Well then let me ask you these critical questions…
Last year, what percentage of your inspections came from referrals from your prior clients?
How about the year before?
How many actual prior clients did you serve in the last 12 months? The last 24 months?
Are you tracking where your business comes from?
Tracking where your business comes from is essential to your short and long-term success. If you wrote in your marketing plan that one third of your business was going to come from prior clients but you're not tracking where your business come from, how in the heck are you going to know whether the strategies you've implemented to get more prior client referrals are working or not?
Marketing your prior clients is really ago direct to the public for business strategy. When you do inspections for your prior clients they call you directly or have their friend or family member call you to book the inspection. The real estate agents aren't calling you for the inspection so you skip all the other home inspectors that are on the agents "approved vendor list." Sweet!
In many cases the prior client referral will show up at the inspection with a buyer's agent that you may not know. By doing a quality inspection and not being scary you have an opportunity to get on the approved vendors list of the agent representing the home buyer referral.
Top 3 Reason You Should Market Your Prior Clients?
1. To get them to use you again and again!
2. To make them a raving fan to get them to refer you to lots of other folks!
3. To sell them other products and services you have to offer!
From the minute you step onto the property that you are inspecting, you should start building a relationship with that home buyer. Prior client marketing starts with the first word you utter to client.
During the course of the inspection you want to impress the client with the fact that you are extremely knowledgeable and someone they can trust and refer to their friends and/or family and feel comfortable doing so.
If you've made your client a raving fan here's what can happen…
One of your prior clients is sitting in the lunchroom where they work. A buddy of theirs comes into the lunchroom and shares that he and his wife have put a contract on the home of their dreams. We want your prior client to share immediately with their friend that they have the perfect home inspector for them. When a situation like this occurs, you know you have achieved your goals of turning your prior client into a raving fan!
Finally, if your prior client truly views you as the obvious expert in your marketplace and knows you, likes you and trusts you, they will be delighted to purchase other products and services from you when they have the need. They will also be delighted to share with their friends and family the information about these products and services that you have to offer.
Okay, Let's Look At How To Make This Happen…
Turn Your Prior Clients Into A Cash Generating Referral Machine Using 4 Simple Strategies!
Email Marketing
Email marketing can be an effective way to stay in touch with your prior clients. You could send a newsletter or a home inspection tip of the month to your prior clients so that you stay on top of their mind. The key to not getting unsubscribed by your prior clients is to provide high-quality content that they find useful. If your prior client cannot understand what's in it for them by reading your emails they will unsubscribe from your list. This would be a catastrophe because you worked so hard to get the business only to lose that prior client and their potential referrals by providing poor quality content.
Snail Mail (US Mail)
Sending your prior clients information via the US mail is a great way to stay on the top of their mind. You could send them a paper newsletter or other high-quality content that they could consume and share with others.
Another example of using snail mail would be to send your client and anniversary card. They will wonder why you are sending them this card because it's not their anniversary. In the card you explain it's the anniversary of when you did the inspection for them and then make them some kind of offer to get them to use you again.
A good example of an offer would be if they did not purchase a radon test during the inspection, you could offer them an "anniversary special" to get a radon test at a discounted price.
Your Blog (not your sales website)
The first step that you want to take in marketing your prior clients via your blog is to understand what type of content they would be interested in. For example, would they be interested in green living, home decorating tips, DYI tips, etc.
After you determine what your prior clients would be interested in, you can start producing that type of content yourself or curate the content from popular sites around the Internet and place it on your blog (not your sales website). Once you have quality content on your blog then you would need to email your prior clients and share the blog post with them.
We know that the more interactive your prior clients are with you and your online properties the greater chance you have to turn them into raving fans!
Social Networks
The social networks are another great place where you can interact with your prior clients. The trick here is to get them to join you on social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Pinterest. You've already determined what types of content that they would be interested in so you can engage them on the social media sites with that same type of content.
Of all of the social media sites, one of the most effective is YouTube. You can produce all types of videos in the field or from photographs that would allow you to engage your prior clients to continue to build that know me, like me, trust me relationship.
As a side note, Facebook will now give you more love if you upload your videos directly to Facebook. If you do upload your videos there they will show your posts to more of your target audience and that's what we're trying to make happen.
Hopefully, you learned how important prior client marketing is and gleaned a few ideas on how to make it happen. Multi-inspector firms should aim to get at least one-third of their business from their prior clients and one man shops have the potential to get way more than that. We have clients at The Savvy Inspector get 60% or more of their business from their prior client referrals.
Below is a video made from a photograph. You could use this type of content to engage your prior clients on both Facebook and YouTube. This is a home maintenance video that really provides great information to your prior clients.
