Monday 27 January 2014

Referral Incentives that really work for any Business & Service

Every entrepreneur I have verbal to always refers to that because purchase is very important for him. One of the best sources for cause purchase for an entrepreneur is through ‘Referrals’. 92% of consumers believe in professional recommendations vs. only 40% believe in Ads in search results, 36% ‒ online video ads, 36% ‒ subsidized ads on social media sites and 33% ‒ on the internet advertising ads.

Learn more why you are missing out if you are not running a formal referral program for your business.
http://www.testifor.com/
In this blog, I want to focus on a key aspect of Referral Management System that many businesses get wrong – establishing up the right referral incentives. Customers really like referring their favorite brands and are excited when they are compensated for their really like. While a referral management system can result in fantastic ROI for a business, an imperfect incentive structure can really hurt and deter even your happiest clients from recommending you.

5 factors a business owner should consider while establishing up the right referral incentives for his business:
1. Your customer should not appear “easy”                  
2. Incentives should be arranged with your product or service  
3. Soft Rewards work! They really do!
4 Add a personal contact – Customers really like it..
5. Ensure you still earn profits – It is still business

Let’s talk about the advantages of referral marketing –

Trust - Most of the customers from referral marketing choose the product or company because their acquaintances have done so. They already have an inherent trust factor playing; hence there is no need to spend any additional money on advertising. This largely reduces the marketing budget.

Sales increaseBefore any sale, companies spend a lot in generating leads by cold calling. However with referral marketing, generating leads happens automatically. Most of the leads do not need much pushing before turning into customers. This has a direct effect on sales when opposed to cold calling which takes a lot of time and persuasion.

Retaining customer baseThis is a tricky one but if played right, referral marketing helps in maintaining a loyal base of customers. Once a customer is happy and satisfied, chances are that he will think of switching over to any company and will promote equally. However this can backfire if the services are not up to the mark. Then the promotion can snow ball into negative publicity for the company. Hence it is not only important to maintain service levels but also to meet customer’s expectations.

In today’s digital age, old marketing techniques do not hit the mark. It’s time to resort to new age marketing mantra and referral marketing is here to stay.

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