Recently I read Dan Kennedy’s “NO BS Guide To Marketing To Boomers and Seniors.” Good read and plenty of good ideas.
One of the main and most interesting takeaways from this was the idea that Boomers and Seniors are more likely to refer clients to you than any other age category.
Now if a referral has a similar customer lifetime value to the referee then getting one referral from each client will double your business. However when a client refers, they often refer more than one new client to you so finding people willing to refer is more like striking gold.
But Wait There is a Catch…
Boomers and Seniors are a very demanding demographic to satisfy. So being just average is as likely to get you referrals as well not being in business I suppose.
The other challenge is creating an avenue for getting Boomers and Seniors to actually refer to you.
In a customer survey highlighted in the book it was reported that 33% Boomers and Seniors prefer to bring referrals to a ‘customer appreciation event.’ There are caveats like it needs to be a fun relaxed atmosphere where the referral can meet you the business owner/salesperson informally. (14% said they would bring a referee to a referral event).
That does tell you that having these sorts of gatherings is likely to pay off big time. If a third of your Boomer and Senior customers are willing to bring referrals to such an event then surely it warrants having customer appreciation events.
They certainly don’t have to be big elaborate affairs. Just invested in adequately, relative to the return.
If your clients that are most likely to refer want events to bring referees to I would certainly be working to make that happen. Maybe do it as a Christmas party to start and if that goes well and end of financial year event too.
If you give customers a chance to respond in a way that they want to they will reward you. Any business that has a large boomer/senior component to its customer list would be foolish not to at least give a couple of these events a try and see how the referrals come.