Referral marketing is one of the best marketing techniques for growing your online business. With this marketing strategy, you can acquire a vast number of customers with minimal effort. This marketing strategy is so effective because strangers get influenced by referrals more than any direct advertisement. Those referrals often refer to their close ones and someone who might be interested in your service or product.
Referral marketing can also increase the legitimacy of your more than any other marketing strategy. It increases the number of loyal customers. Thus, shoppers keep coming back when they trust a brand and this increases your revenue by multifold.
What is referral marketing?
Referral marketing is the method of promoting products or services from existing customers to potential customers through word of mouth. This marketing initiative is designed to incentivize existing customers for introducing a brand’s product to their family, friends, and contacts to become new customers.
This marketing technique is practiced by various businesses around the world to grow and build customer bases. Because it’s the best way to transform your brand’s biggest fans into the best marketers. They help spread the word about your brand to anyone who might be interested in your product.
What are the advantages of referral marketing?
Referral marketing has various benefits for businesses. One of them is reaching the right audience. It happens automatically as your existing customers know better about their surroundings and who might be interested to purchase your product or service. This increases the chance of reaching more precise and potential new customers. Which can also bring loyal customers to your company at a lower cost.
The possibilities and conversion rate is limitless in referral marketing. You might even get an unexpectedly high sales volume through a referral program. Enjoyable incentives can attract more existing customers to enroll in your referral program and spread the word.
According to Social Media Today, 78% of B2B marketers say referral programs generate leads of good or excellent quality. 54% of marketers say referral marketing has a lower cost-per-lead and 88% of them use referral marketing and loyalty marketing software.
Referral marketing can help you to measure customer satisfaction. High-performing referral programs that have large numbers of referrers indicate high customer satisfaction levels. You can use various graphs and reports of WC Affiliate to measure the performance of your referral campaigns.
Referral campaigns can increase brand awareness. When your existing customers promote your brand and tell about your product, it feels more authentic. This builds your reputation and resonates strongly with the new potential customers.
Referral marketing can increase customer engagement. This marketing strategy has a relation to other marketing efforts such as emails, social media, and customer service. Communication with customers via these channels increases engagement. Also, this helps to build relationships and strengthens your online presence. It encourages further referrals when your brand is engaged and recognized by customers on social media.
How to start referral marketing?
To start a referral marketing program can create an informative landing page describing the process of referring your services and products. The copy on the landing page and form shouldn’t too complicated or have too many steps. It’s a good practice to divide the process into three easy steps. Make sure your brand message, referral process, and benefits are easy to understand.
WC Affiliate is a great tool for tracking the referrals and overall performance of referral marketing programs. This tool will help you understand what type of referral programs are a good fit for your business. You can then continue the suitable programs to bring more customers and revenue to your business. Also, you can optimize low-performing referral campaigns to improve results.
What are the best referral marketing ideas?
Experimenting with various marketing techniques can help you choose the best strategies for your business. There are many forms of referral marketing that you can try to engage new customers to your brand. The top 10 referral marketing ideas to acquire more customers are mentioned below –
- Run a referral contest
- Create occasional referral campaigns
- Give-to-get referral campaign
- Point-based referral campaigns
- Create multilevel referral incentives.
- Offer free goods and services
- Reward discounts and cash
- Create affiliate programs
- Organize exclusive events
- Include referral program in Thank You message
1. Run a referral contest
Running a fun and enjoyable referral contest is a great idea to engage more users. You can set the reward for only one winner or reward multiple participants based on certain criteria. Many people including your customers will be eager to participate when the rewards are lucrative. They will refer your business to as many people as they know to win the contest. This will obviously increase the awareness of your business.
You can add multiple tasks to your referral contests. Ask the contestants to test your product and take feedback. Ask them to share your products or services on social media platforms. Also, you can set tasks such as commenting on your brand’s social media posts, sharing your posts on their profile, commenting on the posts, etc.
2. Give-to-get referral campaign
Give-to-get referral campaigns work by offering a reward to both parties when users are referred successfully. The referrers and new customers get rewarded while driving more revenue and engagement to your business.
You can set various conditions to attract to this type of referral program. For example –
- Give $50 to get $50.
- Gift free shipping to enjoy free shipping.
- Give a coupon to get a free product or discount.
3. Create occasional referral campaigns
Most companies create occasional referral campaigns to boost their sales on various occasions. This tactic is proven successful for all types of products and services. You can create referral campaigns with discounts and gifts to welcome new customers.
People usually surf websites for discounts on special occasions. That’s why running referral campaigns during these periods can greatly increase engagement in your referral programs. The popular occasions for referral marketing campaigns include –
- Women’s Day
- Easter Sunday
- Back To School
- Thanks Giving
- Black Friday
- Cyber Monday
- Christmas
- New Year’s Day
- Super Bowl
- Valentine’s Day
If you are looking for a special discount on these occasions to grab the premium version of WC Affiliate then keep an eye on the deals page and subscribe for the notification.
4. Point-based referral marketing
Point-based referral marketing help by gamifying the process. Gamification makes respondents more motivated and productive. You should also use gamification to boost the motivation levels of your customers for referring your brand to others.
Customers can earn points for referring new customers in point-based referral marketing. You can let the customers use their earned points to make purchases in your store, and redeem them in exchange for special coupons, gift cards, bonuses, etc.
5. Create multilevel referral incentives
Creating a multilevel referral program is another great idea to boost your business. You can create fixed amounts or percentages based on multiple levels using WC Affiliate. You can create unlimited levels using this WordPress plugin. Every successful referral will automatically reward the participants based on their levels.
This type of referral marketing is popular for many decades because of its effectiveness. It’s a successful referral marketing technique because the referrals get benefits in cash for every successful referral.
6. Offer free goods and services
Everyone loves freebies. Giving your customers freebies for their referrals is a good move to bring more engagement. You can offer free products, services, and downloadables for successful referrals.
You need to select the one that your customers will love but doesn’t cost much. For example, you can offer free food packages, merchandise, souvenirs, or anything that your brand has in store. People love these things and they will keep coming back with more referrals.
7. Include the referral program in Thank You message
Thank you messages are delivered to customers when they complete a purchase. It’s a great medium to promote your referral program. You can easily create awareness of your referral marketing program by including them in Thank You message.
Whenever a customer gets to know about your referral program, they will be interested in participating if the deal is good. You need to make sure that the reward is explained in simple and understandable words. Don’t try to make the process complicated because customers hate it.
8. Create affiliate programs
Most companies have affiliate programs that help them make revenue in a cost-effective manner. If you have a WordPress website then you can easily create self-hosted affiliate programs on your website using WC Affiliate.
This tool will help you create custom referral links and banners, set up custom commissions, track affiliates, etc. Also, it has a separate dashboard for affiliates so that they can track their progress, earnings, and request payouts.
You need to create a landing page describing all the perks and benefits of joining the affiliate program. Make the rules of joining easily so that anyone can join the program. Also, you can include the prohibited actions on the affiliate program enrollment page.
Wrapping up
It doesn’t matter if your company is large or small when it comes to referral marketing. One or more techniques can help you acquire more customers and revenue if you can follow all the ideas mentioned above. Everyone loves receiving a gift and that’s why you should give away something to the customer for a greater outcome. You can always run referral campaigns to offer your customers something they want. Referral marketing can turn your best customers into your best marketing medium. Repeat whichever idea works best for you and let us know in the comments if you want more referral marketing ideas.
