Referrals/Recommended Info Products

Build your business by asking clients for recommendations!

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, September, 2000)

HOW MUCH OF YOUR BUSINESS IS REFERRAL AND/OR REPEAT?
Well over 50% of my clients for marketing and career services—and probably at least 20% of my direct book orders—have either used us before or came through a personal recommendation.

If you provide high quality, excellent dollar value, and the right attitude, you also ought to be getting a significant percentage of repeat and referral clients.

Are you doing enough to encourage them? You could probably use a hundred different techniques to drive repeat and word-of-mouth/word-of-mouse. In fact, both of my marketing books give this subject a whole chapter.

So today I'll just focus on the simplest way: ASK! When a client leaves our office, completed work in hand, we say, right then and there, some variation on "We'd be delighted to help your friends and colleagues who need this service. Please recommend us." And we hand out a business card and/or brochure. Often, people turn right back to us and say, "Oh, I know several people—may I have some extra business cards?" or "I hadn't thought of that—and I'd be glad to."

On the Internet, it works even better. Often, a marketing client will jot me a note about our high quality, quick turnaround, and affordable prices. And I'll be right back, asking "May I quote you?"—or even, if the client came from a discussion list where I'm active, "Would you mind sending a brief note to the list?" As a result, I have pages of testimonials, and I get referrals from listmates who never even used my services themselves.

These techniques are not difficult and can make a huge impact on your bottom line—after all, the customer acquisition cost is zero.

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AND SPEAKING OF RECOMMENDATIONS—HERE'S SOMETHING THAT IMPRESSED THE HECK OUT OF ME

Last month, I wrote about the serendipity of discovering through a blooper that my subscription list included some very big names, among them Ken Evoy. Ken and I have been exploring ways we can work together, and he sent me a couple of his info products.

Well, after reviewing some of his material, I find Ken is very much a kindred spirit. Like me, he believes in offering high-quality, well-thought-out information—stuff that people can use immediately whether they're rank beginners or 20-year marketing veterans.

And like me, Ken believes in giving a huge amount of value for a low price. His flagship product, Make Your Site Sell, is only $19.95 and includes three large manuals. The main manual is just a shade under 500 full-size pages—I think the whole thing is about 800 pages. And while, with 25 years of professional marketing experience under my belt, a lot of the content was familiar, I still found some idea starters that caused me to rethink fresh directions in my own marketing—not to mention a huge number of hotlinked resources. For instance, I've had a goal to build my speaking practice. Ken's second product, Make Your Knowledge Sell (authored by Monique Harris, whose name comes up frequently in Internet marketing circles), offers several URLs of websites where I can list my availability as a speaker, for free. And if I were a newbie starting out, I'd have thought I'd struck gold. Clear, logical explanations, step by step processes, and a big leg up on the competition.

Are there any negatives to Ken's products? Yes. They come as e-books, so if you want a printed copy, you either have to order a printed book from him or tie up your printer for a few hours churning it out. And I find his taste in clip art bit cartoonish.

But in the great scheme of things, these are very minor complaints. I felt positively enough about Ken's products that I did a very rare thing: I signed up to be an affiliate. It's the only affiliate program I'm in other than amazon.com—which I offer not to make money but as a service to my readers who want to order books they've read about on my site. I am picky about my endorsements and Ken has earned mine.

So yes, I earn a commission if you buy anything through my referral. But no, I don't sign up with affiliate programs just to make money. Otherwise, my site would be cluttered to the brim with affiliate programs (and believe me, I have been approached!). I'd say, if you've been marketing or running a business on the Web less than three years, you should immediately go buy Make Your Site Sell. You may well want it even if you've got a lot more experience—especially if your site hasn't been producing the kinds of sales you'd like to see. If you want to be in the vanguard of the new movement toward dynamic pricing, check out Make Your Pricing Sell. For great advice on copywriting, his latest, Make Your Words Sell. And if you're experienced entrepreneur who wants to begin or expand an info product line, take a look at Make Your Knowledge Sell. Preview all of them by following this link: http://www.sitesell.com/frugalfun.html

I think you'll be glad you did.

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.


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