How To Create A Referral Marketing Strategy

Learn how to create a referral marketing strategy that boosts sales by using your active and interested customer base.

Source: Invitereferrals

A Referral marketing Strategy has roots in traditional marketing; only referral marketing practices have evolved with the changing times. We’ve all referred something or another to our friends and acquaintances. As a result, brand sales have increased organically. Savvy marketers have started creating referral marketing strategies to prompt their loyal customers and influencers to share their brand with new customers.

The brands are rewarding their loyal customers and welcoming new customers with the best of referral marketing practices. In recent times, when the pandemic has affected almost all aspects and areas of businesses. The need for referral marketing has become even more important.

This post will help you understand the referral marketing strategies and practices in 2021.

WHAT IS THE OBJECTIVE OF REFERRAL MARKETING :

The main objective of referral marketing is to prompt your existing customers to attract new customers towards your brand. The referral marketing works two way- 

• Retain the loyalty of the customers by giving them rewards.
• Fetch and acquire new customers to grow your business.

Below are the benefits of referral marketing :

Source: Invitereferrals

If you are running an e-commerce store, you can attain the below benefits of referral marketing :

• Enhance sales :

By running a referral program, you can retain your current customers by rewarding them when referring your brand to their friends. These would lead to more loyalty from the customers and will enhance your sales. The brands now reward both the referrer and referrals, prompting new customers to visit your store again.

• More brand exposure :

Source: Invitereferrals

Brands run the “Refer a friend” campaign to propagate brand awareness and enhance sales through Word of Mouth marketing. People now trust their friends, and hence, the referrals (existing audience ) are a great source of bringing in new leads. There on, the cycle will be repeated by the new customers and so on.

• Save the extra expenditures :

You can save a lot of expenses and increase your revenues at the same time. Run a referral program and reward the customers whenever they get you a new lead. It is a win-win situation on both ends. You get leads; the customers get rewards.

Simultaneously, the referral marketing campaigns enhance the customer engagement rates. Make your customer feel that they are the center of attraction. Also, you can shout out on social media to acquire more leads and hence increase referrals.

WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF REFERRAL MARKETING IN PANDEMIC :

The businesses have seen it all in the past year- the downtrodden economy, businesses being shut down, losing customers, and so on. In such hard times, referral marketing becomes a robust solution for e-commerce stores.

Building networks is the key to enhancing your business’s growth if you are setting up a new e-commerce business or renewing the existing one. That means you need to stay in touch with your customers to feed them with the latest trends. 

How is referral marketing a necessity? :

• Importance of existing customers: The physical store has shut down, which has disrupted the businesses’ hopes to bring in new customers. In such situations, your existing customers are the only ray of hope to promote your brand.
• New brand suggestions: Online shopping has led to more recommendations from the people, suggesting new brands to meet the needs and wants of their loved ones.
• Repeat the sales: The crisis has given businesses a powerful opportunity to turn their website visitors into loyal customers and then repeat their sales by understanding their emotional needs.

Above all, you need to track the website analytics to know more about the visitors’ behavioral patterns and engage them accordingly so that they revisit your store. That is how customer acquisition becomes much easier.

HOW DOES REFERRAL MARKETING LEAD TO THE SUCCESS OF INDUSTRIES

No doubt, the priorities and spending habits of the customer have changed during the pandemic. People can no longer travel to far-off places but certainly enjoy the time within their houses’ four walls. 

All these changing trends have led to certain industries’ fall but enabled the other industries to flourish.

Referral marketing and customer retention platforms have seen an upsurge in the rise of more referrals. Consequently, order volumes increased, and there has been a rise in the number of clients by more than 400. The statistics are surprising since last year.

Below are some of the industries that are blooming and acquiring more referrals and sales :

1. Gifting stores :

Over the past year, the increase in the sales order volume is for sure evidence of the value of referral marketing. The Mother’s day event saw a raging increase in sales order volume by 122 %. It is evident in the increasing number of referrals. The gifting stores claimed that there had been an increase of new customers (229%) as compared to the year 2020.

Many gifting clients saw referrals rise to 1000%.

2. Home appliance and gardening stores :

As more and more people are working from home, they are getting prompted to bring the outdoors in, this has led to the rise in demand for indoor plants and furniture. People are investing in transforming their houses and garden areas. Rather than binging on the online apps, they are getting recommendations from their loved ones.

Consequently, the order volumes and referrals have increased by 60 to 90 % in the pandemic.

The home appliance industry has also seen a boom in the increase in sales by more than 50%.

3. Health and fitness :

Source: Invitereferrals

Health and fitness have now become the utmost need of the hour as people stay indoors and become more health-conscious due to the shutting down of gyms. In such times, people ask for recommendations from their friends for the best indoor fitness equipment like rowing machines.

Many fitness brands can quickly turn visitors into customers. The demand for nutritious food is also increasing as a result. The referrals and consumer orders are rising as a result by more than 15 % in the UK.

4. Beauty industry :

What if you are working from home, you still need some self-care. The pandemic has given consumers more time to focus on their inner and outer beauty. The beauty skincare brands’ sales have now increased by more than 40 % since last year. 

Source: Invitereferrals

Influencer marketing has already led to an increase in sales for beauty products. There are many youtube channels where influencers are posting a lot of videos and promoting the brands.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT REFERRAL MARKETING IN MARKETING STRATEGIES :

Below are some of how you can implement referral marketing in your current strategies :

1. Prompt customers to share experiences :

Source: Invitereferrals

Give unique and memorable experiences to the customers, which prompts them to share the products further. There are ample ways to make their experiences memorable such as packaging and unpacking of the products. It will induce the customers to share their experiences on social media outlets. Your main aim is to add a personality to your brand, which invokes a WOW emotion amongst the customers.

2. Serve customers exceptionally well :

Customers might use your product and might forget it after a while, but what leads them to you, again and again, is their experiences with you. How well you support them – pre and post-sales experiences say a lot about referring your brand to others. You can incorporate live chats. You can add live chats just before your checkout processes to handle any queries.

The more security you give to the customers, the more you as a brand will shine.

3. Create content and promote it :

If you want to increase your sales, you can implement Word of mouth marketing and promote your content. You can stuff your content with relevant keywords and prompt existing customers to viral it. Also, you can leverage the power of Influencers which might incur some costs at your hand but will give you great results indeed!

4. Implement a referral program :

Source: Invitereferrals

You can implement a referral program as well as loyalty programs. They are the best ways to get more referrals to your business. Give incentives to the customers to promote the Word and allow their friends to visit and buy from your store.

You can also automate a referral program with the help of referral program software to offer discounted coupons and codes automatically to the customers. Also, you can track referrals and referrers.

CONCLUSION

A Referral marketing strategy is the key solution to all your marketing-related problems. Remember not to leave things on fate, but follow the above strategies to enhance sales.