Referral marketing works just like any other form of marketing: via a funnel. You put people in at the top. They go through several of stages of conversion as they share with their friends. Then, as those friends engage, successful referrals complete the process.
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 just 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.
So now we come to the last part of our trilogy on how to create and implement an Organic Discovery strategy like Airbnb. In Part One, we talked about how to start with the basics by ensuring your customer experience really is first-class and is something that people would want to talk about, and making sure your SEO is in order. In Part Two, we discussed getting your customers to create content and leave reviews and share those on social. Now we discuss Influencers, Referral Programs and Employees and Partners, and how to tie all these elements together.
In Part One of this guide on how to create and implement an Organic Discovery strategy like the one which allowed Airbnb to get 91% of its web traffic from unpaid sources, we discussed the preparation needed, such as making sure you do actually have a world-class and unique customer experience that’s worth sharing, that you know what you are trying to achieve, and getting your SEO set up. Below we will discuss User-Generated Content, Ratings and Reviews and Social Media, before dealing with Influencers, Referral Programs and Employees, Partners and other Influencers in Part Three.
If you’ve been following our blog, hopefully, you didn’t miss our prediction for the big marketing trend of 2021: Airbnb style Organic Discovery.
This was inspired by the momentous news that Airbnb released in the run-up to its successful IPO in December 2020, which raised US$3.5bn and valued it at US$86bn (almost equal to the combined valuations of Marriott, Hilton and Expedia). But if you didn’t hear, Airbnb announced that it got fully 91% of all of its web traffic without paying a single penny to Google, Amazon, Facebook or Apple (‘GAFA’).
While surely everyone knows the famous quote that acquiring a new customer is anywhere from five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one, it’s strange why so many brands still focus so much on acquiring new customers instead of focusing on their existing ones. Because improving the experience for existing customers will not only increase customer retention and the bottom line, but also create satisfied customers that can become brand ambassadors to help acquire new ones.
