The Worlds Best
Known Marketing
Secret
Building Your Business
by Referral
4th Edition
Ivan Misner, Ph.D .
Mike Macedonio
En Passant Publishing
The Worlds Best-Known Marketing Secret
Building Your Business By Referral
Copyright 1994, 1999, 2000, 2011 by Ivan R. Misner, Ph.D.
All rights reserved
Permission to reproduce or transmit in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, must be obtained in writing to
En Passant Publishing
Publishers Cataloging-In-Publication Data
(Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)
Misner, Ivan R., 1956-
The worlds best-known marketing secret : building your business by referral / Ivan Misner [and] Mike Macedonio. 4th ed.
p. ; cm.
Originally published: Austin, TX : Bard Press, c1994.
A Paradigm Productions book.T.p. verso.
Includes index.
ISBN: 978-1-5484358-7-5
1. Marketing. 2. Word-of-mouth advertising. I. Macedonio, Mike. II. Title.
HF5415 .M573 2011
Copyediting: Jeff Morris, Julien Sharp
Proofreading: Deborah Costenbader
Text Design/Production: Hespenheide Design
Jacket Design: Media Makers
Index: Linda Webster
Table of Contents
.
Endorsements
This is one book you cannot afford to overlook! From beginning to end, The Worlds Best Known Marketing Secret is a MUST READ. It outlines the only marketing strategy in existence that is both highly economical and powerfully effective, no matter what business youre in or where you live.
Susan RoAne, author of How To Work a Room
and The Secrets of Savvy Networking
The Best Way to Grow Your Business
The Advantages of Referrals
Marketing Reality Check
Its reality-check time. How many ways are there for you to increase your business? Dozens? Hundreds? Maybe thousands? Guess again. Try four. Thats right there are only four main strategies that you can incorporate to increase your business. What you dont believe us? Then read on.
First, you can advertise. Oh yes, we know: there are many different ways you can advertise. Theres radio, newspaper, magazine, and direct mail advertising. You can advertise on billboards, TV, park benches, pens, balloons, or leaflets. If you feel really daring, you can even try skywriting. But when the dust settles and the smoke clears, its still advertising.
Every business weve ever known, including those we have personally worked in or owned, has advertised in one form or another. Traditional forms of advertising, however, can be expensive. For example, the average one-time cost for a four-inch by four-inch advertising display in a major metropolitan newspaper is several thousand dollars.
If you were to run a $2,200 advertisement only once a week for one full year, youd spend over $100,000. Assuming that the newspaper gave you a volume discount of 25 percent, you would still spend tens of thousands. For virtually all start-up companies, as well as many companies that have been in business for a few years and untold numbers of other long-established businesses, this kind of expense is not feasible.
We are not suggesting that you stop advertising. Depending on your product or service, many forms of it can be very effective for you. But it doesnt matter whether youre Procter & Gamble or the corner florist you dont have an unlimited budget to spend on advertising. Therefore, you choose your advertising options according to a somewhat fixed budget, and off you go. The real question is, Does your advertising bring in all the business you need or would like?
Ask yourself, Am I making more money than I want because of the tremendous amount of business that advertising has generated for me or my company? If the answer is no, then you need to increase your advertising budget. If you cant increase your advertising budget, then you need to adopt another strategy.
Competition for customers in our society is fierce. Your competitors are trying to win over the same clients or customers that you are. Even in a strong economy, advertising does not guarantee success over your competitors. The people youre trying to reach, by some estimates, are bombarded by thousands of advertising messages per day. This constant inundation means that your prospects potentially have many alternative sources of supply for the products or services you provide.
In a tough economy, advertising may not work at all. When times are especially tough, you and your competitors are effectively competing for a reduced pool of available dollars, and people are more value-conscious about the dollars they do spend.
The second way to increase your business is through a public relations (PR) campaign. This can be very effective, but it can also be very expensive and time-consuming for a small company. Large companies hire PR firms, but this doesnt really help develop the credibility of the individual sales rep out in the field. Therefore, if your company is too small to hire a PR firm, or if you are a sales rep for a large firm, you need to create your own personalized PR program.
A good PR program can enhance your credibility, which in turn will have a positive impact on your referral marketing opportunities. In , we will discuss the importance of a good PR program to support your referral marketing efforts. However, it is important to understand that PR only lays the groundwork for a sale; it rarely closes the sale. While its importance should not be underestimated, you should know that it rarely makes a quick difference in your bottom line. Therefore, no business can rely primarily on its public relations effort.
The third way to increase your business is through referral. Referral marketing has long been recognized as the most cost-effective form of marketing a business can use. Tom Peters, author of Thriving on Chaos , regards referral marketing as one of the major ways a business can bring in new clients or customers. Peters asserts that one has to be, just as organized, thoughtful, and systematic about [referral marketing] as with other forms of advertising and marketing, yet, You never see a [referral] section in marketing plans. Peters says that if you dont have a well-structured plan, you are not likely to have impressive results.
Four Ways to Market Your Business
Unfortunately, as we said earlier, most marketing surveys have shown that consumers are ten times more likely to talk about you if they are unhappy or unsatisfied with your service than if they are happy or satisfied. The best way to get truly impressive results is to have a plan and develop a structured program.
(We do have to mention one other marketing strategy that a lot of people use as an alternative to advertising and PR, and that is... cold calling! Yes, thats right the C word! Just mentioning it makes us shiver. Given the other options, who in his right mind would want to spend the rest of his professional life cold calling ?)
So... this is your marketing reality check.
