If you are looking to grow your corporate event planning business in New York, referral marketing might be your ideal solution. It’s not only inexpensive but also easy and quite effective.
Sure, paid ads and social media engagements can get you clients and attendees, but harvesting more referrals is composed to rake in fivefold more. The trick is to entice your clients and attendees; it’s only happy customers who refer others to your business and products.
Well, growing your event planning business in New York through referral marketing is easier said than done. While it may appear to be as easy as pie to get referrals through word of mouth simply because of the great job you did, it’s simply not always the case. If you want more referrals, you need to create a plan to get them.
Here are some proven tips you may want to consider to lure more referrals to your business!
#1. Create Happy Clients and Attendees
Without satisfied clients, your referral marketing will just falter. Start off by finding ways to entice and delight your attendees and clients as a means of forging a good referral strategy. Perhaps you can offer them freebies, custom discounts, and much more. Once you have them on board, then you can devise a way for them to spread a word-of-mouth about your business.
#2. Ask for Testimonials and Reviews
First, you need to ask for testimonials or reviews of your professionalism from the clients as well as give out exit surveys to attendees. Needless to say, positive reviews and praise from clients and attendees respectively will paint your business in good light. On the other hand, you want happy attendees and clients to talk about you and post good reviews on social media.
You will need to set up a review page on your website or direct your clients to a particular review site(s) where they can publicly express their experience with your outstanding service.
#3. Refer for referrals
In the corporate event planning scene in New York, making referrals for your clients is a no-brainer. By doing so, they’ll be eager to return the goodwill. Don’t be afraid to ask your satisfied clients to put out the good word about your services. Ask them for some of their business cards so that they understand that you also plan to help their business by referring them out to your other clients. Say you do an event for an attorney, yeah, they probably don’t know many people in the events industry. But! They do know a lot of other attorneys and professionals who may be in need of your event planning services. By the same token, you asking them for their business cards says you intend to refer them to anyone who may you if you know of a good attorney.
#4. Offer Incentives
People love incentives, more so if they are at a corporate event. Be creative with your incentives. Discounts for attendance, for instance, might work for attendees, but might not cut it for clients. You can give out coupon codes that attendees can share with friends and family, thereby offering referrals. Clients, on their end, want something that’ll be valuable to their business. You can share information or technologies that’ll help boost productivity.
#5. Connect with your Clients
Most people in corporate event planning in New York know this, but it’s always important to connect with the attendees and customers. Even better, care about their business and lives. It pays to understand what makes them tick. Let’s be real. You’re not looking to become best friends nor are you looking to make a connection for spiritual purposes. However, you are in fact trying to build a connection between you and your clients that says, “you get me.” When they feel you get them, they trust that you will make event decisions that not only fit their budget but also fits their style.
The Takeaway
One of the most operative ways to advance your event planning business is done by word-of-mouth marketing. It’s reasonably priced and influential and it’s really hard to beat that recipe when we’re talking about drawing in a larger crowd. But before you get a hard-working referral system in place, you must provide outstanding service, which is the foundation for all virtuous referral marketing.
