I Really Underestimated the Power of Referrals
I operate an offline marketing business which mainly offers SEO and PPC services to small, medium and large organisations. I've not been at it long, about 6 months in total and its only now that things are really picking up.
Why?
When I started out, (and mainly on the advice of some successful Warriors and threads) I did a load of free seminars, presentations and consulting. I built websites for people, I did free logos, free video creation - free anything. It got to a point where I was thinking why on earth are you doing this for free, you're not making money!! So I stopped and offered my services at regular price, picking up scraps of work here and there - enough to get by. Although, I'm lucky in that I built up a small affiliate empire before starting, to take any financial pressure off.
6 Months Later...
6 months on and I'm starting to get more and more referrals from the people I did freebies for months ago. It's unreal. Some of the referrals are from people I don't even know, they've just heard that I walk the walk. It seems that actually, once you do a dam good job for someone, free or not they will never forget you.
I've heard many people bang on about the power of referrals and how to build a referral network but, to be honest, I thought it was all hype. Nonsense from the people who say they work a 3 hour week satisfying 12 clients who pay them £2000 per month each per month - there's many of them about.
Well, I dont have that... But I do have 4 lovely clients - one pays me £199 per month to manage an Adwords campaign, 2 pay me £499 for SEO services and 1 pays me £99 for SEO services. I'll not be retiring just yet and I still make more from my other online stuff, but im getting there.
And all of my regular clients came from red hot referrals.
Why?
When I started out, (and mainly on the advice of some successful Warriors and threads) I did a load of free seminars, presentations and consulting. I built websites for people, I did free logos, free video creation - free anything. It got to a point where I was thinking why on earth are you doing this for free, you're not making money!! So I stopped and offered my services at regular price, picking up scraps of work here and there - enough to get by. Although, I'm lucky in that I built up a small affiliate empire before starting, to take any financial pressure off.
6 Months Later...
6 months on and I'm starting to get more and more referrals from the people I did freebies for months ago. It's unreal. Some of the referrals are from people I don't even know, they've just heard that I walk the walk. It seems that actually, once you do a dam good job for someone, free or not they will never forget you.
I've heard many people bang on about the power of referrals and how to build a referral network but, to be honest, I thought it was all hype. Nonsense from the people who say they work a 3 hour week satisfying 12 clients who pay them £2000 per month each per month - there's many of them about.
Well, I dont have that... But I do have 4 lovely clients - one pays me £199 per month to manage an Adwords campaign, 2 pay me £499 for SEO services and 1 pays me £99 for SEO services. I'll not be retiring just yet and I still make more from my other online stuff, but im getting there.
And all of my regular clients came from red hot referrals.
"I swear it upon Zeus the outstanding runner cannot be the equal of the average wrestler" - Socrates