3 Critical Strategies For Every Referral Marketing Company in 2016
Posted by naxumadmin / December 10, 2015
If you run a referral marketing, MLM, or a Direct Sales company, you have probably been planning the next steps for 2016 for weeks (or even months) now. As you finalize your plans to dominate the market this next year, here are 3 parts of your business to evaluate.
#1 Retail Customer Acquisition Strategy
This may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s the key to viral growth.
In MLM and Direct Sales, it can be tempting for companies to lead with a focus on recruiting “recruiters” and affiliate more than actually selling a product to retail customers.
Time and again there are wake-up calls in our industry, and this year is no stranger to that. Multiple companies shut-down for not have a retail path and most notably the FTC’s allegations that put Vemma’s business on hold for weeks.
There are a few parts of your strategy to consider:
A: The Customer Experience
What does it feel like to become a customer at your company? How easy is it to order your product? Is there free shipping or instant online access? Do I get a thank you email? A thank you a phone call?
What are you doing this year to make sure your customers have an incredible experience?
Maybe you will decide to be like one of our clients here at Naxum and attach a coupon for each new customer to come back and try other products you have at your company.
B: Customer Acquisition Training:
What training have you provided for your affiliates to be acquiring retail customers?
Is there a video series on how to find customers? How about how to engage with them? How about compliance?
We have had a number of clients create great results by creating a structured customer acquisition training video series that is followed up by a multiple test on the other side. In our Naxum UNIFY platform, we even email the member’s sponsor when their new sub-affiliate takes the test so they know their new sub-affiliate is ready to kick their business into gear!
C: Customer Focused Systems:
What systems do you have in place for members to be gathering retail customers?
Companies without real systems leave themselves exposed for compliance challenges and a disoriented brand message. If you will not take the time to have systems in place, then you are forcing your affiliates to create their own without your guidance.
Do you have videos? Capture pages? Autoresponder campaigns? Do you give your affiliates easy sample packs to convert new customers to try your products or do you expect the affiliates to just figure out what product mix to lead with on their own?
We have seen a really positive trend in our industry of companies creating $15-$29 packs where affiliate can sell these sample packs of product to clients and engage them. What would your business be like if every affiliate were selling only 2 sample packs each week?
#2 Customer Rewards Programs
What about after your customer purchases from you? What do you have in place for them if they really enjoyed the experience?
Most companies in the MLM, Direct Sales, or Affiliate marketing space have a large gap in this part of the process. In a theory we created, we have dubbed this process “The Raving Fan Progression”.
Most companies have 2 groups of people classified as customers and affiliates. The challenge is that there are customers that are “raving fans” of the brand, but feel the affiliate opportunity is too daunting or too much of a commitment for them. In the Raving Fan Progression, we have identified this challenge and classified another group as “referral customers”; some companies like to call them “ambassadors”.
These “referral customers” are invited to share a link about the product they purchased and get a reward in exchange for sharing that with others.
With some of our clients at Naxum, we have built robust points programs where the customers get points in return for referring others that can be used toward purchases. Other companies have decided to go the route of creating digital “gift cards” as rewards for member referral others that are redeemable in a customer virtual office online.
How are you incentivizing these people to bring you referrals? Or are you leaving these people behind?
#3 Complaint Social Media Content Sharing Program
What are your affiliate saying about you in social media?
Even the most well-intentioned promoters can cause your company heartache with a post about health and income claims that are not shared compliantly.
So what’s the cure? #socialmedia is not a fad, your affiliates are going to use it regardless.
To address this, we have created a done-for-you social media sharing system that allows the corporate team to create engaging compliant content for the members to share. Some clients do this twice a week and the best do it daily!
Social media is a conversation and your affiliate deserve amazing engaging content to share with their possible customers.
Many of our clients have integrated this part of their business with Naxum’s coded blog system. This way, their members simply click and share a coded link of complaint content on Facebook (or their favorite social network). When their friends click to read it on the company blog, all the banners and offers will be linked to that affiliates sites.
Want to see a demo of this system in action?
