JANE FINETTE

Book Review - The Referral Engine

I just finished reading ‘The Referral Engine” by John Jantsch, which I spotted it in the iBook store. It was published in May 2010, and according to Publishers Weekly is a ‘…thorough primer on the power of letting your products and customers speak for themselves.” I was curious to read how Jantsch suggested one should go about building word-of-mouth referrals, and of course as much of the success of Firefox was spread by satisfied and loyal user advocates, I was keen to see if I could learn something new.

The book goes over (starting from a basic level) all the steps one needs to think of when building a powerful brand, and creating consistent ways for people to engage with and refer your organization / company.  I must admit that much of the book was not new to us here at Mozilla, but I found scores of interesting tidbits, which I’m going to look into further. The section on using technology to allow people to connect with you more deeply where and when they choose, however, balancing this with “hugs and handshakes” in real life really made me stop and think. Its going to be important for us to find more ways to connect online and offline people relationships. Jantsch raises many excellent points, and shows himself to truly understand the power and importance of customer experience.

He walks one through the ‘Ideal customer life cycle’ and the seven stages of referral development - all super helpful. And ends each chapter with a recap of actions to take.

I would wholly recommend this book for a wide variety of reasons…

1. To Start-ups: If you are a start-up this book with teach you right from the get go how to bake referral methods into your business, and you’ll shave dollars of your marketing budget.

2. For existing organizations and companies, read it to remind yourself of your customers and how they affect your brand. Remember you don’t own your brand, your customers do. If they are happy and delighted, they will tell others and you’ll have a long future ahead of you with loyal customers. You might not be asking you customers to refer you? Ask yourself why not? And make it easy for folks to share the great experiences they have.

3. For Mozilla, we’ve come so far and can be so grateful for the millions of referrals we’ve had over the years from around the globe. We’ve created great products and moved mountains for the Web, with our users being our largest advocates. Its all our job no matter what our function, paid staff, volunteers, partners to continue to create ways for people to share, advocate and lobby for a healthy Internet — and therefore why its important to use Firefox.

We’ll certainly be doing our best to find news ways for users and community spread the word. If you have ideas, please drop me a line / leave a comment.

And remember, creating something people want to connect with is key!