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The Simple Guide to Online Referral Marketing

November 1, 2021 by Jessy Troy Leave a Comment

These days, with so much competition online, it’s harder than ever to get your product’s name out there. Simply updating a social media feed or sending out a newsletter just isn’t enough anymore.

In response, marketers and SEO experts have been turning to another avenue of exposure: referral marketing. Referral marketing, which relies on customers to spread the word about your product, has a lot of appeal, but it may be unclear where you should start. Here are five tips for incorporating referral marketing into your online strategy.

Create an Effective Sales Funnel

This is the fundamental step that defines success of any campaign. Make sure your CTAs are planned out and no click is wasted. Use online form builders to put together lead generation forms and capture any sale!

Keep a close eye on your conversion funnel to make sure you are making the most of your traffic.

Create Viral Content

The most important thing to remember when marketing a product or service is being sure that the marketing content – whether it’s an eBook, a sales page, or a video – is worth sharing.

Too many forget that they shouldn’t be creating this content for themselves. It’s for the customer.

You should already know what your demographic likes and dislikes, but also consider what kinds of things they share. Take a look at what your demographic does on social media. Do you notice any trends that you could follow?

Make Content Shareable

Once you have a killer idea, you need to make it shareable among your demographic. Don’t just put your video up on YouTube and expect people to flock to it without any notice or incentive.

Post a notice on all the social media channels you operate. Send out a newsletter to let people know you’ve got something worth sharing. Mention it to customers as you communicate with them. If you’re making a big push, you could even contact media outlets with a press release to get even more exposure.

Hold Contests to Incentivize Sharing

Although people may know about your content, they may not be willing to share it, let alone view it. In this case, it may be best to offer an incentive for sharing.

Some successful strategies include holding a lottery of sorts by offering a prize for everyone who tweets about your content or your business.

Work with Brand Ambassadors

Sometimes you can’t just rely on yourself or your customers to get the word out. One trend in online marketing lately has been for marketers to work with brand ambassadors.

The term “brand ambassador” is a bit of a loose term, but it generally means someone who is willing to promote your product in return for money, free samples, or other benefits. Brand ambassadors can promote your product through their own social media or blog, giving you access to an audience you might not have had a chance at before.

Customer Referrals

Don’t forget the old-fashioned method of offering customers rewards for referring your product to new customers. This strategy dates back to before the internet, but it is still applicable today.

In fact, the rideshare app company Uber recently used it to great success, offering customers free rides if they referred the app to their friends. It was a win-win. The referral program gave users free use of the product, and company gained tons of new customers.

It’s hard not to see why referral marketing is so tempting. For one, it’s another avenue for advertising your brand.

And also, the weight of the work of getting your brand out there shifts from you to your customers, who are essentially doing the advertising for you. Sounds appealing, doesn’t it?

Filed Under: Blogging Tips

5 Keys for Positioning Your Successful Blog

November 4, 2008 by SOBCon Authors 1 Comment

Choose your position carefully
Choose your position carefully

Last week we talked about how you can drive a successful business through your blog and without being a salesperson. Today we will go over some of the steps that you can take to position yourself as an expert and your blog as a valuable resource.

Remember, while the goal is to increase the presence and reach of your blog in order to grow your business, it is not all about you. It is about getting positioned properly to showcase your customers and how their problems were addressed successfully.

Creating Value as an Authority

  1. Use your blog as a platform to communicate value. What benefit do your readers get from coming to or subscribing to your blog? Is that benefit immediately obvious? Is there a suggested path that readers can take to find the information that they are looking for? Also write about your customers and vendors, featuring them as the hero of the story. They will spread that story around for you.
  2. Use offline resources as well as online. Newspapers, while losing circulation (and, increasingly, any objectivity or relevance) still have some readers, and may be your only method of introduction to the less-than-savvy consumers that are not frequent blog-readers.
  3. Offer your services as a speaker. Your local Chamber of Commerce is an ideal resource for networking and exposing yourself to the business community. The Chamber is always looking for speakers and presenters at a variety of events. Your presentation should focus on an aspect of the business market that showcases your knowledge and expertise, but not your business specifically. For example, if you are a motivational speaker or job coach, you could give a presentation on employee morale and how its ups-and-downs affect productivity and the bottom line.
  4. Become active in your trade association. There is an association for nearly every industry and professional service. Get involved. Go to the meetings, volunteer to lead a group or head up a project. Get to know the movers and the shakers, and learn from them. Soon your knowledge and credibility will be at a point where you can offer to teach courses or give a presentation at a regional or national conference.
  5. Cultivate a different presence. I am not advocating crazy or risque attire, rather something that sets you apart from the rest of the pack. Everyone has a business card, you can hand out CD-ROMs, or flash drives, or something else particular to your industry. Computer-related items are particularly useful for adding value to your marketing, as they can include links to your blog, your portfolio, and other examples of your online presence.

I happen to know that the SOBCon crowd is particularly innovative – and I invite you to share your own positioning tactics. What would you add to this list?

Filed Under: Blogging Tips Tagged With: Authority, bc, positioning, value

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