In the era where small startups are able to raise millions of dollars each day, it's appetizing for founders to try out various newfangled growth hacks that the extreme experts are proclaiming. Various small businesses don’t have an ever-flowing flow of cash, hence, don’t have the luxurious equipment to do so. It is a good option to get stuck to the tried-and-tested methods of connecting with the customers, and referral marketing is as reliable as it sounds. As per the report of Nielsen, 92% of consumers around the globe say that they trust earned media, which includes recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.In simple words, businesses know that if you are able to get your existing customers to recommend your product or service, it’s become very easy to acquire their friends as leads. Many companies with Dropbox, have found out ways to gain the advantages of the customers. So let us answer the question of what about win/win and win?
What is Referral Marketing?
In simple language, referral marketing is widening the word about a service or a product with the help of the business’s existing customers rather than the traditional form of advertising techniques. It creates the same effect as the other marketing strategies but it is initially directed and implied by a business. Rewards are introduced to the customers for referring to other people. The strategies of referral marketing can be effective for companies ranging from small single-owner and entrepreneur companies to large corporates in nearly any of the industry.
Here is How Dropbox grew 3900% with the simple referral programs?
This is the third stage of the process, “ How the hell did they pull this”? It is not an official thing, here the naming can be done. As numbers are important, therefore Dropbox referral program is defined as one of the most famous boxes of referral marketing. Thus, let's have a quick look at the metric history success of dropbox:
September 2008- 100K registered users
December 2009- 4M registered users
September 2017- 10B evaluation + 1B revenue.
Here the question arises: what has happened in the year between 20018-2010? Dropbox was able to manage the doubling of its user base every 3 months, which resulted in its users delivering 2.8M invites till April 2010. On coming to the point, we were talking about the growth of 3900% in just 15 months. They have accomplished it with the help referral program. The team was able to gather a ton of feedback. They were constantly improving their product and with this, they put a battle in order for VC’s to pool the money in the form of trust to them.
The functioning of the dropbox’s referral program
The philosophy of the program was a very simple one. As it offers the storage space in the cloud, and thus they have taken the decision to give the rewards with more free space to people for not only the reference made but also for accepting the invitation. In simple words, it can be said as it is a 2-side referral program for promoting the product or service. It is known as a 2-side referral program as the rewards were both for referring to friends and family and for making the registration to the dropbox as well.
How Referral marketing can be applied to your startups to gain success?
While the above case study of Dropbox is useless if you are not able to apply anything to your business. Correct referral marketing will prove valuable and it will help you to improve the management to change. Following are some of the best keys takeaways for you to apply it to your business:
Create high excitement
Upon referring to friends, users will be able to earn 250 points on making the first purchase. With this, the referral will get 100 points and added a bonus discount to boot. The step is not limited to this, referring the customers will continue on its path to earning the points for any succeeding purchases made by their referrals.
Do the right analytics
There is one section in google analytics that focuses on referrals. It will make pop-ups to your sites and will refer the people to your site. You can easily make the difference in how many of them were just visitors and how many were turned into potential customers. Once you are able to find out the best-referring sites, then you can connect with them including various proposals to enhance your referrals. You can make the offer to distribute some of the profit in the initial sales driven by their sites.
Bring uniqueness as the customer will want to share
You have to bring a bit of creativity and should think in what ways can be unique from your competitors. Something is there that you can do so that your customers will enjoy purchasing from your store. One way you can try it, in your packaging the products for shipment. It is important to think outside the box in order to bring some “wow” effect on your customers, and it will be well worth it.
Make the referring process an easy one
The majority of e-commerce sites are putting “Refer” buttons on their webpages. Consumers have an opportunity to refer friends and family members to the company whenever they are buffering on the site and just looking or in a mindset to make a purchase.
Therefore to make it, even more, easier, once that button is clicked, you should have a pre-prepared post that they can go and share immediately.
Find influencers and use them
Identifying individuals in niches relates to having more popular blogs, more tweets from Twitter followers, or a good friend list on Facebook. If their slot is closely linked to you, chances will arise to your target customers within that influencer’s communities. If these individuals carry the sponsored postings, additionally you should ask if you can send a free product to them for trial and then make the review on their social media platforms. To have a trusted influencer carry a sponsored post and write a great product review opens your brand up to entirely different communities. also read how Influencer Marketing Improves eCommerce Business Growth.
Conclusion
These above-mentioned tactics are easy to implement, with very little cost. For a small proportion of time, you can increase your visitors exponentially and should find major new sources to make sales. Just talking about referrals is only one thing, and considered as one of the leading practices to build up new customers by resorting to the old ones. When you offer your customers a method for both increasing the value of the service which they are already using and gain the satisfaction of helping others. They will gladly refer people to your business in-crowd.
