Here’s How to Transform Your Laundry Business – One Customer Referral at a Time
“If you provide a great customer experience to current patrons, they will tell others about it.” – Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon
As every entrepreneur knows (or should know) that there are numerous ways to advertise a business. Of course, there are your company’s website and social media platforms – as well as television ads, radio spots, direct-mail campaigns, print advertising and billboards, to name a few of the most common options.
They all cost money, and sometimes lots of it.
So, before you launch a new marketing program, you need to ask yourself: what’s the cost of being wrong? That results could be scary and, at the very worst, might even put you out of business.
Many methods of advertising and marketing are relatively expensive and, to be most effective, they generally need to be repeated – which, of course, makes them even more expensive. The advertising cliché – “repetition is more important than reach” – is 100 percent true.
With that said, I strongly believe the single best and least expensive method to grow your laundry business is through referrals to potential customers by your current customers.
A great example of this is Zappos, the online shoe and clothing company, whose former CEO was internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist Tony Hsieh.
“Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience, instead letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth,” Hsieh once noted.
And his method and philosophy can be applied to marketing and promoting your laundromat business as well.
Here are the big secrets to success using referrals and economically sane word of mouth advertising to grow your laundry business’ customer base.
Customers who arrive at your store’s location as the result of word of mouth advertising, or referrals, are the best customers you can get. First of all, you’ve obtained them at practically no cost. Secondly, they often turn out to be your highest-spending customers. They likely will drop more money with you than a typical customer, because they come through the door already feeling good about your business since someone they trust has recommended your laundromat to them.
Nearly every small business receives some referrals. However, almost without exception, most of those referrals occur by accident. In other words, the business owners do nothing to get them – other than providing a good product or service to their current customers. They are in no manner being proactive in obtaining referrals.
In actuality, you should be asking for referrals. After all, if you’re currently getting customer referrals without even asking for them, just think about what could happen if you proactively sought them out.
I’m suggesting you develop a system for regularly obtaining referrals from your laundry customers. And, in so doing, your first move should be to establish a “referral culture” within your business. This involves your customers’ understanding of how you grow and the fact that referrals are at the very core of that growth process.
Perhaps have a conversation with new customers. For example, you can say, “I build my business primarily through word of mouth advertising and recommendations from individuals like yourself. If I do a great job for you, would you be willing to recommend me to your friends, family and colleagues?”
Not many people are going to say no to that.
Over the years, I’ve observed that – if laundry owners, without even trying, have one in 10 of their customers bringing in referrals – when they proactively ask for referrals, that number typically increases to three to five out of every 10 customers.
That’s an increase in referrals of 200 percent to 400 percent. Project those figures out across a full year, and it can significantly transform a business. (And, again, this boost in business will come at essentially no cost to the store owner.)
Simply implanting the concept of referrals within your current customers’ minds will increase the number of referrals you receive all on its own. If every customer who became a customer of yours next week brought one additional person into your business and then that person brought one more person into your laundromat, you’d never have to do any marketing or advertising again. That’s the magnificent power of referrals.
The good news is that you can become highly proactive in establishing specific referral marketing campaigns all on your own – and, once again, at no or very little cost.
For instance, you can promote a specific service or product on your website through customer videos. Additionally, you can send your customers to a specific page on your site asking for referrals, or you can solicit referrals via your social media platforms.
How about sending quarterly emails to your customers asking for referrals? Perhaps you also can send a letter to your 100 best customers asking them to refer your laundry business to others.
Of course, I strongly suggest offering some type of reward or voucher to customers who actually take the time and put the thought into providing quality referrals for your laundry business. How about offering a free wash, free food or drinks, or a discount on their next wash-dry-fold order? By doing so, you will have established an ongoing, internal marketing program for your laundromat.
When your customers refer new customers to you, you must acknowledge and reward them – because the frequency of a behavior (recommending your laundry business) is a function of its consequences (receiving a reward). If your customers understand they will get rewarded for their referrals, they will provide you with new customers over and over again.
No doubt, the form your reward takes will depend on your business model and the type of customers you service (and hope to attract). But, I hope you’re at least getting a sense of just how powerful this type of marketing strategy can be.
Imagine having your own internal marketing system under your complete control for obtaining referrals – and this system is close to being free of any costs, and it comes with none of the guesswork and uncertainty typically found when using traditional advertising methods.
It’s a marketing approach that truly can transform your laundry business.
