About a month ago I was sitting in my second floor office doing some work when I heard a knock on my door.
I said, "Come in" and in walked a handsome young guy who introduced himself as Andrew. He handed me a small, plasticized black card.
As I took it from him, he mentioned that he was the sales guy for a local car wash and lube place and wanted to share with me as a free gift a 20% off discount card.
I took the card and said, "Thank you."
Here's what the card looked like...
It was a very simple discount card. It's actually called the "Preferred Customer Card."
That very day, I drove over to the oil and lube business and had my oil changed and car washed.
It was great.
The beauty is that I get to use this, my Preferred Customer Card, over and over again. I put the card in my glove compartment and I intend to use it every time I need my oil changed.
It's a brilliant little low cost marketing tactic but...
...Here's The Referral Tactic that Exploded His Sales
After Andrew gave me my card he then asked me how many employees I had.
I told him how many employees I had and then he handed me cards for all my employees and said, "Would you like to share our Preferred Customer Card with your employees? They make great gifts."
I replied, "Sure."
So I ended up giving the 20% discount cards to my employees and they loved them.
It turns out that Andrew has done this same tactic with close to 30% of the businesses here in my home town.
- He finds out who the owner of the business is.
- He offers the owner the Preferred Customer Card.
- He then offers the owner cards that he can give out to all his/her employees.
In essence, he gets the business owners to "refer" his business to all of his employees.
Now Here are the Live Actual Results...
This simple direct marketing referral strategy has produced astounding results. Here they are...
Month 1 - 89 New Customers
Month 2 - 180 New Customers
Month 3 - 273 New Customers
And the best part about this marketing strategy (for this specific business) is that in Month 4 the new customers from Month 1 start returning.
So this tactic starts to compound on itself.
This referral tactic can be used with a LOT of different businesses. One of the keys that makes it successful is the card itself. Since it is a physical card, they are more likely to value it as compared to a simple paper coupon.
David Frey is President of Marketing Best Practices Inc., a small business marketing consulting firm and the editor of the Marketing Best Practices Newsletter. His products include The Small Business Marketing Bible, Instant Referral Systems, and Coaches and Consultants Marketing Bootcamp.