How to Get Current Customers to Refer You to Others

According to current marketing wisdom, one unhappy customer will tell 7 other people about their bad experience with a product or business. A happy customer will only tell 1 other person about their great experience. How can you beat these odds to get more of your satisfied customers to spread the word about your products and services?

The first way is to produce excellent content in a range of formats useful to the prospects in your niche, including:

- Articles

- Special reports on hot topics in your niche

- Videos on YouTube

- Images/infographics

- Webinars

- PowerPoint presentations on Slideshare (now owned by Linkedin)

- Emalls in your email marketing platform and autoresponder

- Ecourses

And more.

Use share buttons for all of these types of content. Many blogs have plugins that allow visitors to share the content at your site on many of the main social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Tumblr. Publish original content on the networks that your followers can also share easily. 

To go viral means to spread rapidly from person to person in your niche. We might also term it creating buzz about your products and service. Launch new products regularly can create buzz. Be willing to give away free review copies in exchange for testimonials to pass the word along about how good your products are.

A free webinar or workshop with Questions and Answers (Q & A) can also create buzz if you have a good reputation in your niche that would make people eager to attend so they can interact with you.

Emails can be forwarded easily to friends and family. Ecourses are even better for viral marketing purposes if they are on an interesting niche topic. Similarly, special reports designed to get more email sign ups have a high potential of going viral. 

YouTube is not just for entertainment. It is one of the largest search engines on the Internet as well. Don’t want to appear in front of the camera? Transform your best PowerPoint presentations into video and upload them in your YouTube account. 

Create an affiliate program for your loyal customers so they can earn income by referring your products and services. Form JV partnerships with those in your niche who are not direct competitors so you can all help each other with your viral marketing. Give them a chance to try your product so they will feel happy to use it and recommend it to others. Craft such attractive offers that any customer would be delighted with it and be glad to tell others about the terrific bargain they got. 

In reference to your social networks, publish unique content as well in your accounts and within groups you have joined or created yourself, such as Facebook groups. Your connections can share it with all their followers with just a click.

Finally, just ask! You would be amazed at how many marketers, even top ones, forget to include a call to action that suggests if the reader liked the content or found it useful, they should feel free to share it with others.

What's your strategy for getting referrals? 

Comment below!