Referral marketing is a powerful tool for acquiring new customers by leveraging the recommendations and influence of existing customers. There are many referral marketing tips available to professionals and businesses of all types. The best referral marketing strategy for you will depend on your ability to implement it effectively. There are many successful customer referral examples. We would like you and your business to be one of them.
Here are five effective strategies to boost your referral marketing efforts:
Create an Incentivized Referral Program
Incentives motivate customers to refer friends and family. Offer rewards like discounts, coupons, freebies, or loyalty points for both the referrer and the new customer. Make the rewards appealing enough to encourage participation.Incentives can increase the probability of referrals by up to 50%!
Some popular incentives that our clients use are Amazon gift cards (who doesn’t like those), discounted services, and travel vouchers. Sometimes, simply pointing out the most powerful incentive of “making a difference in the lives of those you care about” can work the best.
Leverage Customer Advocacy
Identify your most enthusiastic and satisfied customers. Encourage them to become advocates by sharing their positive experiences with others. Engage these advocates through exclusive events, early access to products, or personalized offers to keep them active and enthusiastic about recommending your brand. The key here is to know who your top advocates are and engage them.
That is why no matter what referral system you use (assuming you have a referral system), make sure you have a way to track engagement, behavior and results so you can put “more chips down” on your advocates and treat them differently. There are lots of referral marketing strategies that attract customers, but leveraging advocates is the least expensive and highest conversion way to do it.
Simplify the Referral Process
Make it easy for customers to refer others by providing simple, user-friendly referral methods. This could be through email, social media sharing, or a referral link that they can easily share with their network. The easier it is to refer, the more likely customers will do it.
This goes back to my original point that your best referral marketing strategy is the one that works for you. For it to work, it must be simple and easy to be implementable. Unfortunately, many professionals fall short of their attempts to appropriately utilize technology to help with this. Most technology based systems are overwhelming, expensive and require too much maintenance. Here’s one that makes it the easiest for you, your clients and your network should you not have one that consistently works for you.
Use Personalization and Targeting
Tailor your referral program to suit different customer segments. Personalize referral offers based on the interests and behaviors of your customers. For instance, if a customer frequently buys a certain product, offer them a referral program related to that product. Videos can be a very effective way to personalize your client communication-especially short and personal ones. This can often be difficult to do at scale. We have found a great technology partner with a company called Potion that can help you do that. We use them in our referral marking and plan to build them into our platform over time as well.
Promote Referral Program Across Channels
Spread the word about your referral program through various channels like email newsletters, social media, website banners, and in-store signage (if applicable). Consistently remind customers about the benefits of referring friends to keep the program top-of-mind. The key here is to build a referral culture where your staff, clients and network hear about you in surround sound including how you primarily grow through referrals. For a free whitepaper on tips on building a referral culture, click here.
Remember, transparency, honesty, and delivering a great customer experience are crucial in making referral marketing successful. Encourage referrals by providing exceptional products or services that customers genuinely want to share with others.
ReferMe IQ™ is passionate about helping organizations build high growth referral-based businesses with their ”state of the art” automated referral platform. Peter S. Velardi is an accomplished senior executive and entrepreneur who has impacted thousands of individuals and organizations to build a fast growing referral based business.
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