While referrals are often one of the best free marketing tools for getting new customers into your business, it can take a little effort to get the word out about your referral program.
There are components and features of your Perkville rewards program that already incentivize your customers to get referring. With a little marketing effort on your end, you can help increase the number of new people coming through your door.
Use Your Bonuses to Get Your Customers Referring
You can tailor your bonuses to help you reach specific goals. Creating bonuses – and marketing those bonuses in your usual marketing materials – helps sneakily remind and incentivize your customers that they could be taking advantage of your referral program.
If you’re looking to up your referrals during a particular month, host a Promotion or Frequency Bonus for anyone who refers a friend during that time.
Referrals and the Promotion Bonus
The Promotion Bonus is a great way to subtly bring attention to the referral aspect of your rewards program.
Offer a bonus to your customers that refer people during a specific time, especially if you’re looking to hit specific new membership goals. Give 2-3x your normal points for referrals made during the first week of the month, the last week of the month, or right before the New Year. You can also give a bonus to those that refer on specific days, such as Black Friday, to help amp up your numbers.
You’ll want to focus on marketing the new bonus you’re offering, rather than the referral itself. Share posts on social media about your new bonus or add a blurb to your newsletter to get the word out.
Boosting The Number of Referrals with a Frequency Bonus
Much like the Promotion Bonus, the Frequency Bonus can help you incentivize your customers to refer more of their friends. The Frequency Bonus is especially effective because it challenges your customers to refer a certain number of people during a period of time. You can offer a large increase in points for your most loyal members that refer 3, 5 or even 10 of their friends during a single month.
It’s important to make this goal attainable while still. Check out your referrals over the last few months and see what your most devoted customers are capable of. Then, challenge your members to hit these reaching (but reachable) goals.
It’s important to make a bit of noise around this if you want to succeed. Make sure that your customers are aware of the challenge by posting about it on your social accounts, putting flyers up in your business, sending out emails and training your front desk to let everyone know.
Celebrate Those Customers That Refer The Most People
You have advocates in your business – use them! In your usual marketing materials, praise your customers that have referred a significant amount of people. You could write a blog about their achievements, post a photo of them on your social accounts, or hold an event and offer them a prize.
If you plan to write about them in your marketing, tell the story of not only their journey to hitting so many referrals, but also the way that referrals helped them reach a specific reward that might not have been attainable otherwise.
How do you get the word out about referrals in your business? Let us know in the comments below.