The science behind referral marketing: Your pathway to generating higher quality leads in 2021
With the invention of sophisticated marketing automation tools, capturing “more leads” seems attractive. But “more leads” is rarely the answer.
In fact, a bunch of low-quality leads would do more damage than good. You need high-quality leads that are easy to convert into customers. That is where referral marketing can help you.
The concept of referral marketing is not new. Satisfied customers have been referring solutions to their friends for a long time. And today, it is an excellent way to leverage word of mouth to build a lead engine that runs itself.
Given that 83% of people trust others recommendations, it’s least surprising. Humans are social beings who seek the cooperation needed to survive. The most common “help or invite a friend…” referral message addresses this need for humans to be social.
Let’s take a look at a simple example. The “Love With Food” referral campaign offers a free box of healthy snacks to the value of $10 for using a referral link. They let you help a friend by promoting healthy eating while you earn $10 on top. If you carefully notice, this is a campaign crafted to trigger all three factors - the logical side by giving your friend advice on something that is useful, the emotional side, by showing you care about them, and the social side, by impressing them with your inside information. Even though this is quite a standard campaign, it is effective because it works across these three levels.
