In the past month alone, I’ve had numerous conversations with CEOs whose firms have still not embraced referral marketing in any programmatic fashion, despite recognizing that many of their best leads and clients have come in this way.

Referrals can come directly from firms who’ve experienced your solution—clients, past clients, and partners—or, they can be driven by your brand awareness or reputation in the market. Both are important elements to consider as part of your referral marketing efforts.

In addition to building a basic internal discipline to determine when and how to ask for referrals regularly from satisfied customers or partners, there are a number of elements you should put in place as part of your marketing programming to amplify lead generation from expanding your network.

It can be boiled down to what type of information you share and how you share it.

The content you share with your network to support referral marketing efforts should be educational and value-driven. It should position you or your colleagues as a thought leader, thoughtfully showcase your firm’s successes and subtly promote your firm’s unique value—while adding educational value each step of the way. It should not be purely self-serving or salesy.

For example, instead of sharing a case study in the traditional challenge > solution > result format, turn the client’s story into a lesson learned that can benefit others – how other firms could have prevented experiencing the same challenge by engaging your company, or what best practices they can employ to overcome such challenges in a way that suggests your offering as part of the solution.

How you disseminate this information largely depends on your marketing programs and the channels available to you, but two important and foundational channels for most B2B firms are LinkedIn (and/or other social media as appropriate) and email nurturing to your prospect database (and depending on your business, perhaps your clients, as well). Other examples include speaking at events, securing media placements, and building up partnerships with synergistic firms.

Brand building should often be a core driver for these efforts—making your firm known among target buyers and influencers, so you make it into the consideration set when a need arises. Done right, pairing thoughtful, educational content development with smart, consistent dissemination of that content will help keep you top-of-mind, increase referrals in your direct and extended network, re-engage old customers and prospects and get you in front of new audiences.

That said, brand building can get a bad rep in the SMB market for being fluffy or hard to measure. Yes—these efforts are about raising your brand visibility, but they should always be executed with the longer term purpose in mind of generating leads and uncovering opportunities.  All content development and associated distribution efforts should keep that objective top of mind.

1. Prove your Smarts – Content is King

Why is content so important? When disseminated correctly, it helps you stay in front of your important familiar audiences in an efficient and value-driven manner—past clients, partners, prospects, and an important ‘others’ category (past colleagues, acquaintances, etc.) It’s easy to forget that at the end of the day, business transactions happen between people. And people may forget what you’re doing, unless you remind them. And people also change jobs, so your past colleague might very well be a prospect today.

What kind of content are we talking about? Anything that’s educational or thought leadership oriented, with the majority needing to align with your firm’s offering or industry space, as well as—in some cases—your personal brand.  Sharing ideas and information that make people smarter or push them to think differently, or even that entertains them a bit, maintains the ties of the relationship and puts you or you or your firm in positive favor.

Implemented correctly, your content’s reach can compound exponentially. LinkedIn is perhaps the best example of this: Anytime someone likes, comments, or shares your updates, it appears in their news feed and is then shown to their own network. A single LinkedIn post can get in front of hundreds (or even thousands) of people within a couple hours and continue to compound over time—a result we see regularly when working with our clients to drive visibility and opportunities through LinkedIn.

2. Make Some Noise – Broadcasting Your Content

While solid content is the foundation, unless you have a plan for activation, efforts are all for naught. The key is to think multi-channel. Some people are on LinkedIn daily, others attend events regularly for information, and others scan their email inbox for interesting reads. You want to be visible to your network on a consistent basis. As part of this, it’s important to consider who in your organization should have their own visibility and presence (e.g. sales, founders, etc.) and who will manage the company’s overall presence.

While there are a myriad of other marketing strategies and tactics that can be folded into this type of multi-channel effort, for folks or firms relatively new to a formalized approach, key channels to consider are:

• Social media: Focus on the channels most relevant to your audience. Pay attention to how you activate your company page as well as individual employee profiles, especially those in executive and customer-facing roles.

• Email marketing: Share your educational content with your prospects and installed base (and grow your email list if it doesn’t contain the audiences you seek to engage)—and don’t be afraid to suggest they share it with their networks.

• Events: In addition to merely attending events, identify the right opportunities for speaking. This is another place where you might leverage your partner organizations to speak at their events, jointly host an event, etc.

• Partnerships: Last, but certainly not least, build relationships with complementary or like-minded firms that can help drive referrals or join you in co-marketing activities.  This may include joint content, event collaboration, or simply support in disseminating your content.

3. Partner…Selectively

Partnerships can help drive tremendous growth and other business value, and while sales partnership development and channel marketing are vast topics in their own right, as it relates to referral marketing programs, partnerships can be viewed as any ‘friendly’ organization where there’s a formal or informal relationship or agreement to help drive opportunities for the other firm. It can take the form of introductions to their client base, opportunities to share educational content with their network, joint marketing or go-to-market efforts, or more formalized referral relationships.  

Most companies will develop partner relationships organically over time, though some smartly opt to invest time and resources to build and manage this effort more proactively and programmatically. Whichever the case, once these relationships are established, it’s valuable to explore co-marketing opportunities to help drive more referrals and increase visibility. Before diving into joint marketing efforts, it’s important to ensure you’ve selected partners that align with your firm— complimentary cultures, targets, future visions, etc. – and most importantly, that you both hold the other firm in high regard and are invested in making the relationship work. At the end of the day, the company you keep reflects strongly on your company and brand.

With the right firms on board, co-marketing can take many forms and can be a powerful channel for extending your reach with target audiences. In our work with client partner programs, we’ve seen success in areas including:

• Creating joint thought leadership content on a topic of mutual interest that gets disseminated to both firms’ audiences

• Developing an industry research report with original data that leverages the network of a larger partner to field a survey

• Hosting an educational event for the partner’s client base as a means of gaining access and credibility with their network

• Conducting joint public relations efforts, whether telling a broader story of the collaboration itself or pitching a thought leadership topic with subject matter expertise from both firms

These are just a few examples, and there’s no one-size-fits-all recommendation. The magic in this approach really happens when organizations take a closer look at what each company has to offer the other and plan accordingly.

Dive in – Something is Better than Nothing

While referral marketing programs work best when they’re developed, managed, and executed across multiple channels and in adherence with a plan, not having the ability to invest full throttle should not stop an organization from getting started. Adopting even some of these concepts will start to pave the way for success.

Interested in understanding what the right plan looks like for your organization based on your goals and resources? Contact us to get a conversation started!

Natalie Nathanson is the Founder & President of Magnetude Consulting. Find additional content on the Magnetude Consulting Blog. Follow Natalie on Twitter: @_Magnetude​​​

The signs are clear that the end of strict “business-to-business” (B2B) products and services is going on life support. In the new Age of the Customer, everything is just “C” because the focus is centered on the end consumer. The final customer is now at the heart of all modern business products. Technology products can no longer be solely designed for business users, they must have the actual final consumers, the “customers of your customer” at the heart of all strategy.

And that experience needs to be awesome.

What does this mean for your business? You might have to take a look into your core product strategy and make sure you have the final consumer in mind. And if not, you are highly encouraged to correct the course before your ship skids to a crash landing.

Here are five critical signs you need to look out for.

1. We don’t know how our product is perceived by the final consumers. Gartner reports that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their interactions with the enterprise without interacting with a human. As our communication and interactions become increasingly digital, artificial intelligence-fueled algorithms, the need to gather qualitative feedback from actual end users is critical.

If you don’t have end user feedback systems and instead are relying on your buyer to give you this feedback, then you are not getting critical feedback that should be directing your product strategy.  

2. The administration site for our business users is klunky and hard to use. A Pew Research Study indicated that millennials surpassed Generation X to become the largest share of the American workforce at 53.5 million. As millennials become your buyers, and their customers, the expectation of any digital tool will be much higher in terms of user friendliness and ease of use.

This trend toward “consumer-ish” portals for businesses and mobile friendly UI for workplace millennials is a significant force I see in today’s software firms that was never a factor in the recent past. Admin portals and management systems were seen as a waste of time to design anything more than a basic interface, that usually looks like $#%&. Not today – modern administration dashboards and portals need to be like using an Uber app.  

3. We have limited integrations into modern business tools and services. Long gone are the days when a big business implementation meant a complete vertical value chain of products with one supplier, such as “big blue” IBM. Today, a hybrid “stack” of technologies fuel the greatest companies in the world. Small, nimble companies have the ability to out maneuver the big boys as technology advances speed up.

Slack has hundreds of integrations with popular business tools and apps. Amazon’s Alexa has over 1,900 3rd party services. In the age of the Internet of Things, your product needs to be integrated securely into everything from cars to watches if you wish for large scale.

4. We don’t have a mobile strategy in our product plan. Genwi reports 86% of B2B buyers access business-related content on their mobile devices. This means your business product must have an awesome mobile story. Whether that’s a fully mobile responsive website or a killer app, your customers will be using your product more on their mobile than ever before.

5. We don’t have end user personas or even our buyer personas. Look around your office. Do you see big bold posters of your customers, both buyers and end users? Ideally, you would create a dummy human of your customers and prop them up in every meeting. Jeff Bezos used to leave a chair empty at his important meetings in the early days of Amazon to represent the “seat for the customer”.

If you feel you are suffering from any one of these symptoms, you’re not alone. By centering your strategy around your customers, you will be surprised in the level of engagement will happen over time and that is good for your bottom line. You are probably contemplating a redesign, or refactor, or refresh of your product anyway, right?

Apologize Later

My advice would be just go for it. Here is the down-and-dirty plan to implementing the first round changes before you become obsolete.  

1. Pull together a business case to get approval. Your business case is “we either change and survive or tread water until we drown”.

2. Select a customer-centered design team to paint the picture of your customers, their needs, and habits.

3. Validate customer behaviors through research and testing.

4. Marry the business goals of your enterprise with the behaviors of your customers.

5. Evaluate the gaps your product has in serving these needs.

6. Project budget, projected timeline, and resource plan to complete.

7. Implement solution and get feedback.

Look forward to seeing you in the Age of the Customer!

When it comes to your career, it’s often said that it’s all about who you know. I hated that saying when I first started out in the real world. I wanted to know the hard work I was putting in would be recognized and would be the building block to my career. I wanted to earn my keep and feel confident my success was because of what I did, not because I took advantage of relationships to skirt through life. I later learned it isn’t that black and white.

I realized that “who you know” didn’t mean asking for handouts, nor did it mean getting a step up based on someone else’s position. “Who you know” meant finding people around you who you looked up to and aspired to be and then learning from them. It wasn’t taking a shortcut. Instead, it was about building knowledge and skills and finding helpful resources from people who have already done it. For me, “who you know” meant finding the right mentors so I could grow professionally.

Throughout the years I learned that no two mentors are the same. You have to find the right fit and also work toward building and keeping that relationship going. Only then, will you see the benefit of a mentor.

Finding the Right Mentor

First, you need to consider what your goals are but also realize these can be fluid. After all, the more you learn, the more options will be presented to you. Once you figure out your career path trajectory you can start investigating people who have done it before. Do some research online, look within your current company, join online discussion groups or local chapters, and attend MeetUps or networking events. These can be a great way to meet people casually, learn more about them, and find someone who could be a good fit for you.

If you do pitch the mentorship idea to someone, make sure they are open and willing. To be a proper mentor takes time and effort. You want to make sure they have the bandwidth to do it so the relationship doesn’t fizzle out before it starts.  

Schedule a Cadence

It’s important to have a regular routine with your mentor. This establishes accountability and ensures you both show up. If you leave it open, other things may take priority over your regular meetups and you may see your meetings dwindle down to nothing.

Figure out what works best for you. Are 30 minutes every week feasible or would it make sense to do an hour every other week? Do you prefer video chat, phone, or in-person? What will be your goals for these meetings? Will they be structured or casual?

Sorting this out early in your relationship keeps your meetings engaging and meaningful. Having a purpose for your meetings will make sure you get the most out of each one.

Bring Something to the Table

As mentioned, it’s important to have a purpose for your meetings. It’s up to you to drive the direction of these relationships and cover the things that are applicable to your career goals.

Come to your meetings with an agenda, questions, thoughts, and insights. This will structure your meetings efficiently and allow you to get information sooner.

To get started, consider your own goals against your mentor’s experiences. From there, formulate questions to understand what your mentor did in order to hit XYZ goal.

Ask for Homework

Regular meetings with your mentor provide insight through deep conversation but what can you do to further your research? Ask your mentor for things to investigate on your own time. For example, get suggestions for authors to read, blogs or social media influencers to follow, documentaries to watch, education sites to sign up for, certification classes to attend, and events to go to. There’s a lot out there that can give you a hands-on experience beyond your conversations.

This also might be one of the most valuable things you can do with your mentor. They give you a starting point to explore resources you may not know how to find. They also can tell you what’s worth looking into/attending and what’s not.

If your mentor is located within the company you work for, consider setting up regular job shadowing with them. This is an exceptional way for you to get a real idea of the day-to-day and the challenges a person faces in this role. Additionally, it provides an opportunity to collaborate on projects that give you real world experience.

Take and Give

Although you’re often selecting a mentor because they’re able to offer you knowledge and lessons you’re looking to master, you should also try to find ways to make it less one-sided. You may never be able to give back as much as they give you but the effort will be appreciated. Show them a small token of your thanks or shoot them over an email with any interesting articles or events you find. Maybe you’ll help them discover something new, too!

Mentors play a big role in your career development. Finding several throughout the course of your career can push you to the next step. However, only the right mentors will actually help get you there.

Ashley Perez is the Talent Brand Ambassador at Carbon Black. Follow her on Twitter: @ashlaurenperez