How to get word of mouth referrals

With support from featured sponsor Space Cookie Designs

I interview hundreds of entrepreneurs a year about how they book clients.

When I ask them what their top source of leads is, they all say the same thing:

“Word of mouth”

Now as a marketer who helps creatives find and book clients, I find this answer bothersome for two reasons:

1) It’s a flattened way to look at a very complex set of mechanics

2) It discards how much you can affect that system

It’s like if I asked you what went into getting your last degree and you said

“I showed up to graduation.”

Word of mouth is a system around you, whether or not you manage it!

At the center of the system is YOU doing something so great people want to talk about it.

This should include your paid work but it can also be a newsletter issue, a talk you gave or a checklist you created.

Surrounding you, we have:

👥 PEOPLE: The people you already know. Including clients, partners, collaborators, supporters, followers and friends.

📺 CHANNELS: The ways you communicate with the above people which ideally double as easy entry points for soft referrals. Social media, newsletters and podcasts are common choices here.

➡️ ASSETS: The publicly shareable assets you create. Your website, every edition of your newsletter, social posts, podcast episodes. These are the discrete items someone might forward, share, or reference.

💬 MESSAGES: The sound bites people say when they talk about you. You can plant these seeds should you choose to.

⏰ TIMING: The frequency with which you communicate on your channels which both help you stay in touch with your current network and make those soft referrals more fruitful.

Reading through this, you might see an obvious opportunity in your word of mouth system, but if you do not, play backwards the last few referrals you had and consider what made them successful…or not.

Could it be one of these mechanics needs tweaking? 👀

So many of you ask about how to drive word of mouth, it demanded its own episode! Listen to “How to drive word of mouth to book better clients” right now or queue it up for later.