Posts Tagged ‘10%’

Note, if you are looking for a Freeagent referral code to save 10% on the freeagent sign-on costs, there is a code at the end of this post.

When it comes to web sites, products and services, there are many different ways of driving traffic and customers to your doorstep, be it virtual or real.  The vast majority will take time, money and an awful lot of effort with differing degrees of success.   As a business supplier, one of the cheapest methods is the referral – customers telling other customers to use your product and service because of how good it is.

There are 3 different ways of getting referrals:

Customer direct referrals – This is where customer A tells customer B how good your product/service is, you have no involvement, and the first you know about it is an email, phone call or visit from customer B.  Great – more business, but how many times has it happened for you?

Customer requested referrals – For this, you need to go cap in hand to customer A (possibly at the end of  a project) and ask if they know of any other companies who could benefit from the same product or service.  If they provide details (and even if they call company B on your behalf) you are only one step ahead of a cold call.

Customer incentive referrals – This type of referral is almost the same as the customer direct referral, with the exception that there is an incentive for customer A to contact customer B.

Let’s take two real world examples of these referrals.

LoveFilm – If you are a member of lovefilm, the online film rental company, as well as sending you your requested DVD or BluRay movies,  every so often you will get cards from them giving new customers a months free subscription for you to pass on to friends to encourage them to join.  This is all fine and good, but the big question is – what do I as an existing customer get out of it?  The answer is nothing.

FreeAgent – Now if you are a user and subscriber of the Freeagent small business online accounting solution, you have a page on your accounts screen for referrals.  Freeagent encourages you to pass on the good word – if somebody takes your advice and signs up to Freeagent, then they as a new user get a 10% discount.  But the difference here is that Freeagent also gives you, the existing customer the same 10% discount.

So in the two examples above, Lovefilm gives me nothing for proving their link above, whereas Freeagent gives me 10% off all my fees in the future if somebody clicks it and signs up.  But it also gives you the same 10% if you sign up.  In the Freeagent system – everybody wins.  My link gives me 10% off my existing account, you get 10% off and freeagent gets a new customer with zero marketing cost.   Everybody wins.

It’s viral marketing at its very best, but in this case you are not forced to watch a video of a computer generated frog, a man painted orange slapping people, or a dog roller-skating.

So that leaves two questions….

1)      Where in your business can you use the Freeagent model to have existing customers pass on your details for a future reward in the form of discount, gift, free days, hours, etc?

2)      If I wasn’t getting the 10% discount from the Freeagent link, would I still recommend it?  The answer is a big YES, even without the 10% referral, it’s the best thing for small business since sliced bread

The referral code is included in the above links.  But if you are looking for direct entry of a Freeagent referal code, use 34o5sqzm