4 Ways to Create a Referral Program Your Customers Will Use
Word-of-mouth advertising is the most powerful advertising method around. It is how Facebook grew from 12 million users in 2006 to 300 million users in 2009. If you create a good product or service people will tell other people and you will grow revenue without spending money to acquire customers. Unfortunately, word of mouth advertising is largely out of your control. You can’t force people to tell other people about your pressure washing business but you can incentivize word of mouth advertising through a robust referral program.
It should go without saying that the pre-requisite to getting customers to refer your pressure washing business is to:
Show up on time
Do a thorough job cleaning their property
Be pleasant to work with
Now let’s look at how to structure the referral program to build a client list and grow your power washing business.
1) Keep it Simple
I have seen complex referral programs where in order to collect the referral commission, the person being referred has to spend over $500, one of the services has to be gutter cleaning, and they have to book the appointment in July. All of this is in order to collect a $50 Amazon gift card. The homeowner doesn’t have time to crunch numbers and create a game plan to get your referral bonus. Most customers simply do not care enough. No matter how good of a job you did pressure washing. No matter how much they liked you when you interacted. If the referral program is complex they will not follow it.
How do you get homeowners to refer you to their friends? You make the program simple. If you refer someone and they mention your name when they book you get the referral bonus (we’ll talk about what types of bonuses to use later). You don’t set criteria like a price minimum or service type. Make the directions easy to follow and people will be more likely to follow them.
2) Incentivize the Referral Program in Person
When someone initially calls you, mentioning the referral program is just a waste of breath. They haven’t even seen your work yet so they aren’t going to feel comfortable recommending you to their neighbors and friends. The best time to mention your referral program is in person after the pressure washing job is complete and they are hopefully blown away by your work. When you or your employees are speaking to the homeowner, don’t briefly mention the referral program at the end of the conversation. You have to SELL the referral program. Similar to asking for Google reviews, a really good angle to take is that you are a local business and a referral from them would mean a lot for keeping the business running. Emphasize that a referral specifically from THEM would be great. This makes the homeowner feel special and conveys that their words are important and carry weight. It isn’t just any referral. It is a referral specifically from them.
3) What Do They Get
A Referral Gives You a Discount on a Future Service
This is the most common referral incentive. Refer someone and get 15% off your next service. Here is the downside of this incentive. Say you do a house washing. The homeowner loves it. You put them in your CRM and give them a fridge magnet. You follow up with your email marketing campaigns. This person is almost guaranteed to book with your business next year when they need a house washing. That 15% discount you gave them is only good at dragging down your profit margins.
Instead, you should make the referral incentive a discount for a specific smaller service. Preferably something that has an earlier timeline in the season. Gutter cleaning is perfect for this. If you wash their house in the Spring or Summer, you now have another reason to book them for a service in the fall instead of waiting 12 months for their next house washing
Hanging Christmas Lights is another great service to incentivize a service that will have an earlier timeline.
Why I am an advocate of increasing the frequency of jobs is that an often overlooked aspect of getting a smaller job the opportunity to put a yard sign in their yard. One yard sign can turn into thousands of dollars worth of jobs.
Incorporating Other Local Businesses
What I have found works best is to find a local bakery that makes really great pies or cakes and offer this as a referral. Any kind of renowned local food place works. When I started this referral program, I would tell homeowners about the referral program and I would watch their eyes light up when they learned they could earn a peach cobbler from a famous bakery in town. This reward also positions your company as more closely tied to the local community. People love food, many people love supporting the local community, and the referral prize is unique.
I can feel eyes gloss over for referral programs that offer $20 Amazon gift cards. It’s boring, faceless, and doesn’t intertwine your compani’s brand into the fabric of a community. In my business’s case, the local bakery would give us shout outs on social media and we ended up cleaning the shop and pressure-washing the front walkway 2 years into this partnership.
4) Follow Up
If you have been running a pressure business or you are just starting a pressure washing business you need to have a follow-up system in place for leads. Your follow-up system should also extend to customers in the form of email marketing or SMS marketing. Send out an email blast or an SMS message reminding customers of your referral program. People forget things all the time, it is your job to remind them.