DIY PR by Penny Haywood Calder

Referrals are much more influential than your own sales spiel – they are credible because they are third party endorsements.

They are vital for B2B businesses and are the fastest way to boost any business. So why not have a Referrals Plan to maximise your referrals chances?

Roy Sheppherd’s book shows you how with over 100 non-cheesy ways to ramp up your referrals – it’s called Rapid Results Referrals. Nothing new. Only common sense. But how many referrals tactics are you currently using?

How often do you hear about Referrals Plans? … Exactly! You’ll be miles in front of the businesses that are not using a planned referrals campaign.

Just choose up to 10 referrals ideas from the book and work with them for 6 months, review, ditch what doesn’t work and top up with new ones. Repeat twice a year. Easy!

This is the sixth in a series of posts re-visiting some of the 30 low cost or free publicity techniques featured in PHPR's founder's best-selling book: DIYPR, the small business owner's guide to 'free' publicity by Penny Haywood.

The 30 techniques are a mix of digital and offline sales, marketing and PR tools because you need to work all three disciplines (sales, marketing and PR) to effectively boost a business.

That's because:

PR raises awareness.

Marketing describes the features and benefits of your offerings and decides how to position them in the market (positioning for price, gaps in the market, distribution etc versus your competitors).

Sales matches the benefits to an individual buyer's particular needs and handles the mechanics of the sale and after sales service liaison.

As the series develops, choose a few ideas to trial for a few months.
The aim is to work up to 10 varied publicity techniques that work for you and your business to create a rolling PR/marketing/sales Plan for success.

Your feedback is most welcome and may be included (with proper attribution) in the forthcoming revised edition of DIY PR.

Labels: DIY PR, PHPR, PR, referrals