Most small business owners are at a disadvantage compared to their large competitors when it comes to marketing. After all, small businesses do not have the marketing muscle and budget of the large companies. They have to find innovative ways to do marketing and advertising that is not expensive yet is equally, if not more, effective.
Many small business owners get intimated by this challenge and think that there is no way they can succeed against Goliath in marketing. We believe that is not true. In our earlier post on 5 fundamental rules of marketing we argued that good marketing strategy does not have to cost much. We also showed how you can improve your sales in a low-cost fashion through community involvement. There is another aspect of low cost marketing that is not utilized well by small business owners. That involves seeking help from your existing customers to do the marketing for you.
Some of the famous companies as well as not so famous ones have used different aspects of this strategy. The most famous example of using customers to do marketing and selling is Amway, where they recruited people to sell their products to their friends and relatives in exchange for commission. Recently, some interesting startups have employed this technique successfully. A company called Threadless asks its customers to design T-shirts and vote for the best design in exchange for a prize. It then sells those T-shirts to other customers. Groupon recently introduced a feature by which their registered users can post links of their daily deals on their Facebook page and earn small reward when their “friends” buy the deal.
You can utilize these and other techniques to get new customers by asking existing ones to do marketing. Here are several approaches you can use.
- Provide referral bonus.
This is probably the oldest and easiest technique you can deploy. You can ask your existing customers to send new customers to your business in exchange for bonus. It can take many different forms. My fitness club provides a referral bonus of $100 when I introduce a new member to them and when he signs up for membership. - Have them post on their Facebook pages.
People are more influenced by recommendations provided by their friends than anything else. With popularity of Facebook it has become lot easier to ask your customers to recommend your products. What you need is establish a page on Facebook for your business. When your customers tag your business with the “like” or “recommend” button it will show up on their Facebook page that their “friends” will see. With proper plan and execution this technique can bring in many new customers by this modern day equivalent of word-of-mouth. - Help them send emails to their friends.
If you are using email marketing and sending regular emails to your existing customers a simple inclusion of a button that lets them forward an email to their friends provides an effective way to recruit new customers. You can also use the similar technique by including the button on your web site. We, at Angel Business Advisors, have included a button on our home page here. - Give them recognition.
This is a variant on a time honored technique of stoking a human ego. By recognizing the customers with most referrals on your web site this technique creates a competition to get ahead of everyone and be recognized as the expert. Including their pictures is even more powerful. - Introduce a contest.
Another variant of the above technique is to establish a contest by which whoever refers most customers in a given timeframe wins a prize (how about free products for a year!). Again, by introducing competitive element you are encouraging your customers to be even more active than they normally would be.
Have you used any other technique to enlist your customers for marketing your business? Care to share with other readers here?
