More Than Referrals: Strengthen Your Marketing

When it comes to starting a new business, you may feel as if you have enough referral traffic to get you going. In fact, with enough referrals, you may have enough business to get you going through the first several years. In our experience, though, we’ve noticed that referrals eventually dry up. In some businesses, you’ll only get through the first six months or so, in other businesses, you might get a few years out of it.

What happens when the referrals dry up? Answering this question completely depends on a number of factors. Here are some of our thoughts:

Don’t Let Referrals Make You Complacent

Frankly, it’s a blessing to have so many referrals that it can sustain your business. You’ll definitely want to take advantage of all these opportunities that come your way. The only problem is, you could be so busy working these referrals that you neglect other aspects of your business, including your marketing strategy.

If you neglect your wider marketing strategy, once the referrals dry up, you want have anything to work with. You can’t let these referrals make you complacent, because they aren’t consistent and sustainable enough to give your business some long-lasting strategies.

Build Up Marketing While Working with Referrals

The solution, then, is to make sure that you work on your marketing, particularly your digital marketing, while you nurture those initial referrals. Digital marketing strategies take a while to develop and once you create and implement the strategy, it could take several years in order for it to fully mature.

Meaning, if you have about a year’s worth of referrals, and you set up your digital marketing strategies right away, around the time that your referrals start drying up, you should also be getting business from your marketing efforts.

Make Sure Your Marketing Plan Has a Mix of Strategies

A good digital marketing strategic plan covers all facets of digital marketing. It is a comprehensive strategy that will help your business grow in a lasting and sustainable way. Referrals can be a piece of the puzzle, but they shouldn’t be the whole puzzle, as we’ve seen happen with many businesses out there, especially those that have just started out.

Instead, your will want to create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that includes everything, such as SEO, social media, content marketing, digital advertising, branding, and much more. If your marketing doesn’t include a mix of these items, you are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to build lasting results.

When it comes to growing your business, referrals will only get you so far. In order to really have lasting growth, you should take the time to design and implement a digital marketing strategy from the very beginning of your business.

Otherwise, you will be scrambling once your business is launched, and since it takes a while for digital marketing to really kick in, you could be leaving new business on the table by waiting until after you don’t have enough referrals.