It's January, the diary's looking a little bit quiet but here's a proactive way that
you can start marketing your business to get some really great leads.
Marketing tools that win you more work; Digitool.
Im here with Phil Hall fromTLC Bath he specialises in carpet, upholstery, floor and rug cleaning.
Indeed, that's right Daisy, yes.
And you run a very successful business with one really great marketing tip that you've
kindly come here to share with us.
Yes I have it's Referral Source Marketing, it's something we've done for a few years
now which has more than doubled the profits of business and made out lives so much better.
Well we can not wait to hear about your tips, can we ask you lots of different questions?
Of course you can, fire away!
Amazing, just to hear that one marketing has more than doubled your business has got me
super excited, so can you please explain what referral marketing is and how you use it?
Yes, yes no problem at all. Referral Source Marketing is basically going to find the people
that can refer good, new clients to you and then following a system to build a relationship
with them and help them and so that they become comfortable passing on clients to you. Basically
that's all it is about, regular visits to the right people. We're in the carpet cleaning
business so we're going to carpet shops, carpets and flooring shops, interior designers, property
management companies and letting agents and we've done this for four and a half years
now and our net profit has gone from about 45,000 to over 100,000.
Just from this referral marketing scheme?
Yes!
Amazing! So you say that you go and target businesses that have got a similar target
audiencce to you, so carpet shops, estate agents
Sure
When you target them, what are you going into their business and doing?
What we do, it's a cold call initially, which we all dread, we take them a gift. Usually
take maybe cakes, or some fruit and ask them if we can leave leaflets. Well if you take
the cake or fruit you can't possibly say no to the leaflets. We visit on a regular basis
to offer more leaflets and obviously take some more goodies and build a relationship
and as time passes on then they will begin hopefully to send you clients and it's worked
wonderfully well for us.
Perfect, so you're going in, giving them the goodies and the leaflets and is there anything
you say? Do you go in with an alternative motive or are you just giving a pressie?
It's very much giving a pressie. What one of the most important points of this is that
you have to give something before you can recieve.
Now, Phil, you've been doing referral marketing really, properly, for four years now. How
did it start and how does that compare to right now?
Right well if you want to start that, what you've got to do is, assuming say you're in
the carpet cleaning industry. You need a list of your local retailers, if you're doing hard
floors then tile shops etc, and just work out a route. If you work out a route and how
to drive round them all, the way we've done it we have a ringbinder
The big black book
The big black book, and there you have the record of somebody with the dates, when you
went, who you saw, four c-c, that's four cream cakes and you then go back next month and
the month after and you just keep this record as you go round then you fill it in in your
car, and then flip over and drive to the next one.
So this black book is your record of who you visited, so you can make sure you're giving
them the right cakes and am I right, is this also location based? So that you're not driving
from one point to the other?
Absolutely, yeah it's town by town in a logical order so you're going round the same people
in minimal mileage each time. And you drive round with your eyes open looking for new
shops and new people
Can you tell us when it started and how it was working in the beginning for you?
Studies have shown it takes about seven visits before most people are going to trust you
and you become part of their business life and they start sending you clients. You know,
it's a big ask.
So you're going seven times with cookies, cakes, strawberries, donuts, you're going
seven times before you should expect any sort of results
Yeah well they vary, some are keen and eager and they have, we offer to help them if they
have a problem with a carpet, we wil go and resolve it. Never charge them!Never ever charge
them.
So you're doing almost like a favour for them at the beginning?
Absolutely, you are proving you can do the work as well. You're reliable, you can do
the job, why shouldn't they then refer you?
Why would a business need their carpet cleaning, how would that come about?
If it was a carpet fitter, sometimes they can roll out a new roll of carpet from the
mill, and there's a spot of oil on it. We have Bath's biggest furniture store, within
a week of me going in there, they had a carpet that had glue that had dripped off a machine.
And they'd laid 200 square metres of the carpet, and they got this major problem. We went in
and resolved it in about 20 minutes, ever since then we have had all their clients that
have ever asked for carpet and upholstery cleaning come straight to us.
Genius as well, as you're not only giving before you're receiving from the carpet fitters,
but they're also seeing what kind of results you do, how brilliant you are, so they feel
so much more confident about recommending TLC Bath. Amazing
So that was the beginning, it took a little time for it to work
yeah it took a while to
Can you tell us a little about now you're four years into consistently doing referral
marketing, aren't you?
Yes we're just over four years now, our turnover for the business is about 300,000 of which
70,000 comes from referral sources this year.
Wow what a huge chunk of the business. Just this one thing that you've done consistently
has produced such amazing results. And one thing you were telling me before we started
was that these customers come back to you year on year as well.
Well of course, yes they do. We have one thing we do and we don't advertise this at first
but when somebody refers a new client to us, they get a referral reward voucher.
Do you just want to hold that up a bit closer to the screen?
Just to give you an idea, it entitles them to 10% of the value of the first job. We send
these to retailers and it can be redeemed for cash, services or a donation to charity.
And many of them actually, well it works out evenly split as much goes to charity as to
the other two choices.
So this referral scheme, you've given out donuts, you've gained the trust, and when
does the referral reward certificate come into play?
Well usually by the third or fourth visit. Once you're beginning to relax with them and
they're getting used to you, you mention it. But it varies from place to place. You learn,
you know when the time is right.
Yeah of course and you've got that good rapport with your clients. And this referral reward
certificate, what have you found the results have been with that?
Well the great thing is, if you think about it, if you're giving 10% of each job as a
commission, the return if I'm doing it myself, there's no labour cost and cakes don't cost
that much. By and large you're looking at a 10:1 return. But only half the vouchers
get redeemed, roughly 50% of them
Interesting
Some retailers have said 'Phil we don't want your money!Just keep bringing us cakes!'
So it's really costing you pennies, the amount of a packet of donuts costs to get
Yeah it's approximately a 15:1 return, for every pound we spend, we get fifteen pounds
worth of new business. Which is very good return on a marketing strategy.
Thank you that's awesome advice. Just hearing the figures it has produced with TLC Bath
and the return on investment it's bringing back, it seems like something you guys could
be doing in January just to have that boost. And it's something proactive, if the diary's
not full today, go and buy yourself some donuts, go speak to some customers, or potential customers
and get that diary booked up! Thank you so much for coming and speaking to us Phil, I really appreciate it.
Pleasure!
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