Referral Program

[NicoleScraps]

Does anybody offer or have you offered in the past some sort of referral program to customers? As in, with X amount of (paid) referrals, you get Y for free. What are/were your X and Y values and results of offering such a deal?
I kind of feel like this would be a better route for me to go down to obtain more clients rather than offering free or super cheap photos.
Any thoughts?

[Jim Poor]

I offer $100 credit for a referral that results in a booking. A lot of those programs don't reall work well though for a few reasons.

The biggest one is that customers don't really find out about the program until they have already had their sitting & bought photos. Then, they forget about it until next time, but by then it's too late to get referrals before their next sitting as they are ready "now."

It doesn't hurt to offer, but don't expect a landslide of bookings from it.

[BuddhaPi]

I don't have a photography business, but I do offer a referral reward as it were. I offer free web hosting for one year to any referrer that sends a new "paying" client my way. I get fairly good results and I also send out a quarterly email reminder to all of my clients to put the offer in front of them..as Jim said most will and do forget..so you might be able to offer a discounted sitting, or discounted print package..just my 2 cents worth..

[Jojie]

I wish I"m in the business! I don't even know where to start. But you know what? I thought that would be a good incentive to have something like those. Thanks for bringing it up.