Jeff Harrison explains how complementary local businesses can swap referral emails to grow their customer lists. A barbecue-cleaning company partnering with a landscaper might expect 10 responses per 1,000 sends. Send these emails sparingly, about once every other month, and never share raw customer databases due to spam laws and platform policies.
It is truly becoming harder and harder to reach our ideal client. The point is, is they're so spread out and they're in so many places. They're on TikTok, they're on YouTube, they're on Instagram, they're on Facebook, you name it, they're everywhere. And it's getting more expensive and quite frankly with the iOS device changes, that said, hey, privacy. I can't do this, I can't do that. I can't even target the right people. So what is the answer? Well, on today's Local Voice, I'm going to give you a solution.
Hey, welcome back. My name is Jeff Harrison with swingpoint Media and this is the Local Voice. And I want to share with you a process and this is part one of some things that we do to help our customers reach more of their ideal customers without breaking the bank and without having to ask Google, hey, can I put this ad out there? Or Facebook, is it okay to talk this way to these, these type of people? What is it? Well, first of all, it's called cooperative marketing. Sometimes people call it collaborative marketing. I like to call it cooperative marketing because it means businesses are cooperating with each other, sharing their assets in such a way that it'll help each one of them grow their database size as well as their potential leads and sales. So what exactly is this? Well, let me give you an example. Cooperative marketing is nothing more than two businesses that have the same type of customer but they don't sell the same product. You see, that's a, that's the distinguishing part because we don't want them competing with one another. I'll give you an example. Let's say, for instance, I own a barbecue cleaning company and I generally my ideal customer live behind or in gated communities, higher end homes because they're built in barbecues. We're not talking about hibachis on a patio. No offense to those people, but I'm looking for people who actually have bigger built in barbecues and want to take care of their barbecues. Well, who would be servicing those people? Well, maybe a landscaping company who actually works behind the gate and maybe I can work with them. And so what we'll do is I'll say, well, the people who I service as cleaning their barbecue, they also need landscaping services. And the people who have landscaping services also tend to have built in barbecue. So what we'll do is we'll send out an email to each other's database in such a way we're referring one another to help them say, hey, I own the landscaping company. I met so and so who does this kind of stuff. I had them clean my barbecue. It's a really great job, and I want to refer them to you. And as a special, I'm going to get a discount. You're going to get a discount because you're one of my customers. And then the same thing would be with your landscaping to my barbecue people. It's a great way to do this. Now, first of all, you can't do this every week. You'll basically burn your list out. This is something you might want to do once every other month, maybe once a quarter. But you want to find people who are your ideal customer, because this is what will happen. Let's imagine there's two ponds, and each pond there's fish, which is your database of people. And when you share that letter, some people will come over and say, I want to play in your pond. I want to swim in your pond. I want your service. I want your product. And then they come to your database. And let's say, for instance, for every thousand that you send it out, let's say you get 10. Well, those are 10 new customers that you didn't have before, and they didn't cost you anything. It was literally just sending an email, being introduced by somebody who referred you. That's already a warm market for them, and they have a higher level of trust. This is called cooperative marketing. This is something you can do. So I'm going to challenge you. What's your business? Who's your ideal customer? And then stop and think, hmm, who else out there has my ideal customer that I can reach out to, that they have a database of people that we can share emails with? Now, I know what you're saying, but, Jeff, I don't have any emails. That's okay. So start small and grow larger. Remember, this is just part one of cooperative marketing. I've got a whole bunch of these. Yep. Up my sleeve that I'll share with you over time. So this is part one. I'm also going to give you this referral letter we recommend because there's a process for that. I can hear some of you say, hey, Jeff, why don't they just give us their database and I'll send an email? Well, if you did that, first of all, you would be a cold email, and the open rate is very, very low. Second, the database or the email provider will not allow that to happen. If you read those, it says, I won't do this, but if I'll refer you, then it's okay but I can't give you the names of my database. That's a hand spam law. All kinds of other things we don't want to get involved with. So this costs you no money and it creates a relationship with someone in your industry that you can say hey now if you had eight or 10 of these over the course of a year you would probably have a lot more business coming in and it would be one of those things where you didn't have to ask Google, you didn't have to ask Facebook. Okay? For Instagram. They don't care because they don't know you're actually offering this to a very dedicated group of people. If you like this, please give me a thumbs up or a five stars rating and make sure to download the email that I'm going to provide at the end of this. My name is Jeff Harrison with Swing Point Media and this is a local voice. I'll see you again next time.
