While these acts of generosity create a lot of virality and chatter, they’re random and unscalable. According to Jay Baer, however, there’s a better option:

“A better approach—and a more strategic one—is to create a Talk Trigger for your business. A Talk Trigger is a strategic, operational choice that compels word of mouth. It’s an intentionally delivered differentiator that causes customer conversation every single day.”

Baer goes on to talk about how DoubleTree Hotels do this with cookies. For the last 30 years they’ve given every guest a cookie when they check-in. According to Baer, they bake 75,000 cookies every day.

This simple gesture turns customers into advocates, building their brand and generating word-of-mouth referrals. This is the power of referrals and advocacy.Referral marketing can be a scalable and profitable way of getting new customers. Indeed, people trust their friends more than the advertising that talk about the same message. But how do you foster advocacy and turn customers into raving fans?

No matter what size your business, it all starts by identifying two types of people:

Customers who do business with you on a regular basis Customers who already refer new customers to you



To do this, you must start by measuring where every single customers comes from. If you’re a brick-and-mortar business, this means training staff to ask how your customers found you. If you rely on your website to generate customers, look at your data in Google Analytics. Ask how customers on various pages on your website: