5 Tips for Marketing Your Business with Referrals

A business needs multiple channels of marketing modules that can bring in significant amount of promotion, revenue and recognition, beyond what you’ve already established for yourself/your business. A good place to start, is with your existing customers, something that many business minds tend to overlook at their first quarters of operating.

Referral marketing has been known around the online ecosystem for quite some time, back when internet was still fairly new, a lot of referral companies were making their debut, promising people to make quick money by referring people to shady services, it worked for a long time, and surely a lot of companies are still trying to capitalize on such loopholes, but we want to work with a more direct type of referral marketing.

We need to tap into our own customer bases to get real referrals that will drive us new sales and business. First of, we need to make sure that we’re aware of the basics of referral marketing, and what kind of tactics and strategies we need to be aware of before we let others promote our products.

The other thing we need to know are the essential do’s and don’ts when it comes to letting others promote your product, since factors such as rewards also come into play in this matter. Once you’ve gotten those parts of your referral strategy memorized and understood, we can take a look at some of the tips/ways of accelerating the growth of our newly built platform for the absolute maximum benefit.

1. Build with referrals in mind

Whatever the deepest features of your business are, build in a way that referrals can compliment these features, so that users will automatically want to be a part of the process. The other way is to allow users to gain extended (non-vital) list of features once they start to participate in the referral program, and while not viable for all businesses out there, still a very solid strategy worth thinking over.

2. Ask only once

If you plan on monetizing your existing customer base through the referral program, make sure that you don’t overdo it, since that is often the case with these business models. You give up all hope for this one solution, but in the end you regret the choice because everyone feels like that’s the only thing happening at the company.

3. Treat your customers exclusively

Especially when it comes to customer care in a program such as referrals, people want to know their rewards, what they’re going to earn, how well they’re doing, and sometimes the good old pat on the back is also enough — but you, as a business, need to make sure that someone is there to do that pat on the back, otherwise customers won’t feel the liveliness of your referral programs.

4. Transparency is key

A big company will usually attract some very intellectual agents and clients that will want to take part into the referral program, but as a business owner it is your duty to get things straight with your new potential referees — especially on budget, target budget, the quantities, your ability to pay, etc,. etc,. all these things are to be dealt straight away, not only to invoke the feeling of transparency, but to avoid late stage talks of possible changes.

If you really aren’t going to offer a product or feature your customers want, tell them and tell them why. They’ll appreciate not being strung along for a ride that goes nowhere and might even consider staying because of your honesty. They might not get the same honesty if they leave, and many will deal with a workaround if offered. @Inc

5. Trust your values

Once in a while, comes an opportunity that could yield a great amount to the quarterly/yearly revenue chart, but sometimes it takes more than being a bold business man to take the job, it takes courage and trust in your own business values. If a big company is offering a job ten times the revenue of your regular jobs and you feel like you can do it in time, you should take it — since these are usually the opportunities that lead to life-changing referrals in the future.

Marketing Your Business with Referrals

The whole referral marketing field can get quite complicated, but with these tips in your head — you should get a better idea of how to approach referral marketing in the future, and what is the best way to approach some of the more easy parts of it. Of course, if there is a need of you to learn more about this particular type of marketing — leave us a comment with your questions and perhaps we can work on scheduling another similar post in the future.