It’s no mystery that referral marketing is powerful.
In fact, referral marketing is so powerful that, if you can do it, you may not need to do any traditional advertising ever again.
Luckily, there are many ways to do referral marketing — the best being to ask for a referral whenever someone gives you a compliment. Because they are more likely to give you a referral at that moment than at any other time.
But there is also another time to ask for referrals that is almost just as good. A way that is highly “contrarian” that most people would never think to do.
And that is to ask for one (or more) referrals when a customer’s been through a hard time because of one of your foul ups or mistakes.
In other words, if you make a mistake, immediately apologize, make it right (or more than right) and then ask for referrals.
Believe it or not, when you do this in a sincere way, you can and will get referrals almost every time.
Why?
There are a lot of reasons.
The main reason is because you’ve proven to that customer you really do care. If you more than make up for the problem (i.e. “here, take it free, on the house…”) and make things right, you will have made the person’s day.
How can they not like you and want to tell other people about the extremely “honest and respectful” guy who made a mistake and then immediately fixed it?
I know one guy in the ebook business who does this.
If someone complains he flips off a few ebooks to them for free and says sorry.
The result is many of them tell two or three friends about how well they were treated.
I know this sounds almost crazy, but it’s true and it works.
See for yourself, the next time a customer complains, make it right and ask for a referral of some kind. I think you will be very happy with what happens.
