- \n
- Why does referral marketing work? <\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Building a referral marketing program<\/a> <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Reviews and referral marketing<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Referral marketing for small business<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Customer referral program software <\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/birdeye.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/want-to-grow-your-business-with-referrals-webinar-1024x88.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nFrequently asked questions about referral marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What is customer referral marketing?\u00a0<\/strong>Customer referral marketing is when businesses enable and encourage customers to tell friends and family members about products and services.\u00a0<\/p> <\/div>
What is a referral marketing program?\u00a0<\/strong>A referral marketing program is a systematic method of encouraging customers to refer a business to their friends and family members.\u00a0<\/p> <\/div> <\/div>\n\n\n\n
Why does referral marketing work? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Here are a few reasons why referral marketing<\/a> is so effective in attracting new customers.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s Effective <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Nowadays, customers are trusting traditional marketing less and less. A recent study by Hubspot<\/a> found that trust for marketers was at a stunning 0%.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe modern consumer goes out of their way to avoid any sort of marketing. More and more people are running Adblocker, throwing out direct mail, and watching Netflix to avoid television ads.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile customers might not trust marketing departments, there is something they do trust: recommendations from people they know. After all, how many times have you checked out a restaurant or a barber after hearing a rave review from a friend?
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe reason why referrals work is simple: It\u2019s all about trust. While customers don\u2019t trust marketing departments, they do trust their friends and family members. Referrals help you to leverage this trust to your advantage.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s Cheap <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Unlike other forms of marketing, referral marketing doesn\u2019t require much expenditure on your part. After all, it doesn\u2019t cost money for a friend to tell a friend about a great business.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile many businesses do incentivize referral marketing with an offer or discount, referrals tend to pay for themselves. A customer who comes in based on the recommendation of a friend or family member is much more likely to stick around. According to the Harvard Business Review<\/a>, you can expect 16% more profits from customers who have been referred by a friend or a family member.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s Easy <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re a business owner, you might be wondering whether you have the time to do referral marketing with all the other important business matters that you have to attend to. Referral marketing strategies can be implemented by businesses of all shapes and sizes.\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\nChances are that you have tons of happy customers who would love to promote your business. The difficult part is being able to track each one of your customer referrals<\/a>. Of course, even that can be simplified with referral marketing software.\u00a0
<\/p>\n\n\n\n ![\"referral](\"https:\/\/birdeye.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Infographic_Referral-Marketing-161x1024.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\nBuilding a referral marketing program <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
If you want to get started with a referral marketing program, here are a few tips that can help.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nProvide a killer customer experience <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Before anything else, it\u2019s important that you deliver great customer experiences. At the end of the day, great incentives will not motivate customers if they don\u2019t feel great about your business.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nIn order to make sure that you\u2019re doing a great job delighting customers, consider sending surveys. It\u2019s an easy way to gauge your overall customer satisfaction levels and identify potential weaknesses in your customer experience<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Set goals and expectations <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Before you get started with your referral marketing program, it\u2019s important to set goals and expectations. Think about what you\u2019re expecting to get out of your referral marketing program. How many new customers do you think will be referred to your business?
<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s important to keep your expectations realistic. Most of the time, referral marketing doesn\u2019t lead to word-of-mouth spreading like wildfire. Remember that your customers are busy people and even happy ones may forget to refer your business. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Find out how you plan to incentivize referrals <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Think about how you can incentivize your customers to refer your business to friends and family. Maybe you can offer a discount for each referral that they send.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nIf you don\u2019t have the resources to incentivize customer referrals, you don\u2019t have to do it. While it does provide extra motivation for your customers, there are plenty of successful referral programs that don\u2019t use incentives.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nSet up a system for tracking referrals <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
In order to reward your customers for their referrals and determine the effectiveness of your overall strategy, there are a few things that you should be tracking.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n- \n
- How many new customers you\u2019re getting through referrals <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Who referred the new customers <\/li>\n\n\n\n
- Which customers do you need to give a discount to<\/li>\n\n\n\n
- How much money are you spending on your referral incentives<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
Keeping a detailed record of these different factors will help you understand how well your referral marketing program is working in bringing in new customers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thank and reward your customers <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Once your customers have referred your business, show them your appreciation. Send them a text message or an email showing your thanks. If you offered an incentive in return for the referral, be sure that they\u2019re being properly compensated.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nReviews and referral marketing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
When you\u2019re building your customer referral program, consider also implementing a plan to get your business more reviews. While you might not think of reviews as referrals in the same category, they work great in conjunction with one another.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nOnline reviews can make your referral marketing program more effective. It\u2019s easier for a customer to recommend your business to a friend if you already have thousands of great reviews online. They won\u2019t have to put in as much effort to convince their friend that you have great services when you have credibility in the form of reviews.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nReviews help bring in new customers for many of the same reasons that referral marketing does. While a potential customer may not know a reviewer personally, hundreds of reviews do show social proof. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Referral marketing for small business <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
While it might seem easy for big businesses to implement a referral marketing program, it might seem almost impossible for a small or mid-sized business. Believe or not, with the right tools referral marketing can work for any business. Here\u2019s an example for you.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nPennsylvania Center of Dental Excellence <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Pennsylvania Center of Dental Excellence is a 1-location dental practice based in Philadelphia. While a small business like this typically doesn\u2019t have the time nor the resources to run a referral program, the practice manages to get customer referrals through Birdeye\u2019s all-in-one platform.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt works like this: Three days after a patient visits the practice, a referral request is sent automatically with the following message.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nHope you had an experience worth talking about! Introduce us to your family, friends and colleagues using one of the options below.<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Pennsylvania Center of Dental Excellence uses Birdeye to send out these referral requests. The link attached allows patients to post on social or send a pre-filled message via text or Facebook Messenger which includes a link to the business\u2019s page.
<\/p>\n\n\n\nI had a great experience with Pennsylvania Center of Dental Excellence! Sharing their information with you here, please check them out by clicking the link below!<\/em>
<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow Birdeye can help you supercharge your marketing <\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Birdeye\u2019s platform can make customer referral marketing easy. The Birdeye platform allows you to send referral marketing requests to your customers via text and email. But that\u2019s not all. Birdeye\u2019s all-in-one experience marketing platform allows businesses to collect and manage reviews<\/a>, interact with customers, and collect quality feedback via customer surveys<\/a>.
<\/gwmw><\/p>\n\n\n\n ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/birdeye.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/Start-growing-your-business-with-referrals-with-this-handy-guide1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trust for traditional marketing channels is lower than ever. But that doesn\u2019t mean businesses should give up their marketing efforts entirely. It just means they need to be smart about using channels that work better. There\u2019s one channel that works like no other: customer referral marketing.\u00a0 Customer referral marketing leverages a simple insight: While customers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":28414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9871],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-referral-program"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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- Building a referral marketing program<\/a> <\/li>\n\n\n\n