Maximise Referrals
Recently the MYOB business quarter report come out.
In a survey of a thousand Aussie businesses it was found that only 35% had a website!
The business owners with a website report a more successful year.
Only 51% of finance and insurance businesses are online, while 48% of manufacturing and wholesale businesses have a website and 36% of retailing and hospitality businesses have a website.
Referral plans
Referrals are the best types of leads – who doesn’t know that right?
But how many of us make a plan to maximize referrals?
Recently I put together a plan myself and here are some helpful tips:
- work out how you want to target, what business type, personality type etc..
- brainstorm some ideas on how to meet these business/people
- some ideas are networking groups, friendly phone chats, letting your family and friends know or even facebook
- make an incentive to refer to you, something free or a kickback on their next bill
- place this incentive in your invoices and newsletters
Riding the marketing roller-coaster
I dont know about you but the design industry is a tough one. Quoting and chasing leads takes time and when you finally win the job its all hands on deck.
Then you finish and have to find the energy to chase the new leads.
The best thing I have done to make this process smoother is SEO by far but also networking and facebook leads.
Putting aside time to check and update these lead generates has helped me keep a constant flow of business without the bumpy up and downs.
Questions and Answers
Q: How do I keep an eye on my site?
A: The browser wars have raged for quite sometime now so the only sure way to keep an eye on your site is to download and install Chrome, Firefox, Internet explorer. In that order as currently Chrome is the leader. Maybe make it a point of checking your site in these browsers every month just in-case a browser update does something funny to your site.
Just for Fun
The oatmeal’s musings on running your own business.
Warning it has some bad language and general naughty stuff – but very funny!