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Still Relying on Referrals? Why Word of Mouth Is Keeping You Stuck · Marketing For Tradies

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you ask a hundred business owners what their primary marketing strategy is, 95% of them are gonna say word of mouth.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: They say it with pride, like it's a badge of honor, like I don't need to advertise, all my work comes from referrals.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's great, but here's the brutal truth.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Relying on word of mouth is not a marketing strategy.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually making your business really, really vulnerable.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the single biggest thing keeping your business stuck right now.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm gonna show you why referral dependency is killing your growth and how to replace hope with a pipeline of leads that turn into actual jobs.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Marketing for Tradies, the podcast where we help trades and service-based businesses with straight-up marketing advice to get more leads and win more jobs.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host Shannon, and my agency has helped over a hundred businesses go from inconsistent work and relying on word of mouth to getting a steady flow of jobs coming in every single week.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, I'm walking you through simple practical strategies that actually help you grow your business without a guest ball.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: So let's get into it.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: So just to be clear, getting referrals is a good thing.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: It means that you do good work and people trust you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: You should always want referrals, and it's actually a really good indicator that your fulfillment or service delivery and the way that you are serving your customers is really, really strong.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the mistake is relying on them as your primary source of new business.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: Only referral and word of mouth leads coming in.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: You have zero control over your lead volume and flow.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: You can't scale word of mouth on demand because it's not something that you can control.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hire a new crew next month or you want to grow your business in any way, you can't just call past clients and say, hey, I need you to recommend me to three people this week.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work like that.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Referrals happen on the customer's schedule, not yours.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: This creates what I call the referral ceiling.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this usually hits around the 800K to 1.2 mil mark.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: You have enough word of mouth to keep you and a couple of guys busy, but you can never quite break through that ceiling to the next level because you can't predict where the next job is coming from.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you're trapped by your own good reputation.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: And because you can't control referrals, you end up in this feast or famine cycle.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's such a common thing with service-based businesses.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know exactly what this looks like.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: For three months, the phone rings off the hook.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're working weekends, you're stressed, you're turning away work, you're worried that you're gonna be scaling too fast and you're losing control.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then suddenly it stops.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: The referral well dries up for whatever reason.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: For three weeks, the phone doesn't ring, you start looking at your bank account, you start stressing about payroll, you start taking jobs you don't even really wanna do at margins you don't like, just to keep the crew busy.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I spoke to a business owner uh who was a builder in Sydney recently, and he lived in this cycle for five years.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he was sharing with me just the toll that the anxiety took on him of those famine months.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was like literally destroying his health.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: He was a great builder, but he was a terrible marketer because his entire marketing plan was hope the phone rings.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it did sometimes, but sometimes it didn't.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the emotional and financial cost of this unpredictability is taking a huge toll on business owners because you can't build a stable, scalable business on a foundation of hope.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't work that way.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: You need a system that you can turn on and off.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: You just can't build a stable, scalable, and consistent business on a foundation of hope.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: The only solution to this is to build a system that keeps your pipeline full and consistent.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: You need to replace hope with maths.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Having a full pipeline means investing in ads and knowing exactly how many jobs and how much revenue you generate from each dollar you put in.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can turn that flow up or down on demand.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: And here is exactly how you can do it.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: First, you need to identify your highest margin or most profitable job and service that you want to provide more of.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Not just everything you do, the one that makes you the most money and that you're actually really good at.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: The second is build a dedicated landing page specifically for that service.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: You then want to run targeted ads to capture people who are actively searching for that service in your area.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not just running random ads to your main website, you're running targeted ads to a targeted landing page that's built to sell your service for you.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: So let's say you spend$1,000 on ads.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: That gets you 100 clicks, 10 leads, and you turn those 10 leads into two jobs.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Both of those jobs are worth$5k each, meaning you've brought$10K in revenue and you've turned that$1,000 into$10,000.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can take away expenses and let's say you net$3K off those ads, it means that every dollar you put into that system brought you three to ten dollars back.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's profitable, it's scalable, and you at least double your ad spend.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if you double your ad spend, you double your leads, your jobs, and revenue too.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Investing ads can be daunting to begin with, but when you break it down into a simple mass equation, it's pretty simple and means you can grow faster and more sustainably.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So your next tactical step from this episode is to look at your revenue from the last 12 months and ask yourself or calculate what percentage of it came from referrals.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: If it's over 70%, you are vulnerable and you need to start building a paid acquisition channel today before the referral well dries up.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: But let's also recap what I shared today.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing is that word of mouth is a great bonus, but it's a terrible primary strategy because you cannot scale it on demand.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: The second point is that relying on hope creates a massive financial and emotional stress.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: You end up taking on bad jobs just to keep the lights on, and you really can't grow and feel confident in growing with that kind of inconsistency.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And the third point is that you need to build a system where you know exactly how much it costs to buy a customer and use that system to control your growth and scale over time.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Stop waiting for the phone to ring and start making it ring.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: It can be in your power to do that, but you do need to invest in ads in order to do that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that can be on Google or Meta or whatever platform that you want to start with.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're tired of the feast or famine cycle and you want us to fill your pipeline for you without relying on referrals, use the link below or in the description to book a call with our team and we'll run you through exactly how our system works and what you need to do in order to scale your business to the next level as well.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for tuning in to the Marketing for Tradies podcast.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you got something out of this episode, don't forget to like, follow, and subscribe or leave us a review on whatever platform you're listening on.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're a service based business owner who'd rather have someone handle your marketing for you, book a call with my team using the link below and let's see how we can help you.