strauss deconstructs the book’s message into three steps, which he calls “the essence of creating your own referral machine”:
1. Be Referral Worthy: This is as simple as satisfying your customers, but obviously companies that go above and beyond the call of duty will get rave reviews. “People don’t refer business to boring or mediocre businesses, but they do refer business to companies that exceed their expectations and do something exceptionally well,” Strauss writes.
2. Start With Existing Customers: It is not enough to provide a good product or service at a fair price – that’s expected. Jantsch says you must take a customer through the following cycle: “know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer.”
Create customer loyalty programs**. Give people incentives to refer business to you. Connect with your customers using Facebook, Twitter and location-based smartphone games (see Foursquare and Cellphone Acts as Loyalty Card). Offer feedback forms and take online customer surveys.
3. Create a Strategic Partner Network: “The idea here is to find businesses similar to yours – companies that share your values and are also exceptional and worthy of referrals,” writes Strauss. “Then begin to do some work together, some joint projects. Maybe they can offer free samples of your products, and vice versa.”
But the extrinsic reward: “All of a sudden you will have this other company singing your praises to their customers.”
In wireless retail, the competition over price, device or network can be fierce, but since you are dealing in an industry with a high replacement frequency – the average U.S. cellphone user replaces his/her phone every 18 months – there are always new opportunities to deliver outstanding customer service and a uniquely positive phone buying experience. Follow the above steps to ensure your company is making a consistently good word-of-mouth impression.
- newsletter@iQmetrix.com
** iQmetrix preferred partner, TracPoint Loyalty, offers a variety of customer loyalty and marketing programs to increase repeat visits and retail traffic including Customer Loyalty Cards, Gift Card Mailers and dual use Business Card/Gift Cards. For more information call 800-404-4450 or email sales@tracpointwireless.com
* To read more about Customer Experience, Loyalty and Referrals, check out the following articles from iQmetrix News & Views: