HOW TO PROFIT FROM REFERENCE MARKETING IN B 2B MARKETS

Reference marketing plays an important role in business markets. Customer references have a positive impact on vendors’ reputations. It also portrays customer references as a source of competitive advantage, as a foundation for competitiveness and at the same time, they are presented as decreasing buyer uncertainty and perceived risk.

Many multinational companies are profiting from deploying large scale reference marketing programs. Among the first to pursue this path, one may find sound names like IBM or Siemens. Other firms have also joined this trend and are heavily promoting their customer references. Take for instance the example of the Swedish telecom vendor Ericsson – that only considers a project closed once they receive the reference from the customer – or the American cloud-based software company Salesforce.com, whose CEO personally approves all the success stories the company disclosures. Apart from these big and well-established companies, first customer references are also vital for start-up companies seeking to enter new markets and rounding up for new capital.

Reputation and customer references serve the same purpose and are highly effective tools for both attracting new customers and creating