Word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful tool. Particularly in today’s world where it’s so easy to pass along information, word-of-mouth marketing can make or break your business. When you’re first starting your business, you can’t reasonably expect to get a lot of referrals through word-of-mouth. As you build your business, though, and gain more clients, you’ve got a much higher chance of building clients through word-of-mouth and repeat business. If you’re lucky, you’ll reach a point where your business is self-sustaining, and you have enough referrals to make your marketing investment minimum. Here are a few tips for building clients through word-of-mouth:
Treat Every Job Like a Big Job
First and foremost: treat every job like a big job. Don’t put small jobs off because they’re ‘small’ and they won’t pay you much; treat your small clients with the same respect and responsiveness that you provide your ‘big’ clients. You never know when a small client can refer a big client, or even when a small client expands the scope of his business or marketing efforts and needs more from you. You could do a few articles for a client who decides he likes your work and wants to hire you for a gigantic recurring project – you just never know what a job can bring you. If you treat your ‘little’ clients poorly, aren’t as responsive, or simply don’t put in as much work on their projects, you could be cheating yourself out of a ‘big’ client through word-of-mouth.
Reach Out to Your Clients Periodically
Some clients are just one-off projects, but most clients have the potential to be recurring clients, or to provide referrals that can be valuable to your business. Reach out to your clients periodically. Send out an email, or send out holiday cards to remind your clients that you exist, and to thank them for their business. If you’re genuine with your sentiment, clients will appreciate you and they’re more likely to remember you. If you pay lip service just to keep your name fresh in their thoughts, most clients will sense that and dismiss you and your contact as a marketing device. It might work, but not as effectively as genuine sentiment, or genuine appreciation for your clients.
Thank Your Clients for Referring Business
If you do have a client who refers new business to you, don’t just take on the new business – actually thank your client for referring the business your way. At the very least, send a quick email or phone call to thank the client for the referral. Even better is a handwritten note – particularly in this day of electronic communication, it’s really nice to get a handwritten thank-you note. This small step can show your client that you appreciate their referral, and make them more likely to refer you again – and give you more business when it happens.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing is a Powerful Tool
Word-of-mouth marketing is truly a powerful tool. At this point, a year and a half after starting my freelance business full-time, probably 80% to 90% of my work comes from repeat clients and referrals. I spend far less time searching for and bidding on new projects, and more time doing paying work. Any freelancer knows this is the key to building a successful business – minimizing the non-paying aspects of the business and getting more paying work – and if you use these techniques to build your referral business, your business will be much more profitable and productive.
Do you have any great tips for building a client base through word-of-mouth marketing? Share them with us! I’d love to hear what unique approaches other freelancers take to building a referral business.
