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Home / Business / Small Business

Graham McGregor: Make your business easy to refer

Graham McGregor
By Graham McGregor
Columnist·Herald online·
26 Aug, 2013 09:30 PM4 mins to read

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Graham McGregor
Opinion by Graham McGregor
Graham McGregor is a marketing columnist for the NZ Herald
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One of the simplest ways to improve your marketing results is to make your business easy to refer and recommend to other people. (If more people recommend ad refer your business it's relatively simple to increase your sales.)

Here are five ways to make your business easy to refer that you may like to try...

1: Make what you do entertaining and fun.

I saw a great example of this recently on the website of a video production firm in New Zealand called Click HD.

If you go to this link on their website and click the 'Bespoke Animation' tab you will see an entertaining animated video.

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It's less than 2 minutes long and Click HD created it for a medical firm called Dr Kelly & Associates in the United Kingdom.

This animated video is both entertaining and fun and you will definitely enjoy watching it.

Which makes it very easy for someone who watches it to recommend it to other people. (Exactly as I am doing right now.)

2: Get extraordinary results for your clients.

I was chatting with a business consultant in Auckland a few days ago.

Discover more

Opinion

Graham McGregor: Differentiating your business

29 Jul 09:30 PM
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Graham McGregor: Partnership Marketing

05 Aug 09:30 PM
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Graham McGregor: Creating delighted clients

12 Aug 09:30 PM
Opinion

Graham McGregor: Getting ideas from other people

19 Aug 09:30 PM

This consultant showed me how he had helped a painter client massively increase his profits. The before and after evidence that showed exactly what this business consultant achieved was just astonishing.

His painter client earned an extra $106,000 of new profits in a four month period as a result of changing some very simple things they did in their business.

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This business consultant specialised in working with tradespeople and has created similar results for tradespeople in other industries as well.

Because his results are so good, I personally have no hesitation recommending his services to tradespeople that fit a certain profile.

3: Offer information that potential clients will find valuable.

This is one of my favourite marketing strategies.

Here you put yourself in your ideal client's shoes and ask this question...

'What information would be really helpful to an ideal client who is thinking of investing in the types of products or services that I offer?

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Then provide this information in an easy to recommend format.

Sally Fienerman the owner of Fitness Fix does this extremely well.

Sally works exclusively with ladies who want to get in great shape. She has created a wonderful 16 page booklet called 'The five secrets to a great looking body for women with busy lives'.

This booklet is offered on her website and contains 'how to' information that is super valuable to the ladies who read it.

As a result, Sally gets recommended and referred often by many of the readers of her booklet. (All they do is tell other ladies that they need to read Sally's booklet.)

4: Make your business memorable.

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I was chatting with a sign writer a few years ago and he told me about a client who specialises in repairing windows.

This client decided to call himself 'The Window Doctor' and the sign writer created some wonderful images on his van.

It showed a doctor in a white coat fixing windows. The window repair person also wears a white medical coat while on the job.

The 'Window Doctor' name, the eye catching images and the white coat all make this business memorable and easy to refer.

As a result it is doing extremely well.

5: Have a unique way of doing business

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My favourite example of this is dentist Paddi Lund in Queensland.

Paddi has a confidential phone number and no signage on his building. The only way you can become a patient is to be referred by one of Paddi's existing patients.

And Paddi gets a huge number of referrals by having this unique way of doing business.

"There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary." - Brendan F. Behan

Action Step:
How could you make your business easy to refer and recommend?


Graham McGregor is a marketing consultant and the creator of the 396 page 'Unfair Business Advantage Report.' www.theunfairbusinessadvantage.com (This is free and has now been read by business owners from 27 countries.) You can email him at the link above.
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