Referral Contests: The Importance of Word-of-Mouth Marketing in Brand Growth
As a business owner, content creator, or brand marketer, a major part of what you do is build your brand to get it in more people’s eyes and ears, which is a major metric for the growth of your brand. With the growth of your brand comes a larger audience, which means more subscriptions, tips, or a bigger base of paying fans.
This article will explore how you can use word-of-mouth marketing through referral contests to grow your brand and increase your paying subscribers without stress.
Impact of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Many ideas have been floated and well-documented to help brands grow their audience or consumer base, but the oldest form of marketing, which has existed for centuries, well before the digital age, remains word of mouth. According to a Nielsen study, 88% of people preferred advertisements about a product or brand from their family and friends.
Word-of-mouth marketing uses interpersonal communication to organically spread positive information about your content, service, or brand.
Companies that rely largely on reputation, such as small and medium-scale enterprises or those offering niche merchandise, tend to profit greatly from this marketing; for high-end merchandise, word of mouth has also been very beneficial.
It relies on customers or clients who are satisfied with the product you have offered sharing their experience with their friends, family, or immediate community. The trust these people have with your clients helps to drive awareness about your work and helps you increase sales through their recommendations or referrals, as the new people are more likely to try your product or follow your content.
Understanding Referral Contests
Referral contests are a unique form of word-of-mouth marketing. They are focused efforts to incentivize your clients to advertise your product to their immediate circle of friends.
While print media and major online ads can run up massive dollar costs, word-of-mouth marketing is very affordable, as it costs your customer nothing to share a good experience using your product or engaging with your content.
This advertisement is done in exchange for anything to be won, including cash prizes, discounts, goodies from your store, etc. It is also unlike direct word-of-mouth marketing, where they don’t profit directly from advertising your product.
In this day and age where a million things are competing for your eyes and attention, building brand loyalty and advocacy is essential to sustained success, and by setting up referral contests, you are tapping into the potential of your existing customer base and making them passionate advocates for your brand.
When your customers feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves, they are motivated to go above and beyond what is expected of them, thus strengthening the bond between your brand and your customers while expanding your brand’s reach to a wider audience.
Challenges Associated With Referral Contests
In setting up a successful referral contest, there are a couple of things that you need to put in place to keep it all together. You would need to
- Have clear objectives for the contest and what you expect from each participant.
- Come up with an enticing initiative that will attract your customers to partake.
- Track the performance of each customer.
As a creator who wants to explore word-of-mouth marketing through referrals, setting up this contest could be a rather difficult task, as it could be very demanding to do all these things simultaneously. The desire to maintain fairness and transparency throughout the process and address all the technical issues to ensure people can handle the process requires careful planning. The whole process and the technicalities involved feel like a lot of work, but with a platform like giveaway.com, you have nothing to worry about.
Using Giveaway.com For Referrals
Giveaway.com is a blockchain-powered online giveaway platform that revolutionizes competitions by introducing trust to the drawing process. With every phase securely stored on the blockchain, the outcomes are tamper-proof, ensuring fairness for all parties.
The platform enables you to verify entries, set precise conditions, and generate a fair draw; thus, all users have an equal chance, with no cheating or manipulation involved! You cannot control the outcome, nor can Giveaway.com, as the blockchain ensures everything is fair, transparent, and verifiable.
The reason why fairness of the outcome is necessary is that referral contest creators are often accused of creating fake giveaways and contests to increase the visibility of their brand; sometimes, these accusations are filled with lies, and at other times, they may have some truth in them, but with giveaway.com, those accusations become a thing of the past.
It includes an easy-to-use user interface for you and your customers, so even if you’ve never used an online giveaway tool before, you’ll master the giveaway.com operations in no time.
Giveaway.com also provides loyalty-building benefits through distinct G-coins, encouraging users to stay active on the platform. This means old and new customers can participate in your referral giveaway, thus growing your brand.
Setting Up Your Referral Contest on Giveaway.com
Go to Giveaway.com, click “Create Giveaway,” choose “Referral Giveaway,” and follow the instructions. The best aspect is that all participants are given a unique tracking ID and a scoreboard, making the process transparent and straightforward.
If there is a meaningful incentive to inspire your fan base, they will gladly recommend you to their relatives and friends using a simple link that works across all social media platforms.
Here’s the icing on the cake: Giveaway.com is completely free and simple to use. Within 2–3 minutes, you may set up your giveaway settings and return to work, or you can sit back and unwind as it all unfolds.
These are more than enough reasons to Sign up on Giveaway.com and create your first referral giveaway contest! Learn More
