Referral Marketing Strategies for Business Growth

Knowingly or unknowingly, we all perform referral marketing in our day to day lives. Be it recommending a doctor, or suggesting a beautician to our close friends and loved ones. We all tend to play the role of referrals somehow and somewhere in the midst of our lives.

Similarly, a business or a marketing company adopts the referral marketing strategy to drive their business growth. Continue reading to know the crux of referral marketing and its power packed strategies.

1. Harness The Power of Referral Marketing

Referral marketing comprises a trustworthy referral that influences people more than the broadcast message. Read this blog to know effective referral marketing strategies to propel your business growth.

Adopting any strategy for your business might work for some time but taking the right approach will give you results instantly. Referral Marketing is one such powerful strategy that can boost another customer’s trust in your brand.

What is Referral Marketing?

Referral marketing comprises a trustworthy referral who influences people more than the broadcast message. Read this blog to know effective referral marketing strategies to propel your business growth.

2. Why Does Referral Marketing Work?

People nowadays usually trust their friends and acquaintances rather than on outer reviews and sources. Let’s know why you need a referral marketing strategy:

• Referral marketing v/s Paid to advertise: A word of mouth impression leaves a long-lasting impact and can multiply your sales by five times as compared to a paid advertisement.
• Drive more traffic: Referral marketing helps you drive more traffic and leads. It creates a ripple effect and helps you lead the market with double conversions as compared to other sources. 
• The lifetime value of referrals: A referral lead converts 30% better and has 16% higher lifetime value as compared to points acquired through other channels.
• Cost-effective strategy: Referral Marketing is a cost-effective means of enhancing your brand exposure. Also, you don’t have to put your much-needed efforts with your customers, referring to your product. Build an active customer base at lower costs.

Focus on Your Referrals

The foundation of your referral marketing begins with serving your customers unconditionally. When you do this, they will ultimately become referrals for your brand. No doubt, references are the most crucial component in marking your business growth. In such a scenario, sourcing out referrals becomes an essential task at hand.

Most of the businesses use old age methods to get referrals. Get them not just for the sake of your brand existence but for multiplying your sales turnover.

Let’s have a look at elemental referral marketing strategies which work wonders :

3. What are Referral Marketing Strategies

Fetch more subscribers and prospects: Work towards providing an exceptional experience to your visitors and prospects. When you give them an extra flair of attention, they will consider buying your product. At the same time, exceptional services will enhance their loyalty towards you, ultimately turning them into referrals.

How to work extra hard to win customer’s loyalty :

•  Offer incentives: Reward your customers with extra incentives such as a free product or giving them enough time when they are stuck in the process of buying a product.
• Send friendly reminders: Remind your customers about the product left in the cart. Support them at each step by acknowledging them via automated emails.
•  Be friendly to customers: If your efforts are sincere and customers are satisfied with the services to the tee. Then half of your work is already done and reaping benefits.

Render unconventional customer support: Resolve your customer’s queries, and they will be at your toes forever. Listen to them attentively and acknowledge them when it’s required.

Polish your customer support skills in some easy ways:

• Be responsive towards customers: Don’t ignore your customer’s questions and comments for a prolonged period. When you respond quickly, they will know that they are taken care of at every point in time.
• Be sincere towards them: Customers can quickly grasp the tone you are using towards them. Be respectful and honest towards your customers. And you will get the same in return. 
• Use Personalization: Personalization will boost the count of your referrals. Send them a well-timed promotion. Show your customers some affection. Make them feel that you remember each bit of their information.

Improve your referral program: Creating a referral program helps you in making more referrals. Now you can easily track and manage your referral programs through referral marketing software. Also, through these solutions, you can reward your referrals.

Acknowledge your referrals: Appreciate the efforts of your references by rewarding them with compliments or making some gestures. Acknowledge them and deepen your connection with them.

4. How can You Get Remarkable Results With Referral Marketing

• Impeccable after-sales service: Having the right product is the USP of your business growth. Also, what services are you providing apart from the product that is equally important? That’s how you can boost your referrals to promote your product.
• Appealing rewards for referrals: Whatever you are rewarding to your references must be good enough. Rewards must drive a referral to turn another lead into conversions. 
• Keep the referrals informed: Revere important guidelines about your marketing process to the referral until the deal is closed. Don’t overboard the potential customer (referee) with calls and emails.
• Use both cash and non-cash incentives: According to an intended study, using non-cash incentives prove to be more successful than cash incentives. Also, referral marketing websites can be used to fetch more customers.
• Give rewards in time boundation: If you have announced a bonus, make sure to give them away in a bound time. Otherwise, it could hamper your referral marketing program and hamper business growth.
• Define the buyer persona for the referee: Remember that not everybody a referral refers to is the prospect or a potential customer. A company must define the buyer persona that aligns with your brand or product. For example – income, age or interest of the buyer.

Apart from keeping all the above strategies in mind, it’s important to analyze the results of the referral marketing program. Also, referral marketing has proven to give you higher conversion rates as compared to email marketing and other marketing strategies.

Conclusion

Individual small scale businesses still hesitate in asking referrals. Remember if you cannot ask for referrals directly. You can take in another route of social media (YouTube, videos and blogs, podcasts) to get in touch with the customers you are not aware of.