Basing Your Marketing Plan on Personal Recommendations

Once you have decided to base your marketing plan on personal recommendations, your next job is to understand why people go out of their way to recommend certain goods and services and not others. What gets them motivated to sing the praises of a business they think highly of? Have you told a friend about a particular business—perhaps a seamstress, gardener, dentist or cheese store—in the last six months? What were the things about each of these businesses that caused you to recommend them?

Most of this book is devoted to analyzing these kinds of questions. But the answers can be summed up as follows: If your business is truly worthy of being recommended, you will be able to answer all or most of the following questions in the affirmative:
• Is your business running smoothly on a day-to-day basis?
• Are your financial records in order and up-to-date?
• Are your employees knowledgeable about your product or service and enthusiastic about working for you?
• Do you offer top-quality goods or services?
• Do your customers have confidence that if something goes wrong with the products or services you sell, you stand behind them?
• Is your website being kept up-todate?
Just the simple exercise of asking and answering these few questions may prompt you to make changes in your business. The rest of this book should help you implement changes that will really allow you to take advantage of personal recommendations. Before we deal with the many practical techniques you can use to encourage customers to recommend your goods and services, it’s important to understand the elements that go into a positive recommendation. To succeed in the long run, a marketing campaign based on personal recommendation must be in tune with all of them.