To understand why telecoms marketers have turned towards referral or member-get-member programmes, we first need to look at the daunting challenges they face.
On the one hand, the demand for mobile, fixed line and broadband services never ceases to stop growing. Users now expect the highest-possible quality streaming to their fixed and mobile devices, with all the huge capex requirements in fibre networks, 5G etc. that necessitates.
Want to increase word of mouth around your company or product? A new study from Michigan State University found that you might want to work on tapping into your customers’ sense of consumer arrogance. That’s right, appealing to customers’ pride at finding a great deal or product means more word-of-mouth recommendations to family and friends. Why? Well, we’re all familiar with that feeling of getting a really great deal and wanting to tell others about it. We brag about shopping triumphs for the same reason we brag about anything else—it makes us look good. However, companies should obviously still focus on the quality of their product or offering before activating consumer arrogance—the same study also found that triggering consumer arrogance meant more word-of-mouth communication about the experience whether or not customers liked the product, meaning more positive word-of-mouth information if they were happy and more negative word-of-mouth communication if they weren’t. So while it could be a bit of a double-edged sword if companies aren’t careful, activating consumer arrogance is clearly a safe bet for increasing word-of-mouth. Read on.
At Buyapowa, we see many digital marketers wondering what is the difference between affiliate, influencer and referral programs and which is best to help boost sales via word-of-mouth. All of these can be genuine forms of word-of-mouth marketing (although affiliate marketing may have nothing to do with word of mouth, and can be can be click arbitrage or other forms of marketing) but differ from each other in a number of ways. For retailers just starting out, the terms can be easy to mix up. Even experienced marketers can struggle to understand the best time to implement such a program and the relative benefits of each. Which program is best for new businesses?
Sometimes clients and prospects ask us whether they really need to give an incentive to a referred friend. As if giving an incentive will attract the wrong type of bargain hunting customer? Or, where you feel your product or service is high quality, then surely the recommendation of the friend should be enough? Particularly, if your service is invite-only, like a private shopping club.
As the world’s most advanced referral marketing platform, we spend all day every day digging into what makes people share invites to their favourite brands and retailers and what makes their friends shop. Over the years, we’ve acquired a vast wealth of insight… now it’s time to share it with you.
In this dispatch from our labs, you’ll learn which sharing channels, rewards and incentives work best. We’ll identify which kinds of customers refer the most, the best time to get them involved and how long their referrals can take to come in. And we’ll debunk a myth or two along the way.
You’ve heard of the boiling frog theory, right? Put a frog in boiling water and it’ll jump right out. But put it in cold water, then slowly bring that water to boil, and Mr. Frog will happily sit there until he’s cooked to death.
It’s completely wrong, of course. Put a frog anywhere and it’ll jump out – that’s just what frogs do – but, as a metaphor, the boiling frog theory’s pretty helpful. Because, as people, we act like boiling frogs all the time: unaware that the circumstances surrounding us are getting more urgent, but failing to do anything about it until it’s too late.
