- Just imagine how less stressed you would feel
if you had a reliable way
to get more referrals for your business.
Today, I will show you five ways
to grow your digital agency by exploding your referrals,
so that you can avoid living the exhausting
feast or famine lifestyle.
If you want to achieve steady agency growth,
apply my five referral strategies
to boost your marketing efforts
and generate a steady stream of high quality leads
for your digital agency.
Before we jump in, guten tag,
this is Nicole from Wunderstars.
I'm a marketing coach for digital agency owners.
Every second Monday, I share easy agency growth
and marketing tips for tiny-staffed agency owners
who want to know all the best shortcuts
to growing their agency faster.
Hit the subscribe button now,
if you want to get inspired by my tips
and real life examples from super successful agencies
across the globe, keep watching today,
because I will share my favorite referral boosters
that really motivates your network
to send more business your way,
you are really in for a treat.
Here's the first tip for boosting your referrals.
Simply get more organized
and create a basic referral process
that works for you.
And of course, being German,
I especially enjoyed telling you about this.
And here's a real life example of an agency owner
who does this well to inspire you straight away
and then asked about proactive selling
in the fabulous admin bar,
Facebook group, Pete Everett,
co-founder of SEOHive shares this successful approach.
I have a daily task on my to-do list for this
and do one thing every day to win a new client.
Some days that's as simple as sending an email,
or jumping on a call.
Other days, it might be my main activity for the day.
Regardless, it happens every day without fail.
A little later, I will also show you
how to stay on top of mind
with those people you get in touch with.
Right now, let's look at how you can
implement a doable sales process
like Peters for increasing your referrals.
Revisit your current regular client communications.
Can you identify opportunities
for encouraging more referrals?
For example, can you add a personalized Bonjoro
video message when you send your monthly client reports?
Or can you chat about the benefits
of referring business to you
doing the final project handover call?
Plus, create a dedicated set of referral marketing materials
like this brilliant PDF created by Yatter.
And here's exactly why this marketing PDF works so well,
so that you can learn from this approach too.
It has a clear incentive.
You can earn a thousand pound.
Gavin, the super likable agency founder
of a strong personal brand, introduces it
to give it a brilliant testimonial.
He shows clearly how the referral program works.
It explains who benefits most from working with data
so we know who to introduce them to.
And lastly, it offers outstanding social proof
that Yatter is brilliant.
Here are even more ways
to upgrade your referral process for success.
Start by categorizing all your contacts,
and their likelihood to refer to you,
in your existing CRM system
or create a dedicated referral database.
A simple spreadsheet will do the trick here.
Then introduce dedicated slots in your diary
for keeping in touch with people
who could send referrals your way.
Make this part of your daily routine.
Just like Peter did earlier.
If you are starting this database from scratch,
add your contacts from the last 12 months,
including clients and people who you've interacted with,
who are in a position to send work your way,
divide them into three categories
and prepare a bespoke messaging strategy
to encourage more referrals depending
on the category you add them into.
First of all, you need to know who are your champions
who have already sent you referrals,
get in touch with them first.
How can you motivate them to refer to you again?
I will share some fab ideas for this in a little while.
So stay tuned.
Who's likely to consider sending work your way
because they know people who could benefit
from your services?
Nurture those relationships and regularly let them know
about your latest client success stories and new services.
Plus, send them your referral marketing materials,
like the data PDF I showed you earlier.
Finally, identify who in your network
do you need to get to know better?
Make time for this to uncover new referral opportunities.
Here's how you can get even better results
when you get in touch.
Keep a note of the last interaction
with everyone on your referral database.
What did you deliver for them?
What was going on in their business and in their lives?
Have ideas handy for helping them with marketing challenges,
perhaps two or three quick wins
they would really appreciate.
Plus, collect links to your own or external content
they might find valuable.
So when you're next getting attached to encourage referrals,
you also have something of value to share with them too.
And to always keep top of mind with your customers
and other people who could refer to you,
create regular helpful content
that solves their most burning issues.
Here's my second referral growth tip.
Now it goes without saying that your work
needs to be brilliant to get more referrals.
And here's how you can make referring to you extra easy,
even when you are super busy.
Have an email template you can easily top and tail
that makes it easy for your contacts
to do the marketing for you.
Why not create a dedicated landing page
for your target sector,
or a marketing brochure, like the data one,
with the most relevant examples
and testimonials that show your agency in a great light.
Having a five star digital presence will amplify
people's willingness to refer to you.
Tell me in the comments,
have you ever hesitated to put a contact forward
when you came across a new opportunity
because your contacts website or LinkedIn profiles,
they're completely out of date?
If you don't want to lose out
on those valuable opportunities,
make sure your social media profiles are up to date,
and your website shows the transformation
you can achieve for your clients.
You will find lots and lots of valuable videos on my channel
to help you with this, so subscribe now.
Here's another brilliant real life example
that will transform the quality of your referral.
It's my third tip, so keep watching.
During my exciting digital agency growth interviews,
which are still ongoing,
one super successful agency owner revealed
an amazing growth shortcut.
He actually reaches out to well-established business
and marketing coaches because he finds that
building relationships with people
who could refer business to him
really drives his agency growth.
He builds relationships by firstly commenting
on my social media posts,
or he simply participates when they are interviewed.
Plus, he also regularly publishes expert content.
And when the time was right,
he approaches them directly about working together
and he applies another super clever technique,
I want to share with you.
He actively includes the coaches
in the website design process.
So that their new design and messaging
completely aligns with their teachings.
Apply this fab referral building strategy
together with the fourth tip I share with you next.
I know it's nice to hang out with the people
who know what you do, but if you want
to fill your pipeline with those juicy referrals,
you need to be super intentional about building a network
outside your user group of peers,
because really, you need to hang out
where your clients hang out.
So attend events or actively contribute to Facebook groups
where you can actually build relationships
with people who could give you work.
I promised you a super easy-to-implement
referral booster earlier.
This is my fifth tip.
Offer a choice of rewards to really motivate your contacts.
Do this, and your contacts will feel
super appreciated and refer you time and time again.
Here are some of my favorite ways
to reward my network for referrals to my coaching service.
Flowers, Amazon vouchers, money or vouchers
for my own services or their favorite store,
and chocolates always go down a treat.
Yes, you can use systems like ThriveCart
for a range of commissions for digital products,
but when it comes to a website
or digital marketing services referrals,
the old fashioned way of arranging
a personalized present to show your appreciation
really does go a long way, and it's super easy to arrange.
One of my Wunderstars clients even has
a special thank you card design,
another way to be really memorable.
I hope you like the referral growth tips in this video,
make my day by adding a comment and giving me a like.
And you don't want to miss out
on the brilliant agency growth tips
and real life examples I share
in the next video, shown on the screen.
Auf Wiedersehen, see you in the next blog.