Incentivizing Influencers & Customers; A boon or a mere investment?
- Posted on August 5, 2022 by Robert
- Reading time about 5 minutes
In a world where competition is inevitable, standing out becomes a necessity. For most of the brands around, the main aim would be to find better ways to foster customer engagement and maximize a brand’s potential to drive smarter revenues. Executing marketing campaigns is one way to promote the business on multiple platforms. But people tend to believe more in someone who can provide genuine feedback on the services or products they have purchased from a similar brand.
The world today is leading on reviews and genuine feedbacks and that’s exactly what most of the people prefer. Here’s where your brand would be needing industry influencers who can bring new customers onboarded and boost revenue as well. Starting with some referral loyalty programs for the existing customers or finding out better strategies for industry influencers can be an excellent step in encouraging existing customers to become brand advocates.
Perks of Referral Loyalty Programs
According to a statistic, a business on an average make $5.20 for every $1 spent on marketing themselves via influencers. On the contrary, referral leads have a 30 percent higher conversion rate than leads from other marketing channels. Word of mouth marketing, without a doubt, holds enormous potential which can never be compared to any other marketing tactic. Here’s why referral programs are a boon for any business-
· Create meaningful customer relationships
With the help of a loyalty program platform, you can encourage your buyers for participating in referrals where they can invite their family and friends and get rewarded in return. Here the existing customers who are completely satisfied with the services a brand has to offer will be sending their good feedback and educating other customers, further helping brands in creating meaningful customer relationships.
· Expand your Network
Including influencers in your network could be a great strategy to connect with customers and increase your brand popularity horizons. To make it happen, you can expand through highlighting your brand on social media and bring in new audience to connect. You can run social media campaigns and acquire customers more rapidly.
· Access to Authentic Content
No matter if you’re running an influencer program or have recently started with a referral program, you are liable to receive some authentic content that can be used for planning different marketing strategies for social media, email marketing, blogging etc. Creating a referral incentive program is commonly used in B2C marketing and brands can benefit extensively from the programs which provide customer information and help brand in building smarter marketing strategies well.
Leading Practices of Running a Referral Incentive Program
Not everyone apart from some loyal customers y your side would like to talk and promote your brand to the world around. There should be a reason for them to promote your brand and here’s what you need to know about the best practices to be followed for running a referral incentive program-
· Pre-Launch Features and Pre-Sale Access
A B2B referral program is all about launching new features, bringing out new features and so on. One can give customers the product features for free, you can even provide your influencers to free pre-launch services/ features or products and also pre-sales access for the ones who have been loyal customers throughout or have promised to be your marketing influencer.
· Exclusive Discounts on Products and Services
Providing discounts is one of the most common influencer incentives or influencer program incentives. Identify the influencers in the industry, and provide them with extra discounts, deals on the leading products and services. You can even gift your distinguished products to the loyal customers and the industry influencers for recommending you multiple times. Discounts work wonders, specially in referral programs and influencer incentive programs. Provide premium options for your customers and see them coming back to you with their friends and family coming up to make purchases from your brand.
· Give Away Freebies
Everyone loves anything which comes free! Motivate your customers to make purchases and provide them with freebies every time they shop from your brand. For instance, Dropbox increased its user base from 100,000 to 400,000 through its referral program by giving away 16GB of storage space all for free! Well, if that’s not marketing then what should be?
Referral Program Incentive Example
A leading giant Capgemini transformed its rewards and recognition program for stakeholders, employees and vendors! Through integrating with a referral program for rewarding and incentivizing their employees and external stakeholders including clients and vendors. As a result, they have reduced the rewarding timeline with gift cards, and a wide range of reward options and integrations with HRMS and CRM for swifter and smarter implementation of rewarding strategies.
Wrapping Up
Though organic marketing is never a bad idea to implement, it’s low investment and way higher ROI but having some influencers and loyal customers by your side is no harm at all! Drive massive sales that can partner up with you and the right influencers. Build a referral loyalty programs or channel incentive program that can incentivize customers and cater to your loyal customers or influencers more effectively.