Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones

THE ROLE FOR MARKETING

Our role, in essence, is to ante up, and make it easy to spread the word. Increase opportunities to refer a friend and, at the same time, recognize and reward the referral.

To be sure, it’s going to happen without you. But how much bigger could it be? The entire premise of the Net Promoter methodology is centered on people’s propensity to naturally recommend a product or service to a friend. That said, does that mean we are powerless to join in—catalyze or accelerate—this process? Does this mean we need to stay detached or disconnected from our customers—especially our most active or proactive?

Figuring out ways to recognize and reward our customers is about making sure we don’t look a gift horse in the mouth; but rather giving that gift horse a big, fat smooch on the lips. In a world where we chase elusive, marketing-weary consumers with outdated, blunt, and ineffective instruments of mass deflation, shouldn’t we create economies of scale based on the explosive and exponential power of word-of-mouth—both directly (through referrals) and indirectly (by rewarding frequent purchases and thus the goodwill that leads to increased talkability)?