Referrals, recommendations, and reviews are often not regarded marketing in the traditional sense, but they can deliver high value to companies trying to capture new leads. Forbes confirms that out of a variety of marketing strategies including email campaigns, inbound marketing, and pay per click advertisement, referrals have the highest return on investment because they require minimal capital investments but bring in valuable leads. In Nielsen’s Harris Poll, 82% of people indicated that they would seek out recommendations from their network before making a purchase.
Here are 3 Tips to Help Increase Referrals and Boost Leads.
Incentivize
60% of marketers agree that referral programs generate “good” or “excellent” leads, so create a referral program that is custom to your organization. Even if you’re trying to drive new leads it’s important to retain current customers too and a good referral program can help you do both by giving offering a benefit to customers who participate. Customer referral programs provide a benefit to customers doing the referring such as a discount on rent to engage their friends and family with compelling about your property management company. Those referrals often become customers because they’re coming from the trusted voices of family and friends, which Neilson reports that 92% of people believe over advertising.
Ask Right Away
Although it may seem better to wait a little while after making a sale to ask a new customer for a referral, but it can be beneficial to ask new customers for suggestion soon after a making a sale. Asking for a referral quickly after signing a new customer is effective because customers are eager and excited about the new service which can come through in their referral.
Make it Easy
When customers are being directed to make a referral or leave a review, the process should be made as easy as possible for your customers to do. Provide easy click through links and landing pages designed for referrals that your customers can easily share with people in their network. A complicated process or a broken link can discourage customers to get frustrated and stop them from going through with a referral.
It can also be helpful to make email and letter templates available to customers to facilitate the process of connecting a sales representative or property manager to the person being referred. This reduces the workload for customers making a referral. It helps to equip your customers with these resources on demand via email or their property management portal. Software streamlines communication by eliminating unnecessary inquiries and requests.
Customer referral programs can reduce the cost of acquisition for your property management company who would have to spend less time and money qualifying a lead and going forward that customer would statistically have 37% higher retention rate and offer 16% more in profits.
