Do you want to attract more customers? Try referral program.
Invite friend — get bonus.
Nowadays, there is a huge competition on the market. Each sphere has a great variety of proposals. That’s why your business will not survive without a promotion. Special offers can help to deal with this problem. Everyone loves bonuses or gifts. Here is a key to attracting of people. Referral programs use these knowledge to right direction. Let’s look on such programs more detailed and reveal how do them work.
What is it?
The main principle of referral programs is:
“You offer our service to your friend and we’ll give the presents for both!”
The profit may be presented in different ways:
- cash back
- one time free service
- some material prize
In other words, referral programs are the way of advertising, which helps to attract more and more people through your old clients.
Is that an effective way?
There are a lot of different kinds of advertisement and often business owners don’t know what to choose.
Let’s look at the statistic from getambassador’s research:
According to these data we can make a conclusion:
People trust to friends much more, than TV or Browser’s advertisment. It brings higher qualiry customers. It’s highly probable that person will use it again. That’s really important in marketing.
How to escape common mistakes.
Mistake 1.
“Everything that you need is a great quality of customer service. Then the referral program will work”
No! That is not all.
Everything is not as simple. You need to make product or service, which will satisfy the expectations of customer. You must prove that your product is the best on the market. And, of course, you should offer something worthwhile to clients as a reward for their referrals.
Mistake 2.
“If customer was satisfied, he would promote you”
No! Why do we need such a program then?
You should ask your clients to promote you instantly and dive them a feedback. It shouldn’t be money always.
Other kinds of reward may give better results, than cash, but you should test several variants, it’ll help you to understand which one is better for your business.
Mistake 3.
“Referral programs should only focus on the most influential clients”
No!
Sure, such customers can bring much more benefits!
Although, the majority of client audience are the simple people. It means that they can give an advice to someone like him, who hasn’t so much connections, but interested in advice much more than influent person.
Ways to promote the program.
You should tell your clients about such opportunity. Use email distribution. Tell about rules and details. Email marketing helps to keep up dating with your clients. It always reminds them about you. Separate your customers on different lists based on what they are like most of all (for companies with a large number of customers).
Know your customers.
It is one of the most critical aspects of marketing. Create a profile for customers. Knowing the details of your client’s online live can help to build good targeting marketing. You should notice which social network they prefer. For example, for a regular user of Instagram, you can offer to tell about your services there to get some present.
Never stop promoting.
Place an advertisement on your website. Give it such place that everyone will see it (header, sidebar, in the middle of the main page).
You shouldn’t annoy your customers. But don’t let them forget you.
Be inspired by them
- Uber gives promo-code for the next ride to you and to your friend you invited. After registration, everyone gets unique code to share with friends. When your friend makes the first ride using your code, you get a sale for the next ride.
- Google rewarding business customers for each new user they sign up for Google Apps for Work. After joining the referral program, clients get the personal link to share with their network. Then for each new account activated with this link, advocate receives 15$ directly deposited to their bank account. So, you can make money on the jobs you don’t take.
- Crew present interesting referral offer in B2B sphere. You can get cash every time a project is funded. If you invited somebody to fund their project, you should ask your assistent to add add him in your profile. After that, you’ll recieve 15% commission.
- Dropbox rewards participants of referral programs with 500 MB of free storage space instead of money.
- ReadyTalk offer rewards for some actions (like sharing in a social network or writing an article about them). Only after that, when they strengthened the relationship with customers, they start to use referral program.
- Evernote rewards clients by points, which you can collect and change on something (like free access to software’s premium functions).
- FreeAgent gives both the new users and the referring customer a 10% discount. Also, you can summarize these discounts.
- Verafin rewards the top referrer of the week. Verafin conducts certifications, where you can get special badge after finishing all steps. So, this company generated 117 high-quality B2B referral at the end of the month.
- Tesla offered 1000$ referrers early, but now they changed strategy. Now the first person who refers 20 people in their region receives a free car. Becides, in Tesla there is a system of qualification level for their referrers. According to your level you can choose on of the presents (car for kids or wall connector for 1 or 2 level of qualification, ability to drive Tesla whithin one week or arachind wheels for 3 level, powerwall fo 4 level). Also you can offer your reward to friend, if you don’t need in this. Customers with 1 to 4 level of qualification recieve 400$ cash or 750$ in credit for each installed referral.
To sum up.
Now you know all main aspects of referral programs. Remember that promotion it’s long process, and before you earn money, you should spend some.
Follow these rules and get success!
