Episode 174 - The Best Referral Marketing Strategies for Custom T-shirt Businesses

Episode 174 – The Best Referral Marketing Strategies for Custom T-shirt Businesses

Show Notes

1. Word-of-mouth marketing is still one of the most effective ways to generate leads and sales

How to generate Word of Mouth

- Label your shirts
- Do great work
- Be the “I met a guy/lady/ the other day that does this”
- Ask for referrals

2. Encourage your customers to refer their friends and family members to your business

Friends and Family Plans

There’s a reason that you recognize that phrase. And a reason that Multi-level marketing is a bajillion dollar business..

Because there may be no better advocates for you and your business. You just need to systemize your plans.

Tip: every time you meet someone, make sure they know what you do!

3. Create a referral program that rewards customers for referring their friends and family members

Refer a Friend Programs Work

Here are a few things you can try:

- Refer a friend and get discount
- Refer a friend and get cash
- Refer a friend and get a unique gift e.g. custom monogrammed bag
- Give $20, Get $20

4. Use social media platforms, such as Facebook, TikTok or wherever you “social, to promote your referral marketing campaign

Leveraging Social Media for Referrals

The theme to this one is, don’t make your referral program a secret. Or something you share on a limited basis.

Ask for social media referrals:

- Post just asking for referrals – if you like the content I make, please share with friends
- Ask followers to ‘tag’ – tag someone who would look great in this hat
- Ask followers to share page – hey I am looking to grow the business, please refer me.

5. Make it easy for customers to refer their friends and family members by providing them with customized referral links or coupons

Landing Pages/Web Pages/Emails JUST for Referral Programs

- Make it easy and obvious
- Add a referral link / suggestion to email signature
- Upon invoicing, ask for referrals
- Have a page on your site just about your referral program

6. Say thank you for referrals

- Send Thank You cards (yes in the mail)
- Send gifts – chocolates, wine, apparel, gift cards
- Call and literally say ‘thanks, that means a lot’

Transcript

Mark Stephenson:
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. This is Mark Stephenson.

Marc Vila:
And this is Marc Vila. Today, we’re going to talk about the best referral marketing strategies for the custom T-shirt business.

Mark Stephenson:
Because if we titled the episode the third best or some pretty good strategies-

Marc Vila:
Decent.

Mark Stephenson:
… we get significantly fewer listeners.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. These are the best though-

Mark Stephenson:
They’re the best ones.

Marc Vila:
… for various reasons. One, out of authority, because we’re the ones with microphones.

Mark Stephenson:
I like that.

Marc Vila:
Two, out of realistically, we talk to tons of custom apparel owners over many, many years combined between the two of us of 20 something years of experience in the industry. When we talk to people all the time, we just ask them, like, “How do you get business? What do you do?” We just talk about that and referrals is almost always the first answer for most people, and especially just growing from their customers and things like that. So there’s tons of ways to do some great marketing, but referral is always the first thing you should just go to, assuming you’re not just an internet business or something.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Or if you’re terrible at it –

Marc Vila:
You’re terrible at everything.

Mark Stephenson:
But just in case you don’t know, a referral is when someone recommends you or your business, right? So if I was looking for marketing services, I might say, “Hey, you should talk to my friend, Marc Vila. He’s in marketing.” If I was looking for an embroidery machine, I said, “You know what, I have never heard of a better embroidery machine than the Avancé. You should look up the people at ColDesi.” So that’s a referral. That was me giving a couple of referrals. Referral marketing is just reaching out to people in general systematically in order to generate more of those kinds of suggestions to do business with you.

Marc Vila:
Yep. Yep. It’s great because referrals are just a natural… It’s a natural human thing to do. There’s Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell, you’re familiar?

Mark Stephenson:
Yes. Yes.

Marc Vila:
What book am I thinking of? Not Blink. Tribes?

Mark Stephenson:
Man, I don’t remember. He’s got three books. You should just read them all. You’ll find it in there. I know what you’re talking about.

Marc Vila:
Well, I’m going to google it while we’re talking here for a moment. I think it might have been Tipping Point.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay. Oh, yeah.

Marc Vila:
Actually, I think it’s Tipping Point, but Malcolm Gladwell has some great books, but one of the things he talks about, the reason why I bring it up is just talking about certain people, many people, most of us feel inclined to share experiences, things that we’ve done, tell people things that we like or recommend things. Every single day of your life, you’re probably recommending something from a friend, right? TV show, this delicious pineapple soda that I recommended to Mark just moments ago.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes, which I think I actually have in my fridge now.

Marc Vila:
So all day, every day, people like to recommend things. Why? It just feels good, I think. That’s the big thing is, if you saw a funny TV show and you have a friend who likes funny TV shows and you tell them, and then they watched it and then they call you up and say, “I watched that show. It was so funny. Thanks for the referral. We were bellyaching all night watching it.” It feels so good.

Mark Stephenson:
It really is funny the way people… And people get personally invested in whether or not you take them up on that referral. Somebody asked you, “Hey, do you know anybody that does AC?” “I’ve got a guy. Right. You’ve got to use him. He’s great. Let me give you his name and number. I’m going to text him and let him know that you’re going to call.” And because you get to be helpful, I guess it brings you up a little bit in your personal stature when you give a referral. You’re becoming a source of information, a source of your friends and family or the people that you meet being more successful or happy about something that they did and there’s a lot behind that.

Marc Vila:
Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it’s everywhere. I mean, Christmas time, people love giving and getting gifts. We just love it. A referral is very similar to that, giving a gift of knowledge. People love to give, people love to share information and ideas and thoughts and stuff like that. What better way for your business to take, I don’t want to say take advantage, because that sounds negative, but whatever, take advantage of that natural human inclination by helping to facilitate getting more referrals towards your business because you do a good job, because people will like you, because you want to grow your business. Today is all about strategies to make that happen.

Mark Stephenson:
I think the first strategy is probably… It’s definitely the most common because all the examples that we gave are based on word of mouth, right? I saw something. I tell Marc. Marc drinks something, and he suggests it to me. That’s basically word of mouth. So that pineapple flavored water concoction that Marc Vila is drinking just expanded their potential audience by… Wait, still sounds good. They just expanded their potential audience through Marc Vila’s referral. Word of mouth is the most common way that it happens. The trick is how do you get people to do that?

Marc Vila:
Yeah. What I think about this first one generating word of mouth, almost everything below this is more ways of generating word of mouth, and this whole thing is…

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Yeah, it really is.

Marc Vila:
But there’s some key things you can do to help grow and facilitate that word of mouth being generated. So we have a few good things and one of them I know is, Mark always talks about labeling your shirts, wearing your work.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. And I’m going to talk about it again.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, that’s why I said it so you would.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, I’m going to tell the same story again. A long time ago, we used to do in-person trade shows at the ColDesi headquarters. We’d have people in. We’d have classes and I gave the marketing classes or seminars. The first question I would always ask is, “How do you get your business?” The answer is always word of mouth. I look around the room, says, “Okay. How many people of you are wearing the name of your business on your shirt right now?” The answer was basically zero.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. It’ll be like one. maybe. If there was six people in the class, maybe one.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep.

Marc Vila:
Right.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. So, how do you generate word of mouth? I mean, first of all, you have to let people know to easily discover what you do and that is one of the things that you can do is label your shirts that you sell and label the shirts that you wear.

Marc Vila:
Right. Right. So, a simple way to generate word of mouth is by putting your logo on your shirt, step one, right? If you go to a party, if you go to event, if you go to a store, anything like that, you never know when the person behind you in line is going to say, “You make T-shirts, right? I have a friend.” And then you talk about it and the next thing you know, that word of mouth is being created. That person you saw online now is texting their friend a picture of your logo. They just took off your T-shirt or something like that and said, “I just met a guy.” So it’s beautiful.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, that’s great. I actually know somebody that sells kind of like benefits insurance and he has a shirt that says, “I’m a nice guy. I answer questions about insurance.” And that’s the shirt that he wears. It doesn’t have his brand on it. Just, “I answer these questions.” He gets people that stop him all the time.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, I would imagine so. I would imagine so. And then you said label the shirts that you give out. This is one thing that I feel like I’m saying every day is you put a label on the shirt because the person ordering the shirts, if it’s for a group, is not going to tell every single person, “Here’s your shirt. We got it from here. Here’s your shirt. We got it from here.” They’re not going to say that. The other thing is oftentimes shirts are either consistently worn, like every day to work or school uniform, or they’re worn once for an event, like a marathon or a walkathon or something like that.

And then they’re put in a drawer as a T-shirt to paint or something like that, gardening shirt, but that label exists the whole time that shirt exists before it goes into a landfill or something like that. At any point in time, someone says, “Oh, I could use a custom T-shirt.” They go into that junk T-shirt drawer, “I remember seeing,” and they pick it up and there’s your card and it helps to facilitate further that that word of mouth of people knowing where the shirt came from and being able to easily find that information.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I mean, actually, that’s one of the differentiators most of the time when you buy a wholesale T-shirt, like from Colman and Company. All of the shirts that we use for sampling and all the shirts that we test all have tear-away labels. So they’re actually designed for you to print on them, tear the label away and put your own label right there. So they’re looking for a sign. If you don’t want to do that, you could always work something out with your customers where it has the name of your business somewhere on the shirt. Maybe you print it down in the bottom or in the back or across the top of the back of the collar or something. Because in order to generate word of mouth, that means you have to get the word out and one of the ways to do that is with labeling.

Marc Vila:
Right. Right. And then you had made a note here of be the, “I met this person the other day that does this.”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, be the guy. So in that Malcolm Gladwell book, he breaks down different kinds of people that do referrals. At the top of the pyramid is the connector. Everybody knows someone that they go to. It’s one person that if you need a recommendation on something, you go ask this guy. You want to be the person that that comes to mind when those connectors are talking to everybody that they know, which is usually hundreds of people.

Marc Vila:
Right. Right. That actually is exactly one of the type of people in that book, Tipping Point. He talks those connectors, the people who naturally spread ideas. So I think if you meet a connector, you definitely have to make sure that they’re connecting you, right?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, make it an effort, be the guy. I mean, if you want your friends and family and everyone you know, everyone that you meet that hears something about getting something customized or getting a custom shirt done or anything like that, you want to be the one on the other end of, “I know a guy.”

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s great. And then the last bit to sum this section up, and then we’ll move on to a lot more ways to generate word of mouth and referrals, but one is just asking people to talk about you.

Mark Stephenson:
Yes.

Marc Vila:
That’s as simple as that. I think one of the most effective ways in business that it’s rarely talked about, but if you get into real sales books, they’ll talk about it. In sales books, they say, “How do you make a sale?” I mean, ask for the sale by, “Will you buy this today?” is one of the keys in selling. It’s also one of the keys in referrals. Just, I met gentleman the other day and we were talking about business and things like that and I had a conversation. “I know you’re not in the industry I work in, but you probably know people. I’d love to just share my information to you. If you know somebody, I’d love for you to refer. That’d be cool.” The guy was, “Yeah. Send it to me. Sure. I don’t know if I know anybody in that industry, but if I do, it would be cool to have somebody to refer to because in my industry, people ask me for referrals all the time and sometimes I just have to say I don’t know.”

So, be sure you just tell your friends and your family and people like that, “Hey, please, if you hear a conversation about custom T-shirts or about customizing anything, remember I do it. Keep me on the front of your mind. I’m giving you a couple easy ways to do it. Here’s my website. I’m going to text you a picture of my business card, put it in your favorites in your pictures so you can pull it up easy and text it to someone you might meet,” something like that.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. If you want to take it to another level, and this is a sales technique that I used to use back when I was selling, and that is if I gave you five of my business cards, would you hand those to people that you think might be interested in the custom T-shirt? So it’s a little bit more salesy than just asking for a direct referral, but you’re basically giving them… You’re getting them to do some kind of a small commitment.

Marc Vila:
Right. It’s also you find the right people to do all this stuff, right?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, they’ll do that. Yeah.

Marc Vila:
You have a timid neighbor who barely says hi and comes out of the house once a month. I mean, you could tell that person, for sure, right? But if you have the neighbor that constantly is saying hi, saying hi to everybody, always like, “Oh yeah, you need a better axe? So-and-so down the road has a better axe. Go talk to him.” That person, you need to go up to them and say, “Can I give you five business cards?”

Mark Stephenson:
I was on my walk this morning and I saw some guy that was also walking and he stopped to talk to one of the landscapers out in front of somebody’s property. I could see him for about 10 minutes during my walk and he was still talking to him. That guy, you want to give him your cards.

Marc Vila:
Yes. That guy-

Mark Stephenson:
Because he does that to everybody. It’s not just a landscaper. Everywhere that guy goes, he has a ten-minute conversation. Right. So let’s move on-

Marc Vila:
That landscaper just wanted to finish the job before he went home.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, that’s really it. Let’s move on to the next tip, which is to develop a friends and family plan, right? So we’ve talked about word of mouth and how to encourage that, and that extends into a little bit more specifically friends and family. There’s a reason that when I started thinking about this, the first thing I thought of, “Oh, it’s a friends and family plan,” and that’s because cell phone companies and others have been doing that for decades. Literally, two days after they had cell phones that were easily available, they came up with a friends and family plan.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. What might that look like?

Mark Stephenson:
So, the idea is just if you’ve got kids and you get them cell phones, everybody, when you go into the cell phone store, that person is always saying, “Okay. You want a phone. Great. Are you part of a network? Do you have kids? Do you have a spouse? Because I can bundle all these plans together to give you a better rate.” I’m not suggesting that you bundle everything together to sell something for cheaper here, but it does show you the power of taking advantage of all or using your friends and family. I’m trying to figure out a way to say this properly.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, like a network within a network of people, right? No, I think that’s great. And then, also, I imagine that it also falls into giving discounts, per se, to folks that are related within that, right? So if you have close friends and family and you are looking for them to help expand your network, you could do things like, “Listen, if you know anybody that you want to refer me, because you’re my family member, just let them know, say, ‘Hey, so and so sent me, they said I can get 10% off.’ “

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
You could build in a little friends and family discount. You know what, the bundling thing is interesting, right? Because if you’re doing work for somebody in a little corporate office and they want to get some polos and some hats done for their business, like a mortgage company or an insurance company, and maybe they just have three employees and they want like 15, 20 shirts, it’s a nice little order. You’ll take it. You’d love for it to be a hundred. So, there is something to even to be said within that to say, “Hey, by the way, there’s a bunch of people in this building. I don’t know if you know anybody else who might be interested in buying these, but if you can get another company in here to do it, I could take 10% off everybody’s. If we break a hundred shirts, I’ll give you 15% off.”

Mark Stephenson:
Right. I like that.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. What I love about just saying that stuff is oftentimes you’ll get, “Okay. Thanks,” and that’s the end of it, right? But if you say it often enough, you’re going to get, “Hold on,” pick up the phone. “Hey. Yeah. T-shirt lady is here. You said you wanted some stuff too, right?”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. There you go.

Marc Vila:
“I’m going to look better than you. All right. Yeah. Yeah. 10% off. Okay. All right. She’ll come by after.” All right. Suite 202, stop by there, talk to Larry over there and they want to get hooked up too.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Love that.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. You’re asking for them to access their network to help give a discount to everybody.

Mark Stephenson:
The other part of the friends and family plan thing is a little bit more specific and that is to follow, not completely, but follow the idea behind multilevel marketing, right? So if you’ve ever done or participated in an MLM, one of the first things they do is they give you a sheet with a bunch of blank lines on it and say, “Just write down all of the people that you think you could connect with that would be interested in whatever this stuff that I’m selling is.” Right? So you go and you start with your brother, your sister, your neighbor. You start with the easy people, and then you start getting down to that guy that you knew on third grade that you’re still attached to on Facebook

So, basically, you’re making a list of all the people who are potential referrers. It’s not like you’re going to go through them systematically and ask them to buy a T-shirt, although I don’t not recommend that, but you can look at them as people that know you, they’re familiar with you, potentially they like you, and they might be willing to-

Marc Vila:
Potentially.

Mark Stephenson:
… recommend you just on the basis of that relationship. So this is kind of the low-hanging fruit of referral sources is, “I’m going to start a custom T-shirt business out of my house. I made great stuff. “Hey, Brother Jim, here’s a picture of the shirt I just made. Do me a favor, are there five people that you can refer to my business you know that might be interested in a custom T-shirt?” Something like that, just say it, just say to all of these people on that fictitious list, “Hey, I’ve started this business. This is what I’m doing. I’d appreciate it if you hear of anybody or know of anybody that might be interested in custom apparel that you send them to me.”

Marc Vila:
Great. Right. I think that just the last maybe tip for this little bit, just ties up everything you said, to me is every time and not just meet somebody, but everybody who’s within your network and everybody that you connect with that’s within their network needs to know what you did, what you do. All of them need to know. So make sure all your friends know, just to be sure, especially when you get started. It’s definitely can be scary at first for some folks. “Oh gosh. I don’t want to tell people. What if I fail?”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. People are so shocked.

Marc Vila:
Okay. Yeah. But I mean, all right, you failed. I mean, I’ve told people I’ve started like 17 different things because I did and 16 of those don’t exist or more, right? But it’s just important to just tell folks and just leverage that, leverage the friends, leverage the family. We’re going to talk about referral program next, but I think a friends and family plan is a potential work into a referral program, but you’ve got to make sure people know what you do as a final tip on this.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, I like that. I mean, you are very familiar with starting referral programs, Marc Vila, because you’ve done it for Colman and Company, et cetera in the past. Why don’t you walk us through what we’re talking about?

Marc Vila:
Yeah. So a refer-a-friend program basically says from high level is that you’re going to ask people to refer you and in return they will be rewarded.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay.

Marc Vila:
That’s as simple as it goes, right? If you do something for me, I will do something back for you, which is a great kind of a give-and-get type of scenario. So for Colman and Company, on our store, we do a coupon. So I think it’s a give-and-get $10 coupon, right? So if you want to refer somebody, in the reward points, there’s a little widget on the bottom of the website, you click here for rewards. If you click there on the bottom of that widget, there’s a little referral program. If you send somebody that link, it gives them a $10 coupon. If they use the $10 coupon, then you get emailed a $10 coupon back. So it’s kind of like you get to give somebody a little something, which is great for a referral. “Hey, by the way, you buy this stuff, here’s 10 bucks.” And then if they use it, you get 10 bucks stacks or you get rewarded. So that’s one example of a refer-a-friend program. I would also say that might not work for your business specifically, so you’ve got to get creative on how you do that.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay. I mean, first of all, I love this because it’s not quite paying somebody for referrals, but it kind of is and it’s a great motivator for the people that are doing referrals. If you get one of those connectors, I mean, you could get just a group of friends that get together and say they’re just going to refer each other and you get 20 people that keep referring each other back and forth and yeah, you’re going to pay them the promotional stuff or give them that deal, but it’s an extra 20, 40 or 60 shirts that you sold, so it’s a good deal.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. So some thoughts on this would be refer a friend and get a discount. “By the way, thanks for buying from me. If you refer anybody else, next time you buy from me, I’ll give you 10% off.” Right? “Or I’ll give 20 bucks in custom apparel cash, which you can redeem for anything you want.”

Mark Stephenson:
This is my favorite and it’s my favorite because it encourages the person that gave you the referral to buy something else from you, right? So not only are you getting the sale from that customer that they referred, but the only way they’re going to be able to collect is if they buy something more.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. Which is great, which is a great way to… It’s good for everybody. Everybody gets to save some money. For you, it’s somebody could come to our store and take that $10 coupon and buy two cones of thread and they gave us $1, right? But it’s not about one transaction that we lost some money on because they used a coupon to buy a couple cones of thread. It’s about the long-term gain over this. Now that customer is a customer of ours. They may come back again and buy a bunch of thread, or they may refer somebody else or they may get an email from us that says, “Hey, upgrade your embroidering machine to Avancé.” And then they turn around and buy an Avancé machine, right?

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, it actually happens all the time.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. And that stuff is going to happen to small… That happens to small businesses all the time. So refer a friend and get some cash or something like that, some custom apparel cash or something like that. You can be more fun with it if your business lends to that. You could say, “Every time you refers me somebody, I’ll custom-make a monogram tote bag for you, or a hat or a T-shirt or a mug, or a sign,” whatever it might be.

And then it’s fun, right? Somebody refers you a piece of business. They do it. Maybe your business is specifically the custom pillow cases and custom hats and tote bags and stuff like that. You’re a gift to business. So then somebody refers to you and then you send them a custom monogram. “What monogram do you want on it?” They might say, “I want my mom’s initials on there,” or they might want it for themselves or they might want it for a gift for somebody else. What’s cool about that is you put your logo inside it too, and then whoever ends up with it at the end found out where it came from.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. All of those are great. They’re great strategies and all of this, by the way, stacks up and adds to the good feelings that your customers have about your business, right? So there’s a certain amount of the more that someone, and Marc, you’ve talked about this before, the more that someone says something, the more that someone refers you, the more they feel like they have to use you.

Marc Vila:
Right.

Mark Stephenson:
Right? So it’s almost like you’re giving them a gift when you give them the referral fee or referral object or whatever it is. So now they feel obligated to use that and then to continue to patronize your business.

Marc Vila:
Right. Right. So all that stuff is just… It’s fun. It’s interesting. It gives you something to talk about. What’s great about it is you get to be your own destiny in what you decide it is. That’s one of my favorite things about it is that you can try something for a few months and see if it works. If it doesn’t, you could try something different. You could try something once. “I’m going to say this to this one customer one time, see how they react.”

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
So, it’s a lot of fun. So besides that referral program, what’s next on our list? How else do you-

Mark Stephenson:
This one requires you, and so does the last one, really, this one requires you to actually have a structured referral program, where word of mouth you’re basically just asking and getting the word out. And then if you do the friends and family, it’s kind of the same thing. There’s nothing official or written or structure that you need to do. Once you get into a rewards program that encourages referrals, then stuff needs to be written down. Then it’s like, “If you do this, I’m going to do that.” Once you have those things in place, it’s another thing that you get to market. So you can actually market your referral program on social media, in addition to your primary product.

So in other words, I sell custom motorcycle jackets. “Hey, join the Jack’s Jacket referral program, where every time you recommend somebody that buys one of my custom-made motorcycle jackets, you’ll get a free hat.” And then you’ve got a picture of the jacket and a picture of the hat inside Facebook or TikTok or Twitter or whatever with the referral program at the top. You may or may not get more referrals from it. You might sell a few jackets too.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Because you’re advertising one thing and on the opposite side of that, you’re promoting what you actually sell. I think that’s great. I mean, usually social media promote a referral program is great. It’s not necessarily that hard to do, which was what I love about this is once you get the idea and what you want to do it if you have, you just go out in Facebook and you tell people you do it, Instagram, whatever it might be and you just consistently remind people, right?

I follow a comedian. At the end, every single one, he always finishes his jokes with, “And follow me and have your friends follow me.” That’s like the end. Because his product is eyes, that’s his product is eyes, but he says, “Follow me, have your friends follow me.” I think that’s similar to this. You could be showing off some apparel, a job that you’re doing, something like that, some pictures of some finished goods on social media. And then at the end of that, you can finish with, “And by the way, check out the referral program,” or “By the way, if you send somebody this video and they mention your name, then I’ll give you whatever the promotion might be.”

Mark Stephenson:
I love that. You can also just do it softer. You could do it just like you are doing what we talked about the word of mouth in the first place. And then every time you post a picture of a T-shirt that you just made or a video of something you just did, you could just say, “Hey, do me a favor and refer somebody to my store. Share this image. If you like it, if you know anybody that needs a custom T-shirt, send them to me.” Basically doing the same thing with every social media post as you are with your word-of-mouth program.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. I think we should tie back social media to the beginning, where when you ask your friends and your family and your customers and everyone you know for a referral. That’s one thing. But just in general, asking your social media followers for referral is something you should do as well.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Good point.

Marc Vila:
Right. Just simply put, “Hey, if you like what I make, share it with your friends.”

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Right. “Share it online. Click the share button below and share this to your followers. It’d be a huge deal to me above that.” You could tie it into your referral program that you’ll do something, but you could also just ask. You don’t always have to give something in return if you don’t have that up or ready or it doesn’t make sense for your business. There’s little hacky-hokey things that you can do in social media that I don’t mind like, “Tag a friend that would look great in this hat. Tag somebody who would love a custom mug like this. Tag somebody who’s obsessed with mugs.” You could ask people to tag friends and things like that. It’s a little gimmicky and fun, but it works. It works because it’s a little bit of a game. Somebody’s like, “Oh yeah. I know my friend, Maria, obsessed with mugs, I’ll tag Maria.”

Mark Stephenson:
It’s true. It’s probably the last way to grow your business organically on social media, or at least on Facebook is to physically actually ask people to tag their friends or come up with a clever way, like you just described, to get them to share.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Instagram and Facebook, even TikTok, it’s all good for that type of stuff. People love that. And then, of course, the last bit is a note. It’s kind of what I said before about, I just wanted to be more specific about it, is that you tell your followers why you’re asking for them for a referral and then ask them for it. Honesty, it’s beautiful and it works.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
“I’m trying to grow my business. You follow me for a good reason. Please refer me to other people. It’d be a huge deal and I’d super appreciate it. Thank you so much.”

Mark Stephenson:
Man, I love that. You could, “Hey, you know what, listen, I’ve got a slow week next week. I’d really like to fill it up with custom T-shirt orders or custom mug orders or something like that. Share this right now if you know somebody that needs to place an order.”

Marc Vila:
Yep. Social media is great. I mean, the level one is always going to be friends, family, business partners, customers, but which, by the way, so the social media followers or percentage of those people will be those people, right?

Mark Stephenson:
Of course. Yeah.

Marc Vila:
A percentage of them are going to be your friends and your family and your customers, and a percentage of them are going to be strangers. So this is an opportunity to get those strangers or just those social media friends that you haven’t met in real life to maybe do something for you.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep, I love that.

Marc Vila:
So, a couple more things to mention, you had made a good note here about making it easy for customers to refer friends and family by having a link or something. Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. I was talking to a customer the other day who is going to start a particular program. We just started talking about like, “Okay. Where on the website are you going to send people? Is there something specific?” Really, it seems so general, which is fine, if you’re just got a general kind of, “Hey, friends and family, send people to my website. They’ll buy stuff. I’ll be happy. You’ll be happy. Everybody will be happy. They’ll love the stuff,” versus having some kind of a structured program. If you’re going to do something on social media that I mentioned, where you are actually going to do the, “Refer somebody that buys a jacket from me and I’ll give you a hat,” then the best thing that you can do is make it obvious to the people that are going to get that link what they’re supposed to do.

So in other words, on the motorcycle jacket thing, then you might have it linked to a page that says, “Motorcycle referral program, here you go. Here are the jackets that you can buy. Pick one of these hats for your friend. Which hat do you think your friend would like? Place your order.” It’s very quick and it’s very easy and they’re not having to kind of like pick around the site to find the right information.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s really good. You could also put on this page, put the name and phone number here, on this. “Put the name and phone number of who you referred you right here so I can contact them to give them their free coupon or their free hat or a thank you,” whatever that might be. Also, in general, if you want referrals, electronically, in internet world referrals, you have to make sure that it’s easy. The hardest part about referral in general, especially in electronic world today is somebody say, “I know somebody.” They say the name. And then what can happen in this dark referral world is somebody picks up their phone and they’re looking for you. “Oh, embroidery shop. What’s the name of the shop? I think it’s like Embroidery by Gus or something. Oh, there’s a Gary’s Embroidery. Is that it? Is that it?” Yeah. So you could provide people a QR code that they can save somewhere. You put link.

Mark Stephenson:
Oh, right. Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. You put a link in your signature of your email that says, “Hey, forward the forward this link to your friends.” Have a specific page that you can just tell them that’s really easy for them to remember. Yeah. If you want to refer somebody, super easy way to get nice, friendly way, it’s garysembroidery.com/referral. If you can write that down or remember that, share that with people when they land on there, it’s going to say, “Hey, thanks for being referred.” I’ll make sure I give anybody who comes in from that page white glove treatment because I love referrals.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, that’s great. I also like the idea, if you do have an established or if you figured out a great referral program that motivates people is to have a link on your website, where people can sign up to be a referrer.

Marc Vila:
Okay.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. You know what I mean? At the top. It’s almost like becoming an affiliate. If you go to some websites, either in the footer, at the top, they’re like, “Become an affiliate,” which basically means you get commissions when you refer people. So kind of the same thing, do you know a lot of people refer program, learn how you can make money by buying T-shirts, things like that. You could have a link on the top of your website that goes there and you may have people that make that page attractive and give them that link that’s easy to share. So they’ve got one place to go, where they can learn about the referral program. They can figure out what they’re going to get for referring you and here’s the link that you’re going to share.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. All this stuff, it’s more than what 90% of folks are going to do out there.

Mark Stephenson:
90, 99 points.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. Most of them out there. Most of them when you ask how they get referrals, how they grow by word of mouth, what do you do? Nothing. That’s most people and they grow their businesses by doing nothing.

Mark Stephenson:
Nothing.

Marc Vila:
They just get the word of mouth, which I love, right? I think that’s so cool. I think that’s so cool that people you can get into business that’s very easy to refer. But if you actively are doing some little things, then you can double, triple, quadruple the referrals you get. You’re not in a business where you have to take every referral you get and do what they want to do. You get to pick and choose because you have an abundance of business coming in and where you get to say, “No, we don’t really do that kind of stuff, but I know somebody else.” You’re growing a referral network.

Mark Stephenson:
You’re the referrer. Yeah.

Marc Vila:
You’re the referrer. It’s a beautiful thing. I think that there’s one final thing to wrap up for referrals.

Mark Stephenson:
You know what, I like to squeeze something in.

Marc Vila:
Squeeze it in. Squeeze it in.

Mark Stephenson:
Squeeze it in. And that is make fantastic stuff.

Marc Vila:
Okay.

Mark Stephenson:
You know what I mean?

Marc Vila:
Just make good stuff.

Mark Stephenson:
Make fantastic things. If you do the best custom mug, if you take care to provide the crispest embroidery or the highest quality blanks, just if somebody gets something amazing that they love from you, they will talk about it and give you referrals, provided you have a tag.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Okay. I just couldn’t forget it.

Marc Vila:
No, no, no. You’re right. People absolutely love good stuff and telling people about good stuff. That’s how we started off this podcast is a really funny show, you tell people. A really good restaurant, you tell people. If somebody has a polo that they bought from an old company before and that person took… This connects nine episodes together. But they got a polo from someone else before. It really wasn’t very good quality. The person asked for the cheapest one so the person gave them the cheapest one. They gave them no option to upsell and get them something better. But your business did something different. You talked to them about it and you said, “Yeah. I see you want…” or “Fred, you see how the collar on your polos, you don’t like that. You see how the logo’s fuzzy, you don’t like that. That’s why you’re getting new ones now. We can do something better,” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Marc Vila:
So, what’s really cool about that is that when you deliver that really beautiful product that they’re proud to wear, they’re just going to be happy to tell people about it. It’s really just facts.

Mark Stephenson:
That one’s not a secret.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
I think we’re on track for the last one, which is say thanks.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, say thanks.

Mark Stephenson:
That’s it.

Marc Vila:
It’s one of the most beautiful things you could do, say thanks. How do you say thanks. Let’s give them some good tips.

Mark Stephenson:
So, there are a few. The first one is you could actually send people a thank you card or put a thank you card in the package when you send them their gift product for referring someone, right? If you have somebody that refers another customer, I mean, man, pick up the phone and tell them how much you appreciate the business because it makes a big difference to you personally and in business when somebody recommends you. So if you can express that on a personal level, as well as whatever kind of reward that you’re offering, I mean, that’s just going to go a huge way to get more referrals from that person again.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. Yeah. We wrote down a few things to make sure we cover them, right? Send a thank you card in the mail, a stamp. Somebody’s going to love it.

Mark Stephenson:
I think ColDesi still does that.

Marc Vila:
I don’t know. Don’t send it to one of those people who’s ultra, ultra hates using paper.

Mark Stephenson:
Oh, I don’t know any of those people. They’re not my people.

Marc Vila:
No. That’s because you live in Florida.

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. And you’re over 50.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, good point. Good point.

Marc Vila:
But if you are in an area where people hate paper, then yeah, you probably have to do it via email. But I personally think everyone loves to card. People really do love cards. Even people who hate paper still give birthday cards and stuff like that. Unless you’re the most ultra of people, maybe don’t do that. But send cards in the mail. It’s really going to be appreciated. If it’s a big enough client and a good enough referral and you don’t have a program, send a gift.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah.

Marc Vila:
Send some chocolates, send a bottle of wine, a bottle of-

Mark Stephenson:
Send an unexpected gift.

Marc Vila:
An unexpected gift. Yeah.

Mark Stephenson:
I had a vendor send me a little drone.

Marc Vila:
Really?

Mark Stephenson:
A little consumer thing drone-

Marc Vila:
Cool.

Mark Stephenson:
… that I just can… I mean, I’m not going to use it so I gave it away. Somebody could give it to their kid for a birthday, but what a cool gift. It was a neat idea and I remember them.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. You can send what you do too. You can send a hat or a shirt, especially if they’re already a customer and you know their size and what they like.

Mark Stephenson:
That’s great idea.

Marc Vila:
You can send an extra shirt, or you can send them a… Maybe there’s something you’ve wanted to sell them that you haven’t been able to sell them before. Maybe they’ve never bought hats. They bought shirts and polos with logos or they bought mugs and mouse pads with logos or signs, but they never bought hats and you offer that. So you make them a hat and you send it to them. “Hey, thanks. And here’s a hat with your logo on it.” It might just turn into a sale too, which I think is fun about that too, but anything works. You could send a $5 gift card to Dunkin’ Donuts via email. I mean, there’s anything you could do, any gesture, and you have to determine what the appropriate gesture is based on what they did, but I think that stuff is a dying art.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah, saying thank you.

Marc Vila:
That was very, very important not that long ago.

Mark Stephenson:
Yep. So I think this all deserves you getting out a sheet of paper or opening up a blank document on your computer and mapping out what you want to do and how you want it to go. So for example, you’re going to work on your word of mouth. You’re going to develop a friends and family plan. You’re going to write down the kinds of things that you say, maybe.

You’re going to make sure that every time that you post on Facebook or wherever you post that you’re going to… One time you’re going to tag somebody. Next time you’re going to ask people to share. Next time you’re going to do X, Y, and Z. Then the next thing is you’re going to develop a page on your website. If you’ve got one, that’s just either about becoming part of a referral program or featuring the product that you want or a product that you want people to refer to make it easy. You’re going to develop the skills to get a free QR code to make it easy to share these things in person and then how are you going to say thank you and when.

Marc Vila:
Yeah. I think it’s great. I mean, whatever you do, call them, email them, just be sure to say thanks. However big or small the gesture is, it’s very important. I think that the better the client, the bigger the gesture should be.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Agreed.

Marc Vila:
If it’s a good friend of yours and they sent you a really amazing client, “Let me take you and your wife out to dinner this weekend. I know I don’t have to do it. I know I don’t have to do it, but it meant a lot to me. It was really important and it’s going to be good for my business. We’re friends anyway. We were going to go out to dinner. Let me just pay for it.” I mean, anything like that works. I think the most important thing, in my opinion, of this whole podcast is do what is right for your business, your business style, the type of customers you attract, your brand. So you mentioned motorcycle gear and I think a hat is probably appropriate for that industry. They probably aren’t going to be excited about a coupon.

Mark Stephenson:
Right.

Marc Vila:
I mean, they might be a big coupon crew, but I’m going to guess not. But getting a hat handed to them with a logo or design, I think, is a cool, probably something they’re really going to like. If you’re not very digitally savvy and you don’t really have a website or anything like that, don’t try to get caught up in stuff about, “Oh, how am I going to make a webpage with my referral program?”

Mark Stephenson:
Right. Good point. Good point.

Marc Vila:
You don’t. You don’t. You write it down. You print it out on a card. You email it to people. You text it. You just say it out loud. So find what matches for you. I think that’s what’s really important. If it’s genuine, if it matches for you and if you physically do the work, you will get easily double the referrals quickly.

Mark Stephenson:
Yeah. Yeah. What I love about it is even if you don’t do anything and you just remember it, remember what we talked about here today, and you ask the next 10 people at random if they know anybody that’s interested, then your business will be a little bit better.

Marc Vila:
Yeah, that’s awesome. So I can’t wait for somebody to refer this podcast to somebody else. That’s what I want.

Mark Stephenson:
Hey. So let’s make a contest. If you refer this to this podcast to 10 people and two of them listen to it, you let us know and we will email you and say thank you.

Marc Vila:
If I planned for this, we could have had a cool landing page to send people to and referrals. We didn’t plan this. It’s a shame.

Mark Stephenson:
We don’t even consistently ask people to share the podcast or anything.

Marc Vila:
We try to do it though. We do.

Mark Stephenson:
I mean, we do, but not every time.

Marc Vila:
We try. You know what, all of this stuff is great. We’re not perfect at it. Your business is not going to be perfect at it. Nobody is. But I think that so many people don’t even try. Now, just the fact that you try means you’re going to do better than anybody else, so go for it. Please refer this podcast to folks in the customization business. We’re from coldesi.com, if you haven’t heard of us before, so you can check out the website. We have all types of customization equipment and printers and embroidery machines. If you want to print a hat to a guitar, we’ve got a machine for it and just about everything in between. And then all the blanks and supplies at colmanandcompany.com. But this podcast is a free resource and it doesn’t just fall into this industry that we’re talking about because a lot of this stuff falls into tons of small business stuff. So please be sure to share it with a friend.

Mark Stephenson:
Hey, thanks for listening. This has been another episode of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast. I’m Mark Stephenson.

Marc Vila:
And Marc Vila.

Mark Stephenson:
You guys have a fantastic referral-based business.