You’re a small business owner so I’m sure you’ve had plenty of sleepless nights. Sitting in your office or at home at the end of your very long day worrying about things such as payroll, cash flow, inventory, employee issues, unforeseen events such as weather or even Covid and of course customer acquisition. You’ve tried all forms of advertising that have had varying ROI but there is one method that is tried and true and that is customer referrals. Customer referrals have been around as long as business itself. Many small business owners will attest that customer acquisition is a major pain point for their business and they wish they had better solutions or have even tried to create their own solutions. This blog was created to address the second largest pain point for small business owners, only behind lack of cash flow, and that is customer acquisition.
Customer acquisition is an issue all business owners hope takes care of itself because if you provide a great product or service and a great customer experience, the customer referrals should come naturally, right? Not necessarily, because we live in a society that has a attention span of eleven(11) seconds before we move onto the next attention grabbing thing. So how do you get our current customers to tell their family and friends about your business? You typically have to give your customers 3 things: A great customer experience, an easy to use way to communicate with your business, typically tied to their communications platforms like text, email and their social media for them to send your info to their family and friends and you have to provide some type of customer referral reward. Who doesn’t love to save money? Nothing increases a customer’s purchasing power more than a discount. Remember the blog on WIIFM? We live in a WIIFM society. Very seldom do people go out of their way to do something unless there is a tangible benefit to them. Even with a benefit, the customer experience has to really compel them to want to share your business info and take up their precious time. Remember, their reputation is on the line if they refer you and you provide a lousy customer experience. Make things easy, intuitive and provide instant gratification and you will see more customer referrals coming your way.
Consumers love to give & receive family and friend referrals because it saves them valuable search time and can sometimes even save them money. Having a business vetted for you like a plumber, realtor, restaurant or retail establishment takes the burden of the referred party. Referred customers also have lower customer acquisition cost and typically have longer customer lifetime value for the business. Ninety-two(92%) of consumers trust referrals from people they know and are 4X more likely to buy when referred. Who wouldn’t want those types of customers being referred to your business?
So if you are a small business owner and you have read this particular blog, what questions would you ask yourself when it comes to customer acquisition for your own business(es) and what customer acquisition tools have used and it had a bad ROI for your business in the past? If you could provide a centralized tool for your customers that was free, required no maintenance, and provided you instant message updates on new referrals and was rewarding to your customers would you implement that tool for your business today? If consistent growth for your business is a key goal and having an easy to use and intuitive tool that does not require a website to implement but could provide alerts to you and your customers of new referrals would you use it? If a mobile app could alert you of new customer referrals and when to expect new business would you subscribe to that business? Here is your CTA…
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