Why rely on a sales team when your customers can do the selling for you?
It sounds too good to be true, but the fact is that your customers can have a huge helping hand in selling your business to other consumers. Therefore, you can generate new customers - and guess what happens next? Yes, your new customers can then help sell your business to other new customers, and the cycle continues.
It all seems like a very self-efficient way of marketing your business by relying on others to do the work for you. How do you manage to use your customers like this, getting them to bring in new customers? A few ideas spring to mind, and these two seem to be the most impressive:
Referral programs
A referral program is a concept that gets your customers to actively market your business to other people. In essence, they will encourage more people to come and join your business as customers. There are so many types of referral programs out there, but this truck driver referral is a fantastic example of it in action. Effectively, in this program, existing drivers can refer the trucking company to other drivers, getting them to sign up. The existing drivers then get paid for every new driver they bring in, so it benefits them to get as many referrals as possible.
This concept can be applied to any business in any industry. In essence, your referral program needs to offer a reward of sorts for every referral. Thus, your customers will be keen to drive as many new people to you as possible, maximizing their reward.
Affiliate programs
An affiliate program is similar to a referral program, but with a slight difference. Here, you don't just need to rely on current customers to use the program. Most affiliate programs work like this:
An affiliate signs up to the program and is given their own link
They promote your business and use the link to send people to your site to buy your products/service
The affiliate then gets a percentage of each sale made via their link
As mentioned, anyone can become an affiliate, but current customers do tend to be the best ones as they have used your services/products so can promote them better. Also, the big difference between this and a referral program is in the reward at the end. Here, it's a percentage of every sale, while a referral reward can be anything from money off a next purchase to points that can be collected and cashed in for money or discounts.
In both instances, you're using your current customers to directly market your business to new people. There are other ways of relying on customers to bring in new customers, some of which are less direct. For instance, sending customers branded clothing or tote bags can help. Whenever they wear these items, they are basically advertising your business for you. Also, reviews for your business help as well, so look to encourage these from current customers.