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5 Tips for Getting More Referrals for Your Landscaping or Outdoor Business
When you meet your clients’ needs, you’ll improve your company’s reputation and establish yourself as a trusted expert in the landscaping industry. Once you’ve done that, word-of-mouth referrals will naturally come to you.
There’s no doubt about it that word-of-mouth referrals are powerful. In fact, they’re the primary way 85% of small businesses attract new clients. But there’s a lot more to referral marketing than simple word-of-mouth recommendations.
When looking for referrals as an outdoor contractor, you should build a referral marketing strategy. This strategy uses tools to direct, measure, and make the most of your clients’ positive feelings about your service.
There are many great benefits to having a referral marketing strategy in place, including:
- Identifying loyal customers
- Increasing brand awareness
- Targeting a specific audience
- Multiplying loyal customers
- Expanding marketing reach
- Increasing customer engagement
- Improving customer retention rates
With a referral strategy in place, there are lots of different ways you can get referrals for your landscaping business. Take a look at these five tips to help you get more referrals as an outdoor contractor.
1. Make referrals easy for your clients with a referral form
If you want to give your customers the boost they need to recommend your landscaping services to others, then a referral form is the way to go.
With an online referral form, you don’t have to worry about awkward conversations with your client. Instead, all you have to do is create an online form and ask your clients if they wouldn’t mind taking a few minutes to fill it out. They’ll fill it out and include the name and details of the people they’re referring to your business before sending it back to you.
A referral form includes the name and contact information of the customer recommending your service and the information of the person they’re referring to your services.
Hopefully, you’ll find new prospects reaching out after your clients have forwarded the form to their friends and family.
How do you get your clients to fill out referral forms?
Sure, you could create a fantastic referral form that’s easy to use and understand, but that doesn’t guarantee that your client will fill it out.
By offering them a reward for filling out the form and referring people to your business, you can easily get them to refer your company. You can give them a reward like a discount on their next project with you or a voucher for your services.
2. Use positive milestones as a time to ask for referrals
When it comes to business referrals, timing plays a big role.
It’s important to find the right moment when a customer is most likely to refer you to someone they know. This can be tricky.
If you ask your client for a referral at the wrong time, they’ll ignore you or be put off from working with you again.
Instead, we recommend waiting for a moment when your client is especially pleased with your work. Remember, there are no referrals without happy customers.
There will be more than one good opportunity to discuss referrals with your client. It could be when you hit one of the significant milestones in the project, and your customer is showering you with praise, or maybe it’ll feel right to wait until after the project successfully wraps up.
You can send a simple follow-up message asking if they could recommend your team to anybody looking for landscaping services.
3. Stay engaged with your past landscaping business clients
Keeping relationships with past customers is another great way of getting referrals. Even when your customer is happy with your work, they’ll soon forget about you if they never hear from you again.
By following up with clients regularly, you’ll ensure your services stay fresh in their minds, increasing your chances of a referral or even repeat business.
Keep in mind it’s never a good idea to spam your clients’ inboxes with messages of no value. This will only frustrate them.
Sending emails every so often will keep the connection alive without overloading customers with information that’s not important.
There are many ways to keep your past landscaping clients engaged, including:
- Sending a thank you email
- Asking for feedback
- Sharing company updates
- Offering discounts to customers on their next purchase
- Creating a customer loyalty program
- Providing them with valuable resources – ebooks, landscaping tips, maintenance advice
4. Use a customer referral program with discounts
Everyone loves to save money where they can, and your customers are no different. Use this to your advantage by creating a referral program with discounts.
When you ask your customers to spread their love for your business in exchange for a discount or reward, it greatly increases your referral chances.
A referral program with discounts encourages your customers to refer you without hurting your company’s bottom line.
Always ensure that the discount or incentive you offer is less than the value of a new customer to your business. Otherwise, you’re just losing money.
If your budget allows, you can also expand the referral program to offer a discount to both the person referring your business and the referee.
5. Write referrals for your landscaping materials and supplies vendors
Your materials and supplies vendors are great opportunities for referrals. Your vendors are the perfect people to recommend your service to other clients needing a landscaping or lawn care service.
The next time you are doing business with your vendor, write to them and ask them if they would mind referring you to some of their clients.
If you’ve been a loyal customer of your vendor for many years, they’ll be happy to help you.
We hope this blog has helped you understand the importance of referrals for your business and the most effective ways to get them.
If you’re a landscaping company or outdoor contractor looking to grow your business and improve your online presence, we’d love to help you out.
At Chili Pepper Design, we’re experts at helping outdoor contractors and designers reach new heights in the online world.
