Referral Marketing by ARMing Your Clients

When it comes to getting referrals, most small businesses under perform because they are not arming their clients with the necessary tools do help them get referrals.

I like to use a principle I call the ARM principle for generating referrals.

As the opening sentence of this article states, most of your clients don't give you referrals because you are not properly arming them to do so. If you keep the acronym of ARM in the top of your mind it will help you in keeping your business in the top of your clients mind so when someone asks for a referral they can immediately shout your name out like they were just waiting for someone to ask.

ARM means: Always Remember Me! Literally, when you plan your upcoming year's marketing plan and budget you should be assigning a specific amount for cultivating referral business as well as a specific amount for ARMing your client.

How do you ARM your clients? Repetition is the ONLY way. You must stay in front of all clients, prospects, suppliers and affiliates all year long. It is unreasonable to expect to get referrals during a slow period just because You need them! To get referrals consistently throughout the year, and especially when you most need them, you need to make a small investment of time and money in generating them.

At a bare minimum, do you stay in front of your client at least four times a year? Again, this is a minimum...it will get you some referrals but never a referral explosion. If you really want to ratchet up your referral business you should be staying in front of your client monthly with a minimum of a newsletter. But if your newsletter has no perceived value by those reading it, don't waste your time sending it, for they'll quit reading it after the second or third one. That's why you also have to invest time; you need to make your newsletter worth reading, worth remembering and worth sharing with others.

Besides a newsletter, are you sending out sales letters on a quarterly basis? Are you sending out postcards on a quarterly basis? A several prong approach in maintaining contact with your database is the only way for them to ALWAYS Remember Me! Be creative, do something a little different and go ARM your clients to help them get you referrals.

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