An Ambassador eBook
Building an Effective Referral Program Building an Effective Table of Contents Referral Program
Contents
Introduction...... 3
Chapter 1: Stop, Collaborate, and Listen...... 5
Chapter 2: Effective Incentives to Refer...... 8
Chatper 3: Measure, Analyze, Profit...... 11
Conclusion...... 17
Page 2 Building an Effective Introduction Referral Program
Introduction Its no secret that consumers today are less trusting of what companies say about themselves than what their friends recommend. After all, you’d trust your friend more than an online banner right?
Building a strong base of passionate ambassadors is critical to any business’ success at influencing new customers and keeping your brand at the top of people’s
Page 3 Building an Effective Introduction Referral Program minds.
Just one well-planned incentive can spread throughout the Internet, raising awareness, driving traffic and acquiring thousands of new customers with the click of a button.
By rolling out an effective, monitored and well-managed campaign, you can ensure maximum returns and a rabid fan base ready to mobilize on the streets for your business.
But what actually goes in to a successful referral marketing program? In this eBook, you’ll learn the techniques you need to get your program off the ground and start generating a wave of brand ambassadors to mobilize and promote your brand.
Page 4 Building an Effective Chapter 1: Stop, Referral Program Collaborate, and Listen
Chapter 1: Stop, Collaborate, and Listen
Carefully consider who your most satisfied customers are. Have that person in mind? Good. Now take some time to think about what makes him/her engaged with your brand.
Ask yourself:
What do they find valuable about your business? Where are they sharing your brand? How are they sharing your brand?
The scope and diversity of online channels for word of
Page 5 Building an Effective Chapter 1: Stop, Referral Program Collaborate, and Listen mouth referral programs is staggering. Before you start casting off content and hoping to get some bites in the vast sea of social media activity, take a step back and look at where your resources can be best directed.
Are your customers sharing their best customer service experiences? Or perhaps they’re sending pictures of your product and brand. Depending on the medium, looking at how your customers are already sharing on social media sites can help better direct your campaign to maximize ROI.
Also take into account where and at what time your competition is active as well to make sure your message stands out from the crowd.
Page 6 Building an Effective Chapter 1: Stop, Referral Program Collaborate, and Listen
Once you have a better idea of your target brand ambassador base, you can begin crafting your core message and values. Work to find a message that is consistent and best targets your core base of supporters, and make sure to let your fans know what value your referral program brings to the table.
Along those lines, teach your brand ambassadors about what types of friends they should be targeting and best practices for going about it. Taking time out to educate your first ambassadors can add value to your program and position you as best suited to bring in new referrals from other businesses with similar intentions.
Be sure to provide some direction to your first wave of ambassadors, either through informational materials online or direct engagement. Whatever the medium, education can get your campaign revved up right from the onset.
Page 7 Building an Effective Chapter 2: Effective Referral Program Incentives to Refer
Chapter 2: Effective Incentives to Refer Once you’ve identified and segmented your most passionate supporters it’s necessary to have some incentives in place to back up your requests for referrals. And what better way to get people pumped up to promote than with a customer rewards program? (Hint: There’s no better way).
Page 8 Building an Effective Chapter 2: Effective Referral Program Incentives to Refer
Incentive programs tap into people’s instinctive desire to help each other and to be recognized and rewarded for their kindness. But of course, the type of reward you offer can be a difference maker when in comes time to sign-up for your brand ambassador program.
ESTABLISHING INCENTIVES
After deciding the structure you want to pursue for your brand ambassador program, you will need to decide on how much you want to pay for referral rewards. The balance here will be the same as most marketing decisions: how do you make sure that you don’t spend more money getting the customer to you than the customer will produce in revenue?
The difference, though, comes in calculation. Instead of
Page 9 Building an Effective Chapter 2: Effective Referral Program Incentives to Refer calculating simply how much financial incentive the customer needs to come to you, you also must consider what financial incentive a customer needs to promote your product to their friends and what they think of as a “good deal” when offering their support for your business.
Taking the time to fully calculate the ROI from a social media referral campaign can be very vexing and time consuming. For now, just make sure your customers are responding positively and actively engaging in your campaign.
Page 10 Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure, Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Chapter 3: Measure, Analyze, Profit Going beyond the glitz and glamour of rewarding customers, there are a number of logistical components that must be stored and measured to gain the most utility from your campaign and better understand how successful it is, including having a clear idea of the benchmarks you’d like to reach.
Once you start the program, create a schedule to track, evaluate and optimize your program to direct resources where the most activity is generated.
Page 11 Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure, Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Key back-end requirements that must be managed for success include:
Building and maintaining a database of existing and referred customers.
Automated marketing resources to keep customers engaged.
Send updates to social networking sites on a consistent and real-time basis.
Update records to know how many ambassadors have signed up, and adequately reward those who have made successful referrals.
Page 12 Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure, Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Many businesses choose to overlook data for a number of reasons (lack of experience, laziness, etc). This is a bad idea.
There are huge gains to be made by combing through data and seeing what works best for your program in the form of optimization and increased ambassador engagement.
Having a lot of data on hand is irrelevant without having a clear understanding of the key performance indicators that drive success on referral programs. Looking back at actionable metrics can help truly define the ROI from your investment:
Brand mentions in social media: Tracking how, when and where your fans mention/share your brand can help optimize your engagement strategy and better segment and engage new ambassadors.
Customer loyalty: Analyzing how often a specific fan is mentioning your brand and sharing content can help better define your target supporter.
Conversion Rate: By tracking conversion rates across
Page 13 Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure, Referral Program Analyze, Profit multiple acquisition channels, your business will better understand which platforms drive sales and locate where your engagement is most effective and where to direct resources.
Always keep your analytics in mind when testing out new campaigns. If you’ve never tested out referral marketing with your business, keeping track of your successes and shortcomings can help optimize your program as it grows and evolves.
But to truly analyze all of the data and keep up to date records is a herculean task. Luckily, there are a number of resources that offer solutions to the headache of managing your campaign. Using a brand ambassador software can help track and manage the inner workings of your campaign and ensure you’re getting the most bang for your referral marketing buck.
An effective SaaS brand ambassador software platform can attribute new customer activity to the appropriate ambassador, automate a number of campaign logistics, like issuing rewards and re-engaging neglectful ambassadors, and free-up much needed time to run the other components of your campaign.
Page 14 Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure, Referral Program Analyze, Profit
Most importantly, be sure to consistently check the successes and failures of your program. Otherwise, you will be missing out on a crucial data to help your business’ referrals skyrocket.
Page 15 Building an Effective Chapter 3: Measure, Referral Program Analyze, Profit Referral Program Worksheet:
Print out and use this flowchart to keep yourself organized when moving forward on your programming.
Listen to your current fans
Where are my fans What is my value Where are my fans sharing my to fans? active online? content?
Develop incentives to refer
Type of Reward (Cash, Gift Card, % Commission)
Cost of Incentive/ Is our reward Value to fans profitable?
Measure and analyze data
Optimize programming
Page 16 Building an Effective Conclusion Referral Program
Conclusion An online referral program is only as effective as the amount of brand ambassadors it is engaging. When customers are engaged with your product they’re inclined to refer friends and family, but it helps to set-up incentives to promote through concrete rewards.
By rolling out an effective, monitored and well-managed campaign, you can ensure maximum returns and a rabid fan base ready to mobilize on the streets for your business.
So gear up and get ready because the future of online referral marketing is knocking on your door, and it’s about time you answered.
Page 17 Conclusion Referral Program
Ambassador enables any company to easily track, manage & reward their advocates for referring customers and driving conversions. Receive actionable channel-specific metrics; including shares, clicks, conversions, revenue and clicks per share. Ambassador can be fully integrated into your website, maintaining your look & feel while providing a frictionless experience for your advocates.
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