Does Your Business Rely on the Accidental Referral?

Ask any businessman or marketer about what drives business growth and brings new clients for them, the answer will mostly be referrals. Ask the same businessmen about their strategy to actively gain referrals, you will not see much actions been taken in this regard. Most of the businesses rely on accidental referrals when it comes to getting referrals for new business. They think that referrals are made just by chance and you can do nothing to drive referrals. But they are completely wrong! Do you also think the same way? Does Your Business Rely on the Accidental Referral only? Then it is time for you to realize that there can be strategies to gain referrals.

What Is Accidental Referral

Accidental referrals are referrals made just by chance without any effort from the part of the business owner to make that happen. Yes, accidental referrals do happen. If you are doing a great job and providing superb services to your customers then it is natural for your customers to spread the good word for you. This is what is known as accidental referrals.

Relying on Accidental Referrals Only Is Hazardous

Accidental referrals are just mere bits and pieces of the bigger pie of the market share that the strategic referral marketing can bring on your way. Relying solely on accidental referrals can prove to be hazardous for your business growth. Try to imagine, if without any strategy to gain referrals your customers are referring your services to others how much more referrals you will get if you active deploy methods to gain them? The results can be simply staggering.

Work on Your Referral Marketing Strategy

So, the bottom line is, you should not only rely on accidental referrals when it comes to gaining referrals for new business. You must adopt some tried and tested strategies to gain referrals. Follow these tips to build a robust referral marketing strategy:

Design Referral Campaigns

The best strategy to gain referrals is to design and conduct viral referral campaigns. Referrals campaigns are marketing campaigns through which you inspire your target audience to refer you more and more. For this, you have to use various tools and techniques. One of the technique would be to offer incentives.

Offer Incentives

Offering some sort of incentive or reward for driving referrals is a tried and tested strategy to gain referrals. If you offer incentives to your customers for referring you to others they are more likely to refer than the accidental referrals. You can also offer incentives to the clients who are being referred to you. Incentive can be anything from a simple discount to any other reward based on the kind of services you are providing.

Have Cross Platform Referral Campaigns

One of the essentials of running a successful referral campaign is to have a referral structure that works perfectly on all the platforms. Most often marketers do the mistake of slapping the same desktop interfaces unto mobile users. This will significantly decrease the performance of your referrals campaign. To gain maximum out of your efforts, you have to run a fully cross platform referral campaign. You can read more on designing a cross platform referral campaign here.

Monitor and Optimize

In order to design a great referral campaign, you have to keep constantly monitoring all the aspects of it. From web design to marketing messages to offered incentives you should run split testing and monitor performances of each of your efforts. Then stick to the best performing one.

Create Referral Network and Referral Partnership

Another very important strategy to gain referrals is to develop targeted referral relationships with other professionals. You should target professionals who are related to the kind of services you are providing and then connect with them to create your referral network. Educate your contacts as to what you do and let them know that you are there if any of their contacts need your services. Thus, keep on growing your referral network and referrals partnerships.

So, now you know that only relying on accidental referrals can become deadly for your business. Hopefully, with the strategies to gain referrals described above, you will be able to step up your referral marketing efforts.