Before we had internet reviews, websites, and social media, we had word-of-mouth marketing. If you received a service you enjoyed, you would tell your friends or recommend the service to others. Referral marketing is the same person-to-person endorsement, created for the digital age. By encouraging your audience to share their experience with their friends, family, and colleagues, you cast a wider net of potential clients.
Ready to consider referral marketing to boost your sales growth?
Referral Marketing for Lead Generation
What is Lead Generation?
To understand referral marketing, you first need to know how it connects to lead generation. When you have a product to sell people must be engaged in your brand in order to buy it. Lead generation is designed to gain consumer interest in order to turn clicks into sales. By generating leads, you can keep track of potential clients and customers.
What is Referral Marketing?
Referral marketing involves having your audience promote or recommend your product through their personal network. Often coupled with an incentive, this word-of-mouth technique taps into a market beyond your current reach. By having your customers bring sales to you, referral marketing utilizes your current client base to advance your sales and create new connections.
Implementing an Effective Referral Marketing Program
By creating a successful referral program, you can boost your lead generation and ultimately increase sales. Here’s how to make it work:
- Design the right incentive– Many referral programs are partnered with an incentive, discount, or reward. A good incentive should be beneficial to your guests, potential guests, and your bottom line. For example, you can offer a discounted monthly rate to guests who encourage their friends to also book a monthly stay.
- Make your referral marketing tools easy to use– You can’t generate leads if your technology isn’t easy to access. The referral program you choose should be simple, accurate, and user-friendly.
- Set clear rules and guidelines– Like any offering, product, or contest, you want the rules and guidelines to be very clear. What are the exemptions, stipulations, or permissions of your referral program? What is allowed and what isn’t? Get clear on this and display this information in a readable fashion.
- Promote your program– Utilize social media, call-to-action banners, email marketing, pop-up ads, newsletters, website placement, and more to promote your referral program to the wider public.
Let Your Metrics Do The Measuring
Your metrics are a great way to track how your referrals are doing, your lead generation success, and more. Keeping an eye on these analytics can help you decide what is and isn’t working with your referral marketing strategy. As always, Big Rig Media can help you promote your program and track its progress.
Referral Marketing with Big Rig Media!
You don’t have to tackle referral marketing on your own. From website design to social media management, Big Rig Media can help aid in the promotion, lead generation, and metric tracking of your referral program. All you have to do is decide what incentives to offer and what guidelines to uphold. Together we can create a referral marketing strategy that turns word of mouth into clicks and sales.