Twenty or thirty years ago, if you needed the name of a ear nose and throat doctor, an estate planning lawyer, or a plumber, the best means to secure these services was to ask your family, friends or neighbors. Referrals were always considered the best way for the consumer to select professional services. Conversely, as a professional, you wanted your phone to ring with calls from folks referred by your satisfied clients. These potential new customers already have a favorable opinion of you. Moreover, if you enjoyed working with the person who referred them, you’ll likely have a good experience servicing the new client as well. Birds of a feather do flock together.
Now, however, the paradigm for referrals has shifted. Statistics now tell us that seven of ten individuals rely upon reviews on various websites when selecting products or services purchased. Want a book on Amazon? Look at the reviews. Interested if a restaurant is any good? Take a look at Yelp. What do all of these sites have in common?
In each case, as you scan through reviews for a product or service, you are relying upon the comments, evaluations, or opinions of individuals who you do not know, and indeed have never met! In other words, total strangers are now the basis for referring you to a particular vendor or service provider.
If you are the business providing the goods or services, the key question in your marketing strategy is how to deal with this new metric. The two reasons why you sought referrals in the first place — the person referred already had a positive opinion of you from their family/friend/neighbor, and if you knew the referral source you knew a bit about the new potential client from the “birds of a feather” idiom — now no longer exist. The persons coming to you from the opinions of strangers may still need more information about you to feel comfortable engaging in business with you, and, you now know nothing about them. Both make your job as the seller — whether of services or goods — tougher.
So how will you respond to this new reality?