The main thing we believe at Nichevertising is that the #1 goal for a bootstrapping entrepreneur must be to create a viral referral loop. We define a viral referral loop as the ability to get your best customers to provide at least 3 referrals every month/quarter/year (whatever fits your business), and then get at least 50% of those referrals to do the same. I blogged about it not long ago in a post titled Why creating a viral loop is the only goal that matters.
Alert: This is a post from my Daddy blog series
When you are bootstrapping your business, it’s almost a must that you wear multiple hats. It’s likely that you do marketing and customer service or product development and product testing, or all of the above. As you push yourself to the limit to get your business off the ground, it’s inevitable that you will make one or two customer facing mistakes along the way. The key is that you don’t beat yourself up when this happens and turn this negative into a positive.
I read a great article yesterday on the topic of companies paying to incentivize getting their customers to provide word-of-mouth referrals. The article was titled “The Real Truth About Referral Incentives” and the author Jeff Riddle puts into context a lot of what I have been blogging about over the last week. In my last post, I suggested that putting your best customers at the center of your advertising strategy was the first thing you should do to work towards achieving the coveted viral loop. In this post I want to share a few of Jeff’s ideas in the context of your desire to create a viral referral loop for your business.
