Are there any better ways to promote your business other than referral marketing? 

Not really. Let’s find out why.

Experts say – “Due to tremendous competition in the business world, Word-of-Mouth promotion is always crucial and on top priority. This is because it can boost the sales strategy”.

To support this fact, here are some of the statistics on a referral program that is taken from various surveys:

• Eighty-five percent of customers initiate the purchasing process based on referrals.
• Leads that come from referrals close 70 percent faster and have a 60 percent higher lifetime value.
• Eighty percent of satisfied customers are willing to refer your company to their peer group.

Looking at the reports, you can quickly figure out that building a successful Referral Marketing Strategy is paramount for your business development. And, if you still don’t have a referral program in place, it’s time to have one.

Now, an obvious question arises – How to create the best referral program for your business?

In this article, we’re going to discuss some secrets that will take you by creating a custom-made referral marketing platform for your business.

Things to do to build Referral Program Software

There are innumerable ways to put up a genuinely successful referral marketing strategy to boost referrals. However, to channelize your referral program in the right direction, it’s essential to systematically and organize the solution.

Are you aware of the PACE methodology?

PACE methodology is the brainchild of NextBee. It’s an easy-to-follow guide for shaping the success of your business under any circumstances.

Every product, service, and user-base is unique. That’s why you also need a solution that will correspond to your business’s uniqueness. 

To achieve that, what is needed is not some marketing gimmick that will work in the short term, but a method of approaching users to help you ride the ladder of success. 

Let’s explore the PACE Methodology in detail.

P – Personal

Nurturing a strong personal relationship through your program requires active collaboration with your users. It helps them establish emotional touchpoints and provides them with a sense of purpose, which will keep them feeling fulfilled.

Offering a personal relationship through your program is one of the best ways to provide a quality experience and earn support.

A – Adaptive

Designing a structured program that can adapt to your user’s progress leads to both stability and growth. Listen as your customers’ actions tell you what works.

Discover the rewards and incentives that inspire them. Focus your best efforts on bringing the program to your users. Your program’s functional operation and its design layout should continuously match your users’ demonstrated preferences.

C – Controlled

The difference between flexibility and chaos is smart control. Extensive user activity tracking allows you to maintain momentum and direct your users’ engagement in the most effective way possible. This approach ensures secure data with automated protection protocols to ensure that your program’s integrity is never in question.

E – Exciting

Keeping your program fresh, intuitive, and fun works to increase excitement. It helps your program users remain engaged, developing a strong focus on how customers interact with your program and why it requires constant dedication to clarity and consistency.

By following how your users enjoy using your program, you can develop increasingly addictive activities that your users will return to again and again.

“Every encounter with a friend, online or offline, can become the first step towards a new customer, a new fan, a new follower, a new advocate who wears your brand like a badge of honor on their profile and in every regular interaction they have.” – NextBee.

How to give Referral Programs a unique touch?

Many programs are designed around a set of features, often considered key to a program’s success. But that’s not enough.

Personalizing your customer’s experience is considered the ideal approach to making the referral program unique to your business. Keeping this criterion in mind, you can begin building your program using the right tools.

• Maybe your users enjoy sharing their experience after receiving an email from you, asking them to do just that
• Perhaps they would prefer the ease of posting a picture of a great product on social media directly from order confirmation
• Some customers might even love the thrill of sharing a cool find from inside their online shopping cart, just before the purchase – especially if it means a small reward when they do

If you do not currently possess actionable data on your customers’ preferences, go with your gut. Trust that you know your customer. You will likely discover that you are correct in your assumptions.

Also, plan on testing. 

Learning what gets your users excited leads to developing activities your users will find addictive. Listening closely to what their actions say is the best way to remain adaptive.

From there, you can begin to re-evaluate and build on your incentives to create a structure that directs your customers’ energy towards the outcome you seek – more and better referrals that lead to a measurable increase in sales.

You create this type of control through incentives. Once your customers are excited, the excitement itself will be the incentive that directs this energy toward a productive outcome.

An incentive does not necessarily have to translate into something with an exact monetary value. The right incentive, or series of incentives, involves three primary characteristics:

Thoughtfulness –

The incentive should express a deeper than casual knowledge, much like choosing a gift for a significant other.

Understanding –

A shared point-of-view demonstrates empathy beyond the mere knowledge of what your users’ value. An incentive can show an outlook on the world that you and your users share. Sometimes, the real reward is helping others.

Reflection –

Your users, clients, and employees must see themselves in the incentive. The rewards must invoke those values you actively wish to see expressed in this world.

Incentives are an investment. They induce future behavior that will be profitable. Keeping your incentives always attractive so that your referral program will remain exciting in the long run. 

Again, this does not mean providing always-greater rewards with an increasingly expensive price tag. An attractive incentive can be a badge on a profile, special access to VIP offers, public acknowledgment, encouragement, or something as simple as a one-phrase, hand-written, thank-you note sent to a single random customer every month.

An abundance of attention to detail is typically required when designing a new referral program. It needs to be technically integrated and aesthetically pleasing; it needs to offer initial messaging and includes incentives that grab casual users’ attention and long-term customers.

When designed well, a program will almost always create excitement and gain some of the needed attention on its own. A healthy plan and solid execution will accelerate results.

Key features of NextBee’s Referral Marketing Software

You are well aware of the scope of successful referral marketing software. Understanding the features and functionality will help you gauge the solution in a much better way.

A) Key Motivators for Program Participants

– Users easily send customer referral invitations through email widgets featuring no-fuss current contacts importing.

– NextBee’s smart dashboard creates simple referral sharing with nearly every social media portal.

– Printed Cards extend customer referral tracking offline, allowing for accessible introductions to occur anywhere and anytime.

– Dynamic program Leaderboards provide motivation and keep everyone reaching for more points.

– Customized vanity customer referral links help encourage email marketing and active sharing by personalizing the experience.

– Personal coupon codes encourage specific behaviors through user segmentation and targeted rewards.

B) Guaranteed Results through Smart Controls

Generate viral buzz, featuring internet meme images with embedded tracking links to always know your users’ sharing.

– Telephone sales tracking increases program optimization and tracks all sales and customer referral activity.

– Proactively recruit key social influencers and deploy specialized engagement strategies just for them.

– Promotional sweepstakes and contests maintain a high level of enthusiasm for the program.

– Follow up on every prospect. Build opt-in wish lists and reminder lists, and even create your lists from all referral program recipients.

– Develop your own rewards custom combinations of the popular referrer, referee rewards, and even promotion partner rewards.

C) Best of the Breed Technology Platform

– Secure SSO – make it easy for everyone by using the current customer account login for the referral program.

– Track each step and every part of any multi-step sales process to identify and reduce key friction points.

– Increase confidence with integrated fraud detection and proactive blocks of suspicious behavior patterns.

– Cross Channel entry points allow for complete integration of ‘my account,’ Facebook, and order confirmation pages, as well as specialized micro-sites.

– Grow your referral rewards program beyond your borders with easy internationalization roll-out and 24/7 support.

– Stay current with intelligent, responsive, and mobile-friendly pages and on-the-go referral features.

D) Commitment to Success of the Program

– Expert assistance in deciding incentive structures based on a knowledge base of extensive experience.

– Quality graphic design assistance to enhance your referral program’s message and increase its effectiveness.

– Creative copywriting services are included to support the growth of your referral program.

– Custom support portals to quickly assist any user who has a question and provide needed guidance.

– Regularly occurring, one-on-one focused meetings to analyze and evaluate program performance.

– Fulfillment support for nearly any reward – cash, gift cards, physical items, and much, much more.

Now, you have gotten a broad idea about creating a custom-made Referral Program Software. Still, there are a few things you need to fulfill. Here we go:

First and foremost, have a strong product or service. 

Let’s accept the fact – you’re never going to get referrals if your product/service is not good enough. Make sure to have a product/service that is of supreme quality. It will make the referral process more smooth and effective.

Seamless Experience

Who doesn’t like simplicity? A simple, intuitive, and easy to use solution always generates increased engagement. Thus every step of the referral submission process must be accessible and enjoyable for the referrer.

Process Automation

Automating the referral process for capturing leads is a great way to boost referrals. It helps in qualifying the leads and thereby making the Referral Software more powerful. NextBee certainly aligns the Referral Reward Program in line with your business workflow, thereby making the solution hassle-free. 

Appropriate Reward

Customers must find the referral process valuable. Why not make it two-way traffic where your business and the customers will be mutually benefited? For every referral made or for a bulk of referrals, incentivize the loyal customers. Also, thank them each time they recommend your product/services to other business houses.

Relationship

Maintain good relationships with your vendors as you are not the only stop for them. These vendors tend to move to many other B2B businesses, and some have a higher probability of becoming probable clients for you. The higher respect and likability the vendors have towards you, the higher possibility that they spread the word about your business.

Customer Gratification

Put into practice a customer referral program, gratifying your existing customers for getting more clients for you. It is a straightforward way to enhance brand advocacy and motivate customers to refer again and again. It would be best to make your existing customers aware of the reward they will get for every new client they bring in.

Take care of Employees

Customers are not only the people who spread the word. Deal with your employees well, and they can get you referrals as well. You can also incorporate a reward system for an employee referral program.

Since it’s a tech-savvy world, any referral marketing strategy cannot be successful without taking them Online and using email marketing to get hold of a wider audience. Everyone these days is bonded to several online channels or platforms. So, make sure to take full advantage of it. For example – If you do not have a social media presence, it’s high time to build it. Get your B2B business drawn in social media and continue the engagement regularly.

Conclusion

This list is never-ending. Still, we have covered some prime points to share strategies on doing your referral marketing program work. The significant thing to keep in mind is to bring top-notch products and services to the people. Brands can fetch you quick referrals to have a successful referral marketing process.