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Creating Your Own Online Referral Group

By David Frey

The other day I was glancing through the Houston Chronicle newspaper and noticed a small advertisement with the headline...

"Tired of Lousy Service?"

It piqued my curiosity, so I took a moment to read the advertisement. To my delight, it told a story.

Here's what the ad said...

"So was I, so I got together with my neighbors and compiled a list of our favorite service companies. We call it Angie's List.

Now when we need a plumber, auto mechanic, painter or any other service company, we call to see who our neighbors recommend..."

Then that ad points the reader to a website domain, which is http://www.AngiesList.com

Would You Like to See that Advertisement?

Here's the ad for the AngiesList.com website...

http://www.davidfrey.us/recommends/angie

(copy and paste into your browser)

I thought to myself, what a clever concept.

A compiled online referral list of service companies.

But in the case of AngiesList.com, consumers create the list instead of service providers.

Why Not Create Your Own "AngiesList.com?"

After looking at the ad and reviewing the website, it's easy to see that ANYBODY could do this exact same tactic to get more referrals.

If you're a service provider, why not get a group of complimentary businesses together and create your own Angie's List?

But in your case, if you live in Friendswood, Texas, (like I do) you might call it, "TheFriendswoodList.com"

At the TheFriendswoodList.com you would find a listing of high quality service providers based in the Friendswood area.

Here's How You Could Create Your Own "AngiesList.com"

STEP 1

Make a list of 10 service professionals that you know personally and that you would feel good about recommending to your mother or your sister.

STEP 2

Create a website that featured all 10 service professionals. Include what the service professional does and how they can be contacted. (You can have a cheap website created at http://www.Elance.com)

STEP 3

Approach each of the 10 service professionals with your idea and show them the website. Let them know that you would like them to participate.

Inform them that the only catch is that they would have to promote the website in their marketing literature and pay $10 - $20 for local advertising of the website.

STEP 4

Ask them to recommend 10 other professionals that they would include on the list that would NOT compete with the existing members.

STEP 5

Add the new potential members to the website and approach them and see if they would be interested in participating.

STEP 6

Repeat this process until you have about 100 professionals.

STEP 7

Get some background information on each professional and ask them for a scanned photo and a few testimonials from their customers, clients, or patients.

STEP 8

Now that you have a good solid list and some great background information on them it's time to promote the site. (Make sure you give yourself premium position on the website)

STEP 9

Use the $10 you received from each member, which should amount to $1,000 and do some local advertising in the form of door-to-door flyers (or door hangers), newspaper advertising, valpaks, etc.

STEP 10

Now you have a group of 100 professionals that know you and look to your for leadership and are likely to give you referrals.

Here's How You Can Leverage These Relationships Into Many Other Opportunities for You and Your Business

These 100 members can be a goldmine for you if you manage them right.

There are a lot of other ways to take advantage of these relationships that will bring you a never-ending stream of referrals.

Here are some ideas...

Idea # 1 - Start a networking group with these 100 professionals. You could jumpstart this by holding a morning breakfast meeting at a local restaurant.

Idea # 2 - Why not arrange a volunteer project with these 100 "TheFriendswoodList.com" professionals for a local charity and get the local media to cover it.

Idea # 3 - Ask each member of the group to place a link to your list on each of their websites.

Idea # 4 - Set up some educational seminars for the group by inviting specific members of the group to speak who have talents, skills or knowledge that the group would find interesting.

Idea # 5 - Host a big annual giveaway contest to get the names and email addresses of local residents so that you can market to them.

You can collect contact information from local residents by placing signup boxes in local restaurants and grocery stores (and member's businesses). Ask for the name and email address of participants and tell them you'll notify the winner by email.

Then you can use this local email list to market your "TheFriendswoodList.com" to local consumers.

________

I could go on and on. The list of ideas is endless.

What's important is that YOU are the CENTER of their attention and because of that, YOU will get a lot of referrals from group members and from the list.

This might sound like a lot of work, but with a little effort to set it up and get it running, it could bring you a non-stop stream of referrals for a long time to come.

Did you like this referral strategy?

Would You Like to Discover More Unusual Referral Strategies?

Do this situations apply to you...?

1. You have a lot of customers.

2. Your customers enjoy your product or service.

3. You're frustrated because, even though your

customers know you and like your products and services...but they DON'T TELL anybody about how good you are.

If that describes you then you might be interested in the Instant Referral Systems program.

In this program you'll learn how to get your customers to S-Y-S-Y-E-M-A-T-I-C-A-L-L-Y send you referrals.

By that I mean, you'll learn how to motivate your customers to send you referrals on a consistent basis (rather than on a whim.)

To learn more about this program visit the site below...

http://www.InstantReferralSystems.com

That's it for this week.