Are you looking for proven tactics to penetrate the market effectively? What if you can attain 100% marketing penetration with loyalty and referral programs?
Sounds good, right? For a long time, we have heard that content is king, but the reality is that engagement is the queen, and it is her – the queen – that paves the way for your business growth.
In this article, we will take a look at how you can leverage the factors mentioned above – loyalty and referral – to chalk out a strategy that will help you ascend your business to the next level.
Whether you are a B2B or B2C enterprise, the principles remain the same. But before we look at the key points, here is a quick recap of the concepts involved in the mix.
Loyalty Marketing:
It is a strategy that motivates your customers to come back to your brand time and again to give you repeat business. This strategy primarily focuses on incentivizing your customers to encourage them to stay loyal to your brand.
Referral Marketing:
It is a systematic approach to promoting your brand to potential customers by leveraging word of mouth from your existing customers. Referrals are often spontaneous action, and businesses can influence the users with the right execution.
Now that we have had a quick recap, it is time to understand why you need loyalty and referral programs in your marketing efforts.
Reason 1: Cost of Acquiring a Customer
Think of all the milestones involves in the buyer’s journey and how you struggle to keep them engaged at every point. You have to remind them about your brand always and explain why they should opt for your product or service instead of the competitors.
Once they are through that process and reach your website, the real battle begins. It would help if you had an easy interface and enough offers to keep them interested in making a purchase.
As a determined marketer, you will be willing to go through this process, but now, you don’t have to. You can skip most of the steps. Once you have brought a customer on board, you can give them new offers and deals instead of starting from scratch.
Even from a CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) perspective, it makes better financial sense to focus on existing customers to gain their loyalty and trust.
You can go a step further and incentivize them to participate in referral programs. It is time to go beyond the conventional approach and encourage your customers to become your brand ambassadors.
Reason 2: Easier Selling
Engaging your existing customers is more effortless. They know about your expertise and have an apparent experience with your brand. You have a 70% more chance of selling a product to your existing customer than a 5-20% chance when selling to a new one.
In a nutshell, customer retention ensures long-term profitability and is the critical place to focus your time and resources on.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the secrets of loyalty and referral methodologies that nobody told you, until now, and determine the right way to deploy them in your business.
Using Loyalty and Referrals to Grow Your Brand
Loyalty is fragile these days, and a customer can jump ship to another brand for many reasons. Accessibility, experimentation, or better offers can be some top reasons.
But you do not have to execute loyalty and referral methodologies manually. NextBee offers a precise solution to both your concerns.
You can easily integrate the CX 360 program into your technology stack to kickstart your loyalty programs.
With this tool, you will be able to increase your customer’s lifetime value (CLV) with your brand by 12%, amplify the chances of upselling and cross-selling by 10% and improve social engagement by a whopping 50%.
When you start with a loyalty program, it is good to let referrals follow suit immediately. NextBee’s Catalyst stays true to its name and provides tailor-made solutions to help transform your customers into brand advocates.
Top Strategies to Leverage Loyalty and Referral Programs
Solicit Feedback from Customers:
It is always a good idea to understand ‘why’ your customers leave your brand. You can get this feedback by creating automated programs from your loyalty tool.
Let customers share their views across social media platforms. Their opinions will be helpful for your brand in many ways.
You will be able to find out any weaknesses in your product and use their inputs to improve the next one. When a customer witnesses their feedback making a difference, they tend to stick to a brand.
Measure their satisfaction using surveys and get a better insight into how they feel about your brand. An AI-based program like CX 360 can use the responses and inform you if a customer is likely to leave.
Just make sure that the surveys are short and easy to understand. Incentivize these surveys with small discounts on future purchases if required.
Launch Incentivized Reward Programs for Repeat Business:
Make your customers feel special whenever they buy from you to spread a positive word of mouth about your brand.
Use a referral marketing software like Catalyst to integrate with your database and use information like customer’s birthday, anniversary, and special occasions to access exclusive promos.
It helps create a special bond between your customers and your brand, reduces churn rate, and increases the chances of engaging them in the referral rewards program.
Spread the Love with Loyalty and Referrals:
When you have the points above in sync, it is time to put the pedal to the medal and focus your efforts on retaining your customers and engaging them into the referral program.
Give them incentives to bring more customers to your brand and bridge the gap between them and the brand to gain unmatched loyalty.
All you need to figure out is what mechanics your programs are going to follow. Will you give reward points, cash discounts, freebies, or something else.
Don’t worry about doing it manually as you can use AI-powered tools mentioned in this article to do that job for you.
To Wrap Up
Customer loyalty goes beyond typical surveys and can be achieved through social media as well. When you acknowledge people for their support, they add real value to your business.
By implementing the strategies in this post and integrating the tools into your technology stack, you will have more genuine interactions with your customers.
Put their concerns before profits, and they will add to your bottom line in ways you never thought possible.
Want to learn more about loyalty and referral tools and get in touch with our experts. Let’s kickstart your brand’s campaigns with a free consultation today.
Our experts will guide you through the implementation and execution of your B2B or B2C business process. We will also help set you on the right path to engaging more customers and generating more profits.
