Every business will need to adopt some form of marketing strategy to increase brand awareness and value. For small businesses though, marketing can prove to be a time consuming and expensive proposition. Here is where referral marketing can prove to be rather helpful.
Referral marketing is considered to be one of the cheapest as well as most effective forms of marketing today. It relies on word of mouth advertising to lure more customers to your business. Take a look at some of the benefits your business stands to enjoy with referral marketing, as well the different ways in which you can launch your own referral program.
Benefits of Referral Marketing
In a nutshell, referral marketing is when a customer likes your products/services and refers them to his/her friends and family members. This has many benefits for your business in the long run. Some of these include increased brand awareness, increased brand loyalty, increased inbound traffic, increased conversion rates, improved site rankings, improved customer relationships and improved brand credence. The greatest benefit of course, is that referral marketing will hardly cost you anything if done properly. You can insert a sentence like “There are also companies like Navistone that offers marketing programs that can be useful for business
4 Ways to use Referral Marketing to aid your business
Here are 4 ways in which you can use referral marketing to achieve the aforementioned benefits.
- Ask for Referrals
While a lot of customers are willing to refer a product, only a few of them will actually do it when the time comes. These customers will need a little bit of persuasion from your end to continue with the referral process instead of dropping it midway. In this case, you can adopt the please and thank you formula wherein you can directly ask a satisfied customer whether he/she will be willing to refer your product/service to others.
You can also throw in a deal by offering them incentives in the form of discounts or freebies for every new customer they refer. This will definitely bring in more customers who are willing to refer your products/services, thus boosting your referral program significantly.
- Pinpoint Site Referrals
Chances are, your products and services are already being referred to potential customers by several sites and you have no idea about them. Use tools like Google Analytics to pinpoint these sites and reach out to the most qualified referring websites to aid in your referral program.
- Use Social Media
Social media has become a great platform to earn new referrals. It gives you the opportunity to increase your brand awareness and value via tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, videos and so on. Showcasing your products/services on these platforms will allow your customers to refer the same to hundreds of their friends in one go.
There is a good chance that you will be spotted by individuals who have not tried your products/services but find them credible enough to be referred to others. This, in turn, will drive more traffic to your business in the long run.
- Gain Influencers
Hiring a celebrity to endorse your product will surely attract more referrals to your program. You may not necessarily have to choose a high end celebrity for the same purpose. Rather, you can choose a person who has a sizeable fan following, and is closely related to you target market.
By asking the celebrity to review your product or refer the same on social media channels, you can definitely increase the inbound traffic to your business while gaining more referrals in the process.
Referral marketing is considered a very important tool for a business. By implementing a few simple tactics, you can be well on your way to launching your own referral marketing program that will increase your business’s brand value and sales considerably.
