Throughout this video blog series, Liz Harr has been talking about referral marketing, what it means, how to get more referrals, and how to keep the referrals that you’re getting. In the last installment of this video blog series, we’ll close out by talking about how to build a successful referral marketing program.
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Hi, in this video blog series, I’ve been talking about referral marketing, what it means, how to get more referrals, and how to keep the referrals that you’re getting. Now, I’d like to close the series by talking about how to build a successful referral marketing program.
And there are five must haves that I’d like to share with you. First and foremost, is around networking. But I’m not talking about being on site and going to the networking events that are around your city or geographic region. I’m talking about digital networking skills. The reason this is really important is because social media is fast becoming a way that professional services people are dialoguing, looking for experts, and figuring out who can solve the primary problem that they have that’s keeping them up at night.
And I’d like to share just these three stats with you that I think will put this into perspective. Sixty percent of referral sources check you out on social media. This is not a maybe in your marketing strategy, social media is a non-negotiable, it’s something that you have to have. Seventeen percent of referrals are made because they interacted with you on social media, it’s a way that you can convince people of your expertise.
And finally, here’s another one I want to share that I think is really striking. Eighteen percent of millennial professionals won’t even refer you if you’re not in social channels. That is how much of a generator social media has become in terms of people figuring out whether you’re the expert you say you are.
Now, let’s take a look at the second must have. This is around getting your expertise out there and making it visible. Having in-house experts who give presentations. The reason this is a must have is if you’ve been following this video blog series, you saw that one of the primary ways people are convinced of your expertise is they saw you speak.
So making sure you have an arsenal of experts who can get out there and speak is a must have in your referral marketing toolkit. A website. Also, if you’ve been following this series, you saw that a website, and an unimpressive website, is a top reason that you don’t hear from the referrals that are getting referred your way.
So having a high quality, high performance website is a must have if you’re going to not only get referrals, but keep the referrals that come your way. Now, let me put this into perspective. Eight out of 10 people will check out your website. What this means is if somebody is referred to you, they don’t magically pick up the phone and trust that you are the expert they’re looking for.
They will do some due diligence first, and 8 out of 10 times, they go to your website. So it has to be up to snuff in terms of convincing people of your expertise. And by the way, what I mean when I’m talking about a high performance website, I’m talking about a website that is designed to attract prospects. So it has the thought leadership, it has the keyword rich content, it has the components that convince people you are the expert they’re looking for.
A fourth must have in your toolkit is around industry trends. So being on top of industry trends, being aware of the shifts, whether it’s through original research that you might do, whether it’s through using others’ research, but just making sure that you’re not talking about the same old dialogue that people have been talking about for the last several years, and that you’re on to the cutting edge industry trends is really critical, because this relates to the fifth and the last must have in your marketing toolkit.
And that is around generating high quality, keyword rich content that talks about those industry trends. So if you have these five pieces in your referral marketing toolkit, you’ll be well on your way to not only generating more referrals, but keeping them and making them work for you.
Now, if you found this helpful, I’d like to encourage you to check out our Visible Firm course in Hinge University for more details on how you build this toolkit. Hope to see you there.
