Referral marketing
Your best salespeople already know you
Centers of Influence are the greatest source of referrals most businesses have, and the most neglected
The untapped channel
The highest ROI, the least attention
Referral marketing is the initiative most businesses under-focus — and medical practices are the worst offenders. In our experience, it simply doesn't get the attention it deserves.
Which is strange, because the relationships are already there and almost nobody builds a real process around them. If you want the wider framework for judging what any channel is worth, start with the maths behind CAC and ROI.
Where to start
- Sit down, clear your mind, and write down every colleague, friend, and business owner who could be sending you referrals
- Look hard at who should be sending them — and isn't
- Then build the process that makes it happen on purpose, not by luck
88% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know above every other channel
Nielsen, Trust in Advertising Study
Nielsen, Trust in Advertising Study, September 2021 — more than 40,000 respondents across Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America, MENA and North America. The 92% figure still quoted across the industry is from Nielsen’s 2012 report; we cite the current one.
Why people refer you
They refer when they feel valued
Most people will go out of their way to refer friends and family — when they've felt appreciated, valued, and genuinely well served
The experience
How it actually felt to be your customer, start to finish.
Professionalism
You and your staff know what you're doing, and it shows.
The office itself
Appearance matters. People notice the room they wait in.
Convenience
Easy to reach, easy to book, easy to deal with.
Competitive pricing
They felt the value was worth what they paid.
Technology
Modern tools signal a practice that takes itself seriously.
Rapport
The relationship they have with you and your team.
Feeling like royalty
Make the customer feel like they matter — because they do.
And the referral process starts at first contact
Calling in
Finding you online
Visiting your website
Referred by someone
Seeing a social post
Reading your blog
Attending your webinar
Centers of influence
A conversation becomes a customer
Gaining the trust of other professionals who can send you clients takes time — and it’s worth every hour
Conversation
Communication
Relationship
Partnership
Communal recognition
Customer
Overlap
If you specialize in pain management, the waiting rooms of nearby chiropractors and physical therapists are full of people already presenting with the problem you treat. You don’t have to find them or convince them they have an issue — the qualification has been done. What stands between you is one professional relationship.
We’ve removed the “80%+” figure that used to sit here. We could not substantiate it, and a specific number about a clinical population needs a citation to earn its place.
So market yourself to the professionals who can send you customers
NetworkMake callsUse LinkedInGo to conferencesEmail & textTrain your staffAnd ASK
If you’re a healthcare practice, read this before you build anything
Everything above is about earning referrals through relationships. The moment money, gifts, discounts or anything else of value changes hands for a referral, healthcare leaves marketing territory and enters criminal law.
- The federal Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits knowingly offering, paying, soliciting or receiving anything of value to induce or reward referrals of business reimbursable by a federal health care program. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 raised the maximum criminal fine to $100,000 and the maximum prison term to ten years.
- The Stark Law is strict liability — no intent required — and restricts physician referrals for designated health services to entities the physician has a financial relationship with.
- State law often goes further, and unlike the federal statutes many state kickback and fee-splitting rules apply regardless of who is paying the bill.
- HIPAA governs the follow-up. Sharing patient information back to a referring provider is permitted for treatment purposes; using patient data for marketing is a different question with different rules. Keep the thank-you separate from the clinical detail.
None of this stops you building a serious referral practice. Conversations, education, running a clinic worth recommending, being easy to reach — all of it is fair game and none of it is remuneration. What it does mean is that any incentive scheme needs a healthcare attorney to look at it before it goes live, not after.
Sources — 42 U.S.C. §1320a-7b(b) (Anti-Kickback Statute) and 42 U.S.C. §1395nn (Stark Law); penalty increases per the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, effective 9 February 2018. See HHS Office of Inspector General — A Roadmap for New Physicians: Fraud & Abuse Laws. This is general information, not legal advice — Corunit are marketers, not attorneys.
What is your referral strategy
Five questions to put to your team
Sit down with your employees and answer these honestly
1
How many referrals have you received in the last 12 months?
2
Who asks for them — and how, and when?
3
What percentage of your clients gave you one in the last 12 months?
4
Do you have an automated process?
5
What's your plan to get more?
Ask for their opinion
People love being asked what they think
Especially by someone they trust, someone who knows their field, and — above all — someone who actually got them results
“
Describe the perfect doctor, lawyer, CPA, bakery, or restaurant.
“
If you were me, how, when, and where should I approach more people like you?
“
What do you like best about our company, product, or service?
“
What could we improve?
“
Is there something you don't like about our business?
“
Do you have friends or family you discuss what we do with?
“
Was there anything that made you hesitate to buy?
“
Have you found the way we do business easy and straightforward?
“
If you could change one thing about our company, what would it be?
Then thank them. Genuinely
Anyone who refers a customer to you is helping you. Never let that go unacknowledged.
Handle them right
A referral is someone's reputation on loan
Referred customers should be your top priority — a bad experience doesn't just cost you the client, it costs you the colleague who sent them
Tend to them promptlyRemind your staff that a referred client gets attention first.
Never make them waitThe delay you'd forgive from a stranger reflects badly on the person who vouched for you.
Open a direct lineEstablish real communication with the colleague who referred them.
Close the loopWhere you can, let the referring colleague know how it turned out.
Thank them properlyEmail works. A card or a phone call works better.
Give the program an ownerAssign it to a specific employee so someone builds the relationships and carries the accountability.
Ace all of the above and referrals start arriving without you even asking
Take it one step further — build a formal strategy to generate them — and referrals stop being weather and start being a channel. But your staff has to be on the same page about how you’ll do it.
Good questions
Referrals, answered
Not sure where your referral numbers actually stand? Ask us on a free audit — we’ll tell you what we find either way.
What is a Center of Influence in referral marketing
A Center of Influence is someone whose recommendation carries weight with the people you want as customers — usually a professional in an adjacent field who already has the trust and the audience. An accountant for a lawyer. A physical therapist for a pain specialist. A realtor for a mortgage broker. The relationship is the asset, and it’s built over months rather than bought.
How do I ask for a referral without it feeling awkward
Ask for an opinion before you ask for a name. People enjoy being consulted and resist being sold. Once someone has told you what they value about working with you, asking who else they know with that same problem is a natural next sentence rather than a pivot. Timing does more work than wording — ask right after a good outcome, not at random.
Can a medical practice pay for patient referrals
Generally no, and the exposure is criminal rather than civil. The federal Anti-Kickback Statute prohibits offering or receiving anything of value to induce or reward referrals of business reimbursable by a federal health care program — maximum $100,000 fine and ten years’ imprisonment since the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. The Stark Law adds strict-liability civil exposure for physician self-referral, and many states have kickback and fee-splitting rules that apply no matter who is paying. Have a healthcare attorney review any referral incentive before it goes live.
Is a referral incentive legal for a non-healthcare business
Usually yes — referral rewards are ordinary practice in retail, home services and professional services. Two rules still apply. Any material connection between you and someone promoting you has to be disclosed under the FTC Endorsement Guides, and regulated professions such as law and financial advice carry their own referral-fee restrictions. Check your profession’s rules before you build the programme, not after.
How many referrals should a business expect
There’s no credible universal benchmark, and anyone quoting one is guessing. The measure that matters is your own: what share of clients referred someone in the last twelve months, and what that share was the year before. A programme that moves your number is working, whatever anyone else’s average happens to be.
Do referred customers behave differently
They arrive with borrowed trust, which usually shortens the sales conversation — and they carry a higher cost of failure. A poor experience doesn’t just lose you the customer, it damages the relationship with the person who vouched for you. That’s the real argument for treating referred clients as a priority rather than a bonus.
What should I do when someone sends me a referral
Respond faster than you would to a cold enquiry, acknowledge the referrer the same day, and close the loop afterwards within whatever your privacy obligations allow. In healthcare that last step is constrained — sharing patient information back to a referring provider is permitted for treatment purposes under HIPAA, but marketing-style updates are a different matter. Keep the thank-you separate from the clinical detail.
Should one person own the referral program
Yes. Referral work fails by diffusion far more often than by disagreement. When it belongs to everyone it belongs to nobody, follow-up slips, and the relationships go cold. Name an owner, give them time in the week for it, and review the numbers on a schedule rather than when someone remembers.
How long does a Centers of Influence strategy take to pay off
Longer than paid channels — and for longer. You’re asking professionals to put their own reputation behind yours, and that trust is earned across months of contact, not one meeting. The compensating advantage is durability: a working COI relationship keeps producing without a per-lead cost. Set the payback horizon before you start, so you’re not judging it at week six.
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