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This is one in a series of marketing articles that will explain
e-marketing in layman’s terms. This
information is provided to help you modify your online presence to get
your practice noticed.
Marketing Tip:
Building Your Referral Engine
As we’ve said repeatedly, people do
business with people they know or people their friends and family know.
The referrals you get come principally from the people who know you well
and who have seen you in action. How do you ensure that you keep getting
those traditional referrals ?
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A. |
Say “thank
you” for every referral you get even if you don’t manage to close the
business. Thank you is the most underused phrase in the English
language, and anyone who takes time to use it stands out from the
pack. |
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B. |
Refer business
to others ! The fastest way to turn people into power referrers is to
refer business to them. Think you don’t know about opportunities for
others ? Think again and start listening carefully in every
conversation. You’ll be surprised how many opportunities you stumble
across that you can use to remind others that you’re thinking of them.
People who benefit from your referrals will become your biggest
business boosters. |
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C. |
Make sure your
friends and family understand what you do for a living. How many times
have you said you are a mediator, only to have people ask questions
that show that they clearly don’t understand what a mediator does ?
Take time to educate others – once they understand exactly what you do
they’ll be able to refer appropriate business to you. |
While
face-to-face marketing is valuable, most people find that they can get
more referrals if they ramp up their digital marketing engine. Prior to
doing this there are several items that need to be in place:
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A. |
Your website
needs to be up, rank well, and provide all the information needed by
someone looking to hire a mediator, including a scheduling link. |
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B. |
All your
marketing collateral (website, brochure, business cards, etc) needs to
have a common look and feel. |
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C. |
You need a
system in place to be able to track the lead source and be able to say
“thank you.” |
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D. |
You need a
business presence in the social media environment that is most
appropriate for your prospective book of business. If you market to
other professionals, then you need to be on LinkedIn, but if you
market to end users, then Facebook is a better environment. If in
doubt – join both. |
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E. |
You need to
build lists of prospective contacts and referrers with e-mail
addresses. It is important in the beginning to separate these e-mail
addresses into lists that will allow you to send targeted e-mails. For
example, if you are going to market to attorneys, you might want one
list for those who do divorce work and another for those who do
personal injury work. |
Once your foundation is in place you can now start the tough work of
getting your name out there in front of your potential referrers !
Social Media Marketing
Let’s start with social media marketing. The biggest misconception that we
see here is that people think they are supposed to hang out their virtual
shingle and by “advertising” people will flock to them. Nothing could be
further from the truth. The objective of a social media campaign is to get
people to recognize you as a trusted expert in your field…it is not to
stand up and yell “hire me!” How do you achieve this recognition ? Post at
least 1 link per day to an article in the press about mediation or an
affiliated topic.
In the past we would all forward interesting articles to a couple of
friends. Today by posting it to your social media page, all of your
friends will see it at the same time. If you make that posting prior to 9
a.m. you’ll actually get a 20% higher read rate than you would if you
posted it later in the day, because most active social media users check
their accounts first thing in the morning.
But you say, all of my friends know what I do….what good does it do to
remind them ? Well, all of us are busy, so a little reminder never hurts.
But the reality is that you’re really not trying to reach your friends.
You’re trying to reach THEIR FRIENDS. Take Starbucks for example. They
have 23 milllion Facebook fans. These are typically dedicated customers
who are thrilled to hear about a new seasonal beverage or get a coupon for
an occasional discount. However the more important number is 690
million….that number is the number of friends that the 23 million Facebook
fans have. If only 10% of those 23 million fans “share” a posting from
Starbucks on Facebook then Starbucks will have reached 100 million people
! Consider what happens if 10% of those people repeat the behavior –
suddenly you’re reached a huge number of prospective consumers, and all
you had to do was post one comment that your fans thought was sufficiently
interesting that they chose to share it.
Now clearly your numbers won’t be as big as Starbucks’. But if you spend a
little time linking to your friends and colleagues on Facebook and
LinkedIn, you’ll probably find you have a couple of hundred contacts, and
you’ve now got a method to reach them all quickly.
Newsletter Marketing
Similar to social media, newsletters give you a way to do the work once
and reach hundreds of people with a couple of keystrokes. We’ve written
about the mechanics of publishing an electronic newsletter in prior issues
(that are available in the GODR archives) so I won’t get into the
mechanics of developing a newsletter. But I do want you to consider
several points:
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Even if your
recipients don’t open your newsletter, they’ll see your name in the
subject line and be reminded that you are a mediator. |
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B. |
If there’s is
one catchy / interesting article in your newsletter, then you’ve
increased the chances that your recipients will forward this vehicle
to their friends and family. |
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C. |
If the
newsletter is easy to read (we recommend 2-3 teaser sentences with a
link to the full article) the chances are better that people will
continue to read it every time you publish. |
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D. |
Correctly
written, a newsletter will allow you to track the trends in your
audience, which will help you focus your practice in areas where there
is more likely to be work. |
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E. |
A good
newsletter will allow the reader to easily link to your website to get
more information about you, contact you, or schedule a mediation. |
Push vs. Search
Just a few years ago while the economy was still relatively healthy,
businesses were spending the bulk of their time optimizing their websites
so they could be found easily in a search. However once the markets
crashed, people stopped spending time aimlessly searching and more time
trying to keep their heads above water. Therefore we’ve now seen a
dramatic move to push media. By definition, push media are those media
streams that push content to users once they have established a connection
with you. Both social media and newsletters / email are examples of push
media. Once someone has connected with you on a social media platform they
automatically get your posts…and once they’re on your mailing list they
automatically get your mailings. No further action is required on their
part. While they may not read everything you send, you’ll remain in the
front of their mind and make it easier for them to refer their friends and
family to you when a need arises.
Referrals are the heart of your practice. Take the time to develop your
infrastructure and spend a few minutes each day, week, and month to push
out quality content. And you’ll find that your phone is ringing and your
calendar is full.
Coming next month: Mobile Media...What is it and how does it
affect your marketing efforts ?
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Michele Gibson is a Georgia-registered neutral and a certified
emerging media consultant. She is the president of Digital Smart
Tool, LLC – an e-marketing firm offering website design, SEO,
electronic newsletters, social media coaching, and marketing training
seminars.
Phone: 404-592-3367 E-mail:
mgibson@digitalsmarttools.com |
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