Referral programs work once you’ve created a business worth being referred. Let’s imagine that you’ve made an incredible product or service, gotten it out into the world, and generated some success and buzz with it. Imagine further that you have generated a number of super fans and power users who you’ve recruited to become your referral partners ready to rep your business to the world.

In this dreamy scenario, wouldn’t it be nice if once you created your army of referral partners, they’d be at the ready, anxiously waiting to promote your product each day and help you grow? Of course it would. And while this is not an impossible dream, it is not one realized without a lot of strategic planning, access to the right tools and, most importantly, powerful incentive for your partners.

After all, your referral partners probably came to you first because they love your product or service, but they probably signed up for your referral program because of what was in it for them. Any successful referral program is kept alive by incentives that motivate referral partners to work hard. Here are some ideas for how to set up your partner program with incentives that work so that your partners can do their best and make it a win-win.

Step One: Make it easy and rewarding for them to get started:

If you give someone pieces to a puzzle without a picture of what it’s supposed to look like, they’re more likely to give up halfway through. It’s not impossible to complete, but without that necessary tool right in front of them, it might start to look a little sloppy and they’ll have less motivation to persist.

The same idea can be applied to referral marketing. One of the most critical aspects of your referral program is that you make it easy for your partners to make referrals effectively and use the right tools. To facilitate this for them, ideally you will create a suite of marketing assets from which they can choose to plug and play when they are ready to start actively referring.

Here are three ways to make it easy for your partners to refer you using well branded and effective assets that work for your business.

1. Put together promo tools and training

Provide your partners with an official contract detailing appropriate and inappropriate methods for promotion. Once they’ve signed the contract, equip them to succeed with promotional tools such as ebooks, blog posts, banner ads and free samples. To give your partners even more guidance, try hosting a webinar or creating a training video on how to effectively promote your product or service

2. Set up milestone bonuses

Milestone bonuses are the backbone of any partner marketing program, as they give your referrers something to strive for. Set up a “first sale bonus” to motivate them to start promoting as soon as possible. From there, build a milestone calendar with rewards that scale with more sales or at set revenue thresholds. The key to successful milestone bonuses is to ensure the reward fits the work it takes to achieve the associated number of sales. Very few people are willing to work overtime to get you 1,000 referrals if the reward is a pat on the back. As a rule of thumb, if you wouldn’t work for the reward you’re offering, your affiliates most likely won’t either.

3. Present the opportunity to guest blog

Once you’ve built and fostered relationships with your partners, new mutually beneficial opportunities will open up, such as publishing a guest article on your blog. This benefits them because it gets their name out, and it benefits you because it adds valuable content to your bank of articles. It’s a win-win. Plus, they’ll likely do a great job because they know your product, and they want you to succeed.

Step Two: Keep your referral partners actively engaged for the long run

Your partners originally joined your program because they loved your business’s products or services enough to tell their friends about it. But they stay committed because your program makes them feel like they’re part of something bigger. By personalizing every interaction, you will build trusting relationships with your partners that will get them excited to refer you to their friends and family.

Follow these four tips to keep your partners in it for the long haul:

1. Make your partners feel valuable

Make your referral partners feel respected and appreciated by giving them exclusive access to events, webinars and offers. Send out newsletters with special announcements to your partners before you inform the general public. When you treat your partners like VIPs and insiders, it makes them feel like they are contributing to the bigger picture of your business (which they are).

2. Simplicity is key

Make it easy and effortless for them to promote your business by having an easy-to-use, organized partner program ready to go. Give them resources that are well-made, well-designed and put your brand’s best face forward. This makes it easy for them to be on-brand in their efforts and helps amplify your brand recognition.

3. Stay connected

Provide regular communication and status notifications. Give them fresh content on the target buyer and tips on how to make referrals. Build your referral partners into a larger community. Whether you use a Facebook Group, special promotions, or informative webinars and coaching programs to engage your partners, make sure that you are actively interacting with, checking in on, and encouraging your partners.

4. Highlight your partners’ success

Showcase success stories of referral partners. This can be as simple as giving kudos to top performers, but the real value is in telling their story. For example, how did a partner get 10 successful referrals in one month? What is the advice of your top referring partners? What is the key to their success? Take a few hours each month to interview a partner or two and highlight their story. This will help to motivate and drive activity from your referral partners.

Step Three: Try out gamification techniques

Gamification is the use of game methods and techniques in a given process (in this case, referral marketing), and it can make referral programs more fun for your partners.

These techniques can help motivate and engage users and make their efforts feel less like work. The motivators are usually a type of reward such as prizes, points or badges. An example of gamification in a company that everyone knows is Starbucks’ Rewards Program: Customers earn stars for their purchases, and then trade those stars for rewards. Starbucks also offers double reward days, which creates a sense of urgency, creating a buzz and resulting in increased sales.

Here are a few examples of gamification that you could add to your partner program:

1. Point systems

Offer points for every referral made. After a certain amount of points, let customers trade the points for gifts/products/whatever makes sense for your business. For example, if partners refer a friend, they’d receive a certain number of points. If that referral then makes a purchase, that partner will get significantly more points. By referring, partners can quickly build credit in their account.

2. Create a leaderboard

This board would display where each of your referral partners stands in terms of referrals and sales. The visual display of each partner’s ranking and progress creates excitement and stirs our natural sense of competition. Winners at the top of the leaderboard in a given time period are rewarded with a highly sought-after prize of some kind.

3. Create contests

Similar to the leaderboard, you can create a challenge for customers to get referrals within a certain time frame. The partner with the most referrals by that date or within that time frame wins the prize.

• Sporting event tickets
• A prepaid weekend getaway
• Two plane tickets
• Free access to your product or service for one year
• A new laptop or cell phone
• Any other higher value product relevant to your industry

The most important aspect of successful referral partner programs is to make it easy for partners to refer and then to keep them engaged with regular communication. Remember that, and you will succeed in your referral marketing journey.

The post Remarkable Referral Programs Start With Stellar Incentivization appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

What this means is that the strategic use of referral marketing can allow business owners to tap the power of consumer recommendations to achieve results through this powerful marketing channel.

Referral Marketing: Why Social Currency Wins Every Time

Referral marketing is a marketing technique by which word is spread about a product or service through a business’s existing customers, rather than by traditional advertising. It usually involves paying commissions or offering some other form of value to your referral partners in exchange for generating sales for your business.

The logic behind referral marketing is straightforward: Who better to share your product and vision with the world than your customers, fans and power users? With these programs, you’re extending your reach well beyond your own circle of influence to obtain quality leads from trusted sources.

The greatest value you receive from your customers comes not from their initial purchase or even their upsell purchase but rather from the new customers they refer to you. If you’ve succeeded in delivering a remarkable product and experience to your customers in each of the other phases in the lifecycle, referrals should become an easy ask.

The referral marketing channels most widely used by referrers today are:

• Email: A personalized email sent by the referral partner with a CTA to fill out their information on a prospect lead form
• Lead Form: A form filled out by the referral partner with the pertinent contact information for the referral
• Print Card: A printable card that has the referral partner’s unique URL and instructions on how to take action (These can be useful for in-person events or snail mail campaigns.)
• Shareable URL: A unique URL that your referral partners can copy and paste and share it with their network
• Social Media: A branded post that referral partners can share via LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook or any other social platform you use
• Verbal: A verbal referral from a referral partner, which is collected by a sales team member who inputs it into your CRM

Why has referral marketing become so effective for the modern consumer?

Reviews, testimonials and other forms of social proof have become increasingly important for customers in making buying decisions. Referrals have a measure of legitimacy and authenticity that traditional modern marketing techniques simply can’t touch. Referrals come from real people who have had real experience with the product or service and truly believe in it enough to recommend it to others.

Referral marketing makes people more likely to consider purchasing from your brand and builds an instant connection and sense of trust between you and your new customers.

A recent Nielsen survey on trust and advertising returned some pretty telling numbers when asking what forms of advertising respondents trusted. Referral marketing scored the highest across every single demographic, out-doing editorial content, all forms of ads, and brand sponsorship. According to that study, referral marketing isn’t just the most trusted, it’s becoming a must-have for both B2C and B2B to have that “seal of approval” from others in order to survive in the market. Here are some of the stats from the Nielsen survey that underscore the significance of this marketing channel:

• When referred by a friend, people are 4x more likely to make a purchase.
• Referred customers’ lifetime investment is 16% higher than non-referred customers.
• Customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate, and 81% of consumers are more likely to engage with brands that have reward programs.
• Referred customers have an 18% lower churn than customers acquired by other means.
• You can expect at least 16% more in profits from referred customers.

It makes sense, doesn’t it?  In a world where consumers are more and more bombarded by ads, brand placement and branded content, word of mouth is a way for consumers to break through that noise.

Which do you trust more: an autoplay video on your Twitter feed or your best friend tweeting that they love and recommend a product? As consumers, we have become wary of and fatigued by ads, so referral marketing continues to shine ever brighter.

Millennial Magic

At around 80 million strong, Millennials are now the largest generation in American history, and they hold over $200 billion in combined spending power. And yet, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the traditional playbook doesn’t work for this new generation.

Millennials simply don’t trust traditional advertising. They don’t want inauthentic, sales-y messaging to interrupt their day and tell them why they need to buy X product. They want brand messaging that makes a human connection with them, tells a unique story, or relates to their interests. They seek authentic, personal connections with brands and rely on word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, which displays their preference for personal endorsements over conventional advertising.

This trend speaks to the importance that millennials place on social proof. In the Nielsen survey, 59% of them said they’re swayed by friends’ opinions and 28% say they won’t even try a product their friends don’t approve of. Word of mouth endorsement is important to every cohort, but the degree to which it dictates millennials’ tastes is unprecedented.

Millennials are willing to advocate but not for just any company. They demand a different kind of engagement than other generations. Not only do they need to believe your product is great, but they need to feel a genuine connection with your company. If your brand and your referral program resonate with millennials on a personal level, you have a huge opportunity.

Moral of the story

Regardless of the age group you are trying to reach, referral marketing is increasingly becoming one of the highest converting channels today. The belief in and reliance on social proof, as well as the desire to connect with more authenticity to a brand, are the governing factors that make referral marketing so effective. If you want to build referrals into your marketing strategy, start by giving your customers a reason to refer, and show them your best face so that they will be genuinely happy to help you spread the word.

The post Why Referral Marketing Is King appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

Customer referral marketing (also known as word-of-mouth marketing) is exactly what it sounds like — a strategy that encourages your customers to refer their friends and family to your business. While your customers might already refer their network to your business, there are still some seriously good reasons to implement a formal strategy.

People referred to your business convert into customers faster, spend more, and are more loyal than people who aren’t referred. According to data from the Wharton School of Business, companies with formalized referral programs experience 86% more revenue growth compared to those without. Taking a proactive approach by implementing a referral marketing plan will make the news of your product or service spread like a ball rolling downhill. Reward your customers for sending out positive vibes and watch as gravity does its work.

If you don’t ask your customers to refer, they often won’t, even if they’re happy with your product or service. While 83% of satisfied customers are willing to refer others, according to research from Texas Tech, only 29% actually do. Consider the losses to your ROI from that canyon-sized referral gap. If only someone, namely you, had asked them!

Referral Incentives and Reward Structures

It’s deceptively simple in concept — Jonah likes your product and tells his friend Megan about it; she trusts him and buys the product — but it’s more complex than that. For instance, does it matter if Jonah gets cash for referring Megan or a discount on his next purchase? A Nielsen Harris Poll found that 77% of Americans prefer to be rewarded for referrals with money, so Jonah probably prefers the cash.

Can the same be said for how Megan would feel if she knew Jonah got cash for referring her? If Jonah’s benefitting from a single incentive referral program, where the referring party is the only person receiving the incentive, then probably not. Does it change things if Megan gets something, too?

It can, which is why it’s important to consider using both a referral reward, the reward you give to your customer for successfully referring folks to your business, and a referral offer, the incentive you give to referred people. In this dual incentive program, both the referrer and the referral are rewarded. When they know their friend is also getting a benefit, people are more likely to refer their friends to your product and services, so it’s a win-win-win outcome. Jonah gets cash; Megan gets a discount on your product, and you’ve just converted a new customer through your referral strategy savvy.

Choosing the Right Referral Incentives for Your Business

So how do you go about choosing the right referral strategy for your business? Referral incentives come in two types: monetary such as credit, gift cards or cash and non-monetary such as points, discounts, swag, extra product or even stock. Not surprisingly, different industries and business models benefit from different sorts of referral programs. It all comes down to your business’s product or service. Here’s a general breakdown of referral incentives and which product or service they go best with:

Product or Service Type	Referral Incentive
Product or service that is frequently bought	Nonmonetary such as discounts or credit toward their next purchase
Membership or subscription based product	Free month of subscription
Product that is rarely bought or only bought once	Monetary such as cash or gift cards to their favorite stores

So, what makes these the right approach? It’s all about customizing the referral incentive to fit your customer base. If you, like Uber, have regular customers, you’ll want to offer them discounts to use toward another purchase. As a bonus, they’re likely to make a bigger purchase to make use of the discount. Uber decided to give referral reward credits to customers and their friends who signed up, and that was a game changer for them.

When offering discounts, remember the rule of 100. If your product costs more than $100, a flat discount is usually more enticing ($1,000 off a $20,000 car looks bigger than 5% off). If your product costs less than $100, a percentage discount is usually better — $5 off a $20 bottle of wine is better phrased as 25% off.

What if your business is subscription-based like Skillshare, an online platform that gives its subscribers access to educational videos? If you’re setting up a referral program for subscriptions, it makes sense to offer a free month of subscription to give your prospects a chance to try out your fabulous service before they buy. Skillshare offers referrals two free months and, for every referral who subscribes, the referrer gets a month free. This helps them retain their customers while, at the same time, deepening their brand loyalty.

However, these rules of thumb aren’t meant to be prescriptive. Rather, they’re a road map to the quickest route when creating your referral campaign. There are many companies that didn’t fit their referral programs into this method and have done extraordinarily well. For example, Dropbox, whose customers usually only buy their product once, set up a referral marketing program that gave more product (storage space) to both referrer and referral. Everyone, but particularly millennials and zillenials, like the idea of hooking their friends up with a good deal. Not surprisingly, through this strategy, Dropbox’s membership sign ups skyrocketed, increasing by about 60%.

Reward structures have multiple levers to adjust. When adjusting these levers, here are some questions to ask yourself:

Which platform should you market your referral program on — social media, your business website, email (email signatures and customer support emails are great opportunities to promote it) or multiple platforms? 

Take note where your customers find your product and promote your campaign there. If you’ve been on Instagram recently, you’ll have noticed that referral contests, programs where people refer their network to your project, are everywhere. They take the form of tagging a friend in the comments usually for a chance to win a prize. (Who doesn’t need another branded t-shirt/bag/hat?) The more people they tag, the more likely they’ll win, and their friends can (and do) tag their friends, too. Hydroflask significantly increased their number of Instagram followers by running a contest where, in order to enter, folks had to, “follow @hydroflask & tag two friends in the comments.” Brilliance at work.

Which event will trigger the reward?

Making the reward accessible could be the difference between a successful campaign and a fruitless one. Triggering the reward when the referral clicks the link or when they make the purchase is often the right strategy, but there are cases when rewarding the referrer when sending a message makes sense too.

Will the referrer get the reward even if the referral doesn’t buy?

Consider how much money it costs to run the campaign. If you have the budget to give the referrer the reward, even if the referral doesn’t buy, it will incentivize them to keep spreading the word.

Will the reward be tiered?

Should your referrers get one reward amount for the first person they refer but a different amount for the next five? To incentivize customers to share, a company could offer $75 off for their first referral and $20 off for all subsequent referrals.

Should the reward be recurring or one time?

Think about the length of time your referral reward program will run for. Tesla and many other campaigns are successful because they know when it stops making financial sense to offer the referral reward. One option is to tier the reward so that your customer has to work harder to make the same amount. Using this method, you could filter out all but your most profitable brand ambassadors.

Measuring Your Success

There’s no point in having a customer referral program without a way to know if it’s been successful. To find out, measure the shares, clicks and conversions so you know how well your referral program is doing and what to tweak. You can do this a few ways:

• Measure referrals against other customer acquisition channels.
• Track the sharing rate (how many referral links get shared).
• Track the conversions to new customers (or referral conversion rate).
• Note the ratio of referrals per referer — you may want to reach out to those brand ambassador superstars with extra perks.

All of this takes a lot of work, which is why automation is often used to manage referral programs. With automation, you can be sure all your contacts get promos of the campaign sent directly to their inbox. Once they click, follow-up emails and rewards will trigger without you having to lift a finger. According to data gathered by Web Profits, “Only 20% of small business owners are happy with their current referral program.” Consider where you can go to get support to streamline the process so you’re spending your time where you should be.

Key Takeaways

The leading source for business growth isn’t a secret. It’s as old as enterprise itself — referrals from friends and family. It works because we trust the opinions of people we know more than we trust traditional advertising. A National Harris Poll survey of 2,000 consumers found that “82% of Americans say they seek recommendations from friends and family when considering a purchase, while 67% say they’re at least a little more likely to purchase a product after a friend or family member shared it via social media or email.”

But before you jump into the fast lane, remember to lay the groundwork for your customer referral campaign, in the form of clear rules and instructions so you don’t hit any speed bumps. You probably have a bunch of happy customers who are revving to be your brand ambassadors and refer you to their networks. Don’t let them fall into the abyss of the referral gap! Make it easy to progress from word-of-mouth referral to reward.

Create a tailored customer referral program that streamlines the process from curious friend to customer. Your customers get rewarded for their loyalty; their friends get the good things you sell, and your pipeline is filled with quality leads.

The post How Much More Money Could You Earn With a Referral Program? appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

Strategic partnerships happen all the time between well-known companies. Spotify created a playlist for Uber drivers — taking the burden off the driver to find good music to play while driving people around. This may prompt the Uber driver to upgrade with Spotify and become a premium user instead of going with a competitor, such as Pandora.

This same strategy can work for smaller companies as well. For example, a workout studio called Bar Method in San Francisco partnered with water bottle company Hidrate Spark to do giveaways and pop-up workouts. This is a perfect example of smaller like-minded businesses with the same target customers working together to grow their brands.

Implementing Strategic Partnerships

Let’s say your business is a small wedding dress boutique. You could partner with a wedding photographer, event rental company, or wedding planner to extend your reach to even more brides-to-be. By doing this, you would gain access to your partner’s email marketing list and customer base, enabling you to set up a cross-promotion that will benefit both of you.

Of course, you wouldn’t choose a partner without researching. Putting the time and resources into finding a prospective partner is crucial to a successful alliance. Here, we’ve laid out six steps to set a strong foundation for long-term strategic partnerships.

1. Create a Plan

Creating a strategic partnership takes time and planning before you even start reaching out. During this planning process, it’s important for you to identify:

• Your brand values. You want to find businesses that align with the values you’ve set for your organization. Having similar values will make it easier to get on the same page and ensure you build a mutually beneficial partnership.
• Your target customer. You’ll also want to look for organizations that target the same customer base as you. Start by figuring out exactly what your buyer personas tell you about your demographic. (If you haven’t developed buyer personas yet, check out this guide.)
• Your purposes for pursuing a partnership. Decide if your aim is to target a larger customer base, gain more resources, or build your brand’s reputation. Once you confirm your purpose, you’ll be better able to figure out what you need in a partner.
• Your strengths and weaknesses. Honestly determine the strong and weak points of your business and take inventory of what you bring to the table. What can you offer to other businesses? You don’t need two organizations that are strong in the same areas; a mutually beneficial partnership means organizations complement one another through a symbiotic relationship.

2. Look For Like-Minded Partners

When done correctly, a strategic partnership can mean you’re reaching hundreds or even thousands of new customers. With this in mind, it’s beneficial to take the time to figure out if aligning with a business or entrepreneur is worth it. Find out if the potential partner:

• Offers a product or service complementary to yours. If you own a wedding dress boutique, you wouldn’t want to partner with another boutique. Instead, you’d want to find an organization that targets the same customer base but offers a complementary product, such as a wedding photographer or event rental company.
• Caters to the same target audience. You’ve already figured out your target customer using buyer personas, so make sure your potential partner is targeting the same group.
• Shares your brand values. If your companies were people, would they get along? For instance, if you’re a warm, no-pressure-sales organization, you might not want to pair with a more sales-driven organization.

3. Clearly Define the Value

Before making your pitch, take the time to get crystal clear about the value of the partnership. You only want to invest hours into creating assets that will benefit your business in return, so defining the level of impact each partner can have on your business upfront is important. This way, you can include the specific assets you plan to create for promoting the partnership in your pitch.

To assess the value of the partnership, find out your potential partner’s audience and check it against yours. Do your assets align and feel equal? Make a list of how much time you will invest, the size of your email list, social following and the value of your marketing collateral. If you have comparable email lists, you might propose a cross-promotional webinar. If not, a guest blog or some social media feature posts are a great place to start.

4. Pitch Your Idea

After you’ve carefully chosen your prospective like-minded businesses, come up with a list of benefits for both your organization and your potential partners’ organizations that you can pitch. Here are a few sample benefits you can highlight:

• Opens the door to cross-sell. A strategic partnership between a bridal shop and photography company opens the opportunity to cross-sell to each other’s customers.
• Simplifies the customer’s experience. Making related products available to the bride in one place makes wedding planning much easier and can lead to an increase in sales for both companies.
• Expands your reach. Partnering means getting access to another company’s entire email list. The hard work of generating leads would be done for you.

When you pitch your idea, make sure to explain how this alliance will be a win-win by highlighting exactly what they will get out of it. Don’t be discouraged if the first few potential partners say no; taking on a partnership can be a big commitment, and businesses don’t always have the time or resources to take on new responsibilities. Ask for feedback, edit your presentation accordingly, and keep trying.

5. Get on the Same Page

Now that you have found a partner and made your pitch, it’s time to get on the same page. Many partnerships fail because a deal is signed without first discussing a clear purpose and strategy for the partnership. It’s crucial all parties involved know what to expect from the get-go. Before you seal the deal, set up a time to go over the following:

• The scope of the partnership
• What assets will be contributed by each organization
• The lifespan of the partnership
• The legal structure of the partnership
• The obstacles (why the partnership might be terminated)
• How issues will be identified/resolved

6. Measure and Share Your Results

Before getting started, come up with metrics and ways each of you can track the results of your efforts. Success metrics based on your goals will enable you to take the temperature of the partnership in an objective way. Determine not only what constitutes a winning partnership, but a timeframe for that win.

Meet with your partner quarterly to review the results and adjust accordingly. You don’t necessarily have to abandon a partnership that doesn’t seem to be working in the first quarter. If things aren’t going well, determine a new strategy, possibly a different promotion or allocate more resources to the partnership.

When carefully planned and carried out, strategic partnerships can provide creative ways to collaborate and grow with like-minded businesses. Get started on this six-step process, expand your reach, and find success in your upcoming partnerships.

_________

Are you in a strategic partnership or considering it? Let us know in the comments.

The post Partner With Like-Minded Businesses to Reach More Customers appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

Partnership marketing is increasing at a rapid rate, with 81% of brands leveraging this powerful marketing strategy. Follow these guidelines to help you gain the confidence to approach and plan your next partnership for a successful cross-promotional launch.

1.  POSITIONING

DO position yourself as you would with a potential investor

When you’re approaching a new potential partner, it’s important to position your brand as one that’s trustworthy and professional. Your partners are going to endorse you as an expert — someone with whom they can confidently do business. Approach this as if you’re selling your business to an investor  because, in a sense, you are. Here are some ideas to help build rapport:

• Allow partners or their team members to test your product so they know exactly what they are promoting to their lists.
• Transparency is always appreciated. Let your partners know you’ll send reports and metrics to them during the launch.
• Give your partners your direct line, and let them know you are available during the launch for last-minute issues or questions.

DON’T have an unprepared delivery

With any pitch, you want to have a polished delivery and stellar marketing plan to present to your partners. This starts with preparation and aligning their vision with yours. Approaching a potential partner when you have not done your homework will come off as unprofessional. You want to show that you’re an authority in your industry and have the wherewithal to back up what you’re pitching. Spend the time to fine-tune your delivery so it exudes confidence and they are excited to jump on board with you.

2. YOUR OFFER

DO provide concrete numbers and show your track record

When you reach out to a potential partner to garner their interest in working with you, it’s important to provide clear information about your plans and anticipated results. You’re asking the partner to put a lot at stake by pitching your product or service to their audience, so instill them with confidence in your offer by sharing concrete sales and engagement metrics from previous cross-promotional efforts. These metrics include conversion rate, CTR (click-thru rate), CPC (cost per click), customer lifetime value, and even commissions. It’s always a good idea to run a test audience or a control segment of your list through your offer funnel prior to pitching it to a partner. With hard evidence to back your product, your odds of striking a deal are exponentially higher.

DON’T offer partners a blank guarantee

Your partners put their credibility on the line by vouching for your product, so be sure you’ve tested your promotional funnel and product prior to asking for cross-promotional backing. Know what you bring to the table and proudly share your offer with your partner.

3. AN EMPTY ARMORY

DO equip your partners with more than enough marketing collateral

The more material you give your partners to promote your launch, the more likely your partner will be to promote you and, therefore, the higher your sales are likely to be. You want to make it as easy as possible for someone to promote you. This could include providing your logos, pre-written email templates, ready-to-go digital ads, and referral links that they can use to send people to your sales page.

DON’T show up empty-handed

Initiating a partnership and not providing even the bare necessities will most likely halt any future partnerships. It’s okay and welcome when you go above and beyond what is expected of you. Delivering a polished package of marketing materials in the hectic world of product launches will ensure your partners will want to continue doing business with you time and time again.

4. ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL COPY

DO tailor your content to your partner’s audience

Although you should provide partners with materials, be sure to discourage them from directly copying and pasting your emails. Encourage them to tailor the emails to their own voice and audience. Or, instead of providing emails to use, you can provide your partners with a framework and guidelines with bullet points regarding your offer so they can reference it to write something for their audience. Offering zero content does a disservice to your partners and ultimately you, but offering email copy that they simply copy and paste is bad for your reputation and email delivery rates.

DON’T use the exact same copy for each launch

Using generic copy for each product launch might seem like a time saver but, when content has been copied and pasted without customization and then mailed to an entire list, it presents a number of problems, such as:

• It is seen as untargeted and characteristic of spam by email inbox spam filters, causing a low email open rate and ultimately affecting your launch.
• A quick copy and paste can leave room for error with details such as dates and links.
• Opting to channel inauthenticity with cookie-cutter messaging may lose you rapport and the trust you’ve built with your audience.

5. A SPARSE WINDOW FOR PLANNING

DO give yourself an ample window to schedule and plan your launch

Successful affiliate marketer Jeff Walker lives by the mantra, “Dig your well before you’re thirsty.” His launch calendar books 90 days in advance. Allow time to prepare and test your offer before you present your marketing package with all of the details.

Most partners and marketers limit how frequently they email their list with cross-promotional offers. They do this for a handful of reasons, some of which include ensuring they promote only high-quality products or not wanting to come off as too salesy. If you want to get on your potential partner’s calendar, make sure to reach out with enough time in advance.

DON’T procrastinate and wait until the last minute

Most businesses you partner with aren’t going to immediately promote your business or product. It’s a calculated process, and they need time to plan it into their promotional calendar. Keeping a pulse on both your schedule and a partner’s schedule far in advance can seem daunting; however, planning three to six months out does pay off.  Knowing up front that each phase of this launch requires your time and energy allows you to give yourself plenty of time for research, preparation, the pitch and creating marketing materials.

The post Land Your Next Cross-promotional Partnership With These Tips appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

The greatest value you receive from your customers comes not from their initial purchase or even their upsell purchase, but rather from the new customers they refer to you. If you’ve succeeded in delivering a remarkable product and experience to your customers in each other phase of the lifecycle, referrals should become an easy ask — and achieving them sets in motion a return to the first phase of the customer lifecycle as new customers begin in the Attract (or, in some cases, the Convert) stage.

“Referrals don’t invent demand; they amplify it,” wrote Visakan Veerasamy of the ReferralCandy blog.

Not only do referrals bring you more customers, but they bring you the right types of customers. Customers referred by other customers have a 37% higher retention rate, according to Deloitte and, according to McKinsey, a lifetime value 16% higher than non-referred customers. This follows the simple psychological concept that people who are within your wheelhouse are likely friends with others who are too; people associate with others who are like them.

“If you tried (or want to try) Facebook ads, you know that if you don’t get your target audience right, your entire ads budget will go to a waste … But with referral marketing, all the targeting is magically and perfectly done for you,” wrote small business growth strategist Olivia Angelescu on the Duct Tape Marketing blog.

People trust their friends far more than anyone or anything else, which is why 92% of people trust word-of-mouth recommendations more than any other form of advertising, and 77% of people find the advice of family and friends the most persuasive (among 21 forms of advertising studied) when looking to buy new products, according to Nielsen.

“When your ideal customer prospects see others like them using and succeeding with your product, there’s a level of validation that trumps just about everything else you say or promise,” said customer success expert Lincoln Murphy on his blog, Sixteen Ventures.

But First, Be Remarkable

How do you get in on this extremely low-cost yet highly lucrative part of the customer lifecycle? It starts with making sure you’ve nailed down every other stage to an exceptional degree. As bestselling author and marketing icon Seth Godin says on his blog, “The only thing that will make you remarkable is being worth remarking about.”

Even that is often not enough. Referrals don’t often come automatically; in fact, according to a Texas Tech study, 83% of people say they’re willing to refer a brand, but only 29% actually do. This is likely either because people aren’t aware of the referral program or because they weren’t motivated enough to do it amid their busy lives and many other things vying for their attention.

Businesses need to harvest referrals by asking, reminding, making it simple, and giving customers a reason to do it. A referral program is a deliberate, systematic way of encouraging your customers to spread the word about your product or service, and they typically involve a reward for both the referrer and the referee.

Understanding the psychology of referrals

Understanding how to gain referrals starts with understanding why people refer.

The first step, as Godin explains, is to realize your customers don’t care about your business – they care about themselves. “Anyone who tweets about a brand or favorites a brand is doing it because it is a symbol of who they are – it is a token, it is a badge. It’s about them, it’s not about the brand,” he said in an Inc. magazine interview.

For someone to attach their identity to a brand requires a brand that successfully communicates and delivers on its purpose beyond its products and services. It must deeply connect with someone’s core values and traits, which begins with both showing and telling your value proposition throughout the customer lifecycle.

Similarly, people share things because they involve a certain level of social currency: it makes them look good and makes others like them. An entrepreneur, for example, might feel proud to refer or post on social media about a masterclass he completed because it elevates others’ perception of his level of expertise.

This also works in the reverse: People avoid sharing because their credibility is on the line. What if the person you refer has a bad experience or doesn’t like the product? Your customers need to feel extremely confident in your brand ‒ and in the customer experience you provide ‒ before they’ll take that risk.

“Being really good is merely the first step,” Godin wrote on his blog. “In order to earn word of mouth, you need to make it safe, fun and worthwhile to overcome the social hurdles to spread the word.”

Social currency is one of the six factors that encourage people to spread the word outlined by Jonah Berger, an expert on word of mouth marketing, in his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On. The factors are:

• Social currency: We share things that make us look good.
• Triggers: We share what’s top-of-mind.
• Emotion: We share things we connect to on a deeper level.
• Public: We share to imitate others.
• Practical: We share to provide value and information to others.
• Stories: We share when there’s a story attached to something.

When determining your referral program format, consider how you can play into one or more of these factors to increase your odds of getting referrals.

Creating a Referral Program

With a broader understanding of what motivates people to refer, you can determine what specifically might motivate your particular customers.

It begins with remembering your “why.” Why does your business exist, and how does it align with your customers’ values and needs? That’s the foundation of why your customers will connect with your brand enough to refer others.

Make sure you do these three things to create a successful referral program:

Reach referrers at the right time and place

There are several triggers within the customer experience that are ideal times to remind your customers about your referral program:

• After a customer has been using your product or service for enough time to have experienced an “aha” moment or otherwise understand its value
• When a customer achieves a milestone, such as using your product for a year or completing a level in your educational program
• When a customer is likely going to need a refill or renewal of a subscription, especially if your referral program provides a discount or related benefit
• After a customer has left a positive review of your product online or on social media
• After a customer has filled out a survey with positive remarks

Review your own purchasing cycle and your customers’ habits to determine which times in the funnel are right for you to communicate your referral program.

Give a dual incentive

This is one of the most critical pieces of your referral program: People will only go the extra mile to refer someone if they’ll receive something in return, and they’ll be even more motivated to do so if the person they’re referring will also be rewarded. When there’s an incentive for the referee, the referrers feel like they’re giving a gift.

To determine the right incentive for your business, consider what motivates your customers. What value can you provide to customers in return for referrals? Are they more likely to be interested in something monetary, such as a discount or bonus cash, or would they prefer receiving a physical gift or an add-on related to your product?

If you plan to go the monetary route, you can decide between discounts and cash based on customer buying habits. If your customers typically make repeat purchases with you, offer a discount to encourage them to buy more. If your product is not one that’s typically purchased repetitively, give them cash.

If you plan to go with a non-monetary reward, again consider what your customers most want and need from your product, and see if there’s a way you can offer more. For example, Dropbox famously grew to four million users in 15 months solely based on its referral program, which offered additional storage space for both the referrer and the referee. Storage is the core reason people use Dropbox, so referring others in exchange for more is a no-brainer.

The reward you offer to the friend who is referred can be the same or different from the reward the person who makes the referral receives. Just be sure to keep in mind what would motivate the friend and what would make the referrers feel that they’re giving a gift.

Make it easy

It’s already challenging enough to encourage someone to make a referral – if the act of making it is a cumbersome process, it’s not going to happen.

Making it easy begins with very clearly, briefly and simply explaining the program – what your customer will receive and what his or her referred friend will receive.

Secondly, support your customers in explaining your “why.” They might naturally know what to say about your brand and how your product has helped them, but a reminder from you about your value  and the value you’ll also provide to their referred friend – makes it even easier on your customer.

Thirdly, make the “how” clear and simple. Typically this involves providing your customer with a referral link that can be copied into an email to their friend or shared via social media. Provide social sharing buttons with the link so they can automatically make the share.

Lastly, the process for the referred friend needs to be simple as well. For example, on the order form, don’t ask the friend who referred him or her; you can gain that information from the referral link tracking.

If you’re an Ontraport user, a Refer campaign is already built for you and ready to use for free. Simply upload it to your account from the Campaign Marketplace and add your content.

The post Expand Your Client Base With a Referral Program appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

There’s no question that referral programs have the power to expand a business’s reach exponentially. Take a look at some of the numbers below to see why your business could benefit from creating a referral program, and read more about how to implement one here:

The post The Influence of Referrals on Your Growth Potential appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

Unfortunately, the scummy side of referral marketing seems to take center stage in the media because of stories like eBay’s 2013 referral marketing scam. In fact, many companies avoid using the phrase “affiliate marketing” altogether because it has such a negative connotation. From presenting false information to scammy sales techniques, there’s a lot to look out for when you’re establishing a partner or referral program for your business.

Partnering with a referral marketer who uses shady tactics can hurt your brand’s reputation, email delivery rates and SEO. Watch for these red flags to make sure your potential partners are reliable and trustworthy:

Purchased Lists

It may sound harsh, but most people don’t want to hear from you, especially if they’ve never opted in to your list or given you consent to send them emails.

One of the biggest red flags is when a referral partner uses purchased email lists. Even if your partner’s emails do end up landing in a prospect’s inbox, the recipient is immediately going to wonder, “How the heck did you get my email address?” Attempting to establish a relationship with contacts by spamming them isn’t going to work and will reflect horribly on your brand.

Plus, sending unsolicited emails violates CAN-SPAM and CASL, which are the United States’ and Canada’s regulations for commercial emailing.

Scammy Landing Pages

Referral or partner programs are wonderful tools because they allow you to reach people and markets that you might not have had access to otherwise. However, they’re also dangerous because some referrers might be willing to do anything to make a sale, including driving traffic to Landing Pages that promote “too good to be true” offers. These offers are false claims about your product and unfulfilled promises that can lead to backlash, especially on social media. You’ll then have to do damage control to try to recover your reputation.The prospects to whom your referrers are attempting to sell aren’t going to know the difference between your company and a referral partner, so if they have a bad experience with one of your partners, they’ve had a bad experience with you.

Black Hat SEO

Simply put, don’t trust a referral partner who uses Black Hat SEO tactics.

Before Google introduced its Penguin Update, its algorithm didn’t focus as much on inbound link quality as it currently does. If you had an influx of “spammy” links that led to your site, Google would most likely rank you higher than a competing site that didn’t have as many. However, Google’s algorithm now focuses more on quality than quantity, meaning that the inbound links leading to your site better be good ones, or you might be penalized. If your referral partners are posting dozens of links to your website from low-quality sites, this will negatively impact your SEO rankings.

Black Hat SEO doesn’t stop at inbound links. Content Scraping is when someone steals original content from your website and posts it on their own. If a referral partner is immediately reposting your content on their site, Google could mistake them as the original author, which can potentially ruin your SEO rankings. Another Black Hat SEO tactic is Negative SEO, which is basically buying a bunch of spammy links and then directing them toward competitors so that search engines will penalize them.

All three of these tactics are extreme red flags, and if your referral partners are participating in unethical web practices, they should not be associated with your brand.

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Let us know what you think and share your referral marketing red flags and tips in the comments below.

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Across the board, business owners are partnering with this community of online influencers to connect to their expanding follower bases, and many are tapping into popular, yet less-traditional, referral channels such as YouTube and Pinterest.

Check out how businesses are using these unconventional methods to promote referral links:

YouTube

With over one billion users and over six billion hours of video viewed each month, YouTube has one of the largest reaches of any media platform in the world. In fact, it’s estimated that by 2019, 80% of all online content will be video, so if you can dominate your niche using video now, your views — which determine your potential referral revenue — will increase over time. You’ll also establish a consistent audience that will fluctuate less than other marketing platforms such as Facebook, as YouTube’s algorithm is less likely to change.

Product Demonstration/Tutorial Videos

Product demonstrations, tutorials and “how-to” videos are some of the most searched types of content on YouTube. Ask any millennial: They operate under the assumption that there will be a video tutorial for any question or problem that they have — and they’re not that far off. “How-to” searches on YouTube are growing 70% each year.

Take fashion and beauty vlogger Tess Christine for example. She shows her over two million subscribers how to achieve “Natural Glam & Loose Waves” using a styling tool for which she is a referral partner. Within the actual video, she includes her partner code that viewers can use to receive a discount on their purchase of the product she is using. She also includes a referral link to where viewers can directly purchase the hairstyling product.When an influencer creates a video demonstration of your product, your credibility as a partnered organization naturally goes up.

Comparison Videos

Comparison videos are relatively straightforward: They compare two competing products and give honest analysis, features and benefits on both to help viewers decide which one is right for them.

They can be a great way for lesser-known products and brands to gain attention by piggybacking on more well-known competitor’s popularity. To assure the benefits, though, you need to be certain that your referral partner will present a genuine and honest appraisal of both options without being largely biased toward either side. Take Ride Share Tips’ video “Uber vs Lyft: Why You Should Be Driving for Both” as an example.

Unboxing Videos

It’s surprising that people love watching other people unbox products, but they undeniably do. According to Pamela Rutledge of the Media Psychology Research Center, unboxing videos play into our primal curiosity and desire to reduce uncertainty. Unboxing videos are just that: a recording of an influencer’s genuine “first reaction” to a product, showing a viewer what to expect if they were to purchase the product themselves.

In his video “It Finally Came,” YouTuber Casey Neistat walks his viewers through an unveiling of the DJI Phantom 4 and records his initial excitement and thoughts about it.

Pinterest

While significantly less popular than YouTube, Pinterest is also a goldmine for referral opportunities. The platform currently has over 110 million monthly users, with more than two billion searches per month. In May, 2016 Pinterest began allowing users to embed partner links directly into pins, rather than linking to third-party sites that contain partner links. That makes Pinterest a widely untapped resource.

Partner Pins

While the ability to include links makes it exponentially easier for partners to promote on a wider scale, the platform can also accidentally categorize these pins as spam. Make sure your referral partners are using the platform correctly by following these guidelines:

• To shorten referral links, use Pretty Links (a common referral link cloaker); avoid using link shorteners such as Bitly.
• Be sure to keep pins consistent with the “beautiful” aesthetic of the platform. Your audience will notice the difference if you don’t.
• Don’t expect referral pins to generate more attention than regular pins. Pinterest’s algorithm treats them the same. To increase a referral pin’s visibility, it can be promoted.
• Make sure that your referrers are following FTC guidelines.

Introducing these new channels into your playbook and reaching out to online influencers in these spheres could completely transform your partner programs. Let us know what you think in the comments below.  

The post The New Referral Marketing appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.

What do these companies have in common, besides being some of the most valuable businesses in the world?

They can all attribute a significant part of their growth to successful referrals from their customers.

Consider these stats and you’ll realize why:

• Word of mouth determines 20-50% of all buying decisions. (McKinsey)
• Referrals bring in four times higher conversions than other marketing channels. (emarketer)
• Customers referred by loyal customers have a 37% higher retention rate. (Deloitte)
• Referred customers have a 16% higher lifetime value compared to non-referred customers. (Harvard Business Review)

Simply put, referral programs can grow your business.

What’s a Referral Program?

A referral program is a way for you to incentivize customers to spread the word about your product or service. Referral programs are also known as partner programs and can involve paying a commission to  brand advocates for helping generate sales for your business. With these programs, you’re extending your reach well beyond your own circle of influence to obtain quality leads from trusted sources.

And it works.

Dropbox went from 100,000 to 4,000,000 users in just 15 months due to the massive success of its referral program. Referrals helped PayPal go from 7% to 10% daily growth, catapulting its user base to over 100 million members.

At least one third of the people who buy from any brand do so on the recommendation of a friend or trusted acquaintance. Think about that for a second: One third – that’s a huge portion of your sales. That stat alone explains why referral programs can be so effective.

Current customers who love your brand are your greatest tool for influencing buying decisions for your product. You’re enlisting a troop of fans, influencers and consultants who are likely to connect with your target audience to spread the word about your goods or services. With reward as an incentive, advocates are motivated to refer new customers who in turn refer new customers. A confident recommendation of your product invites your brand into a pre-existing circle of trust between your brand advocates and those they refer. This is why referral leads are so valuable and tend to have much higher retention rates than organic leads.

Here are our best tips for creating a successful referral program.

1. Create a Product Worth Being Referred

The success of your entire referral program relies on your product being remarkable — not “just ok.” Your advocates must personally want to make the referrals in the first place.

Think about it this way:

Say your friend is looking for an SEO consultant to help his business rank higher on local searches. In the past, you’ve hired two different SEO consultants to help you with your own site. Would you rather tell your friend about the enthusiastic consultant who went well beyond your expectations to improve your business’s SEO or the impersonal consultant who did a fine job but never really cared about the success of your business?

Seems like a pretty obvious choice.

Fans of Seth Godin will recognize this point as the principle idea of his best-selling book, Purple Cow, in which he explains that the key to success is to find a way to stand out — to be the eccentric, purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins.

“Yes, you should make it easy for people to refer you. Yes, you should be aware that asking for referrals can help. But no, all the tactics in the world won’t help you get the referrals you want. The only thing that will make you remarkable is being worth remarking about.” – Seth Godin

Your referrers’ reputations are on the line, and they aren’t going to put their neck out and recommend you to their network if the product you sell is mediocre. So create a product good enough to warrant serious attention and watch your army of brand advocates mobilize.

2. Sweeten the Deal With Incentives

While a great referral program starts with a remarkable product, you still have to find ways to get referrers.

Some brands have fanboys — people who will endlessly promote the companies they love and believe in, for free — to help spread the word, but for a lot of businesses, even if people love your product and brand, you’ll have to sweeten the deal with an incentive to get them to promote your business. And it needs to be good.

By offering incentives, advocates are motivated to refer new customers who in turn refer new customers — causing exponential brand growth. So offer your referrers incentives they’ll really want to take advantage of.

For example, the Ontraport referral program offers small business owners a recurring 25% commission on the lifetime of each account they refer. The program is a zero-risk, high-reward situation for referrers, which is why our program is so popular.

Take, for instance, Jake Hower, Founder of FuzedApp and Ontraport referral partner:Or another successful Ontraport referral partner, owner of SuperFastBusiness James Schramko:Big payoffs, minimum effort, super simple.

To learn how to set up your referral program’s incentive structure, check out this post by ReferralCandy.

3. Make It Easy for Your Referrers

Another important part of creating a quality referral program is to make it painless for your referrers to promote you. The easier it is to be referred, the more referrals you’ll get.

In some cases, it’s as simple as asking them to share a link with family and friends via email or social media after they’ve purchased from you. For companies like Ontraport that have more extensive referral partners, you can provide them with promotional tools such as a banner ad to embed on their websites.

Here are more details on these common types of referral promo tools:

• Banner Images: A banner ad is a commonly used method of attracting a click. You’ll design the ad, then upload it. Partners download the banner, which is already linked with their partner information, and embed it onto their web pages.
• Email Messages: These are marketing emails written by you, usually with links in them to your sales pages or order forms. These links come pre-populated with the partner’s referral links so all they have to do is copy/paste the whole email into their email service of choice and mail their people with it. You’ll simply create the email in the editor provided.
• Links: A standard link that passes along your referral tracking information.

Make it easy for your referrers to promote your business, and the sales will come.

The post Your Customers’ Friends Are Your Best Leads appeared first on The Ontraport Blog.