How do I get online referrals?

Getting online referrals involves encouraging your current customers, followers, and contacts to recommend your products or services to their networks.  Referrals can be a powerful way to expand your customer base and build trust with new prospects.  Many of the strategies for successful rules are the same strategies you would apply for any robust marketing plan. 

Are you effectively engaging your audience to encourage their referrals?   Put yourself at the top of your game in each of the following areas:

• Deliver Exceptional Customer Service – No need to elaborate in detail.  Happy customers are more likely to refer you.  Enough said. 
• Ask for Referrals – While this recommendation would fit very high on the “Obvious Scale”, it all-too-often sits very low on the “Did You Do It Scale”.  Ask your satisfied customers to refer your business to their friends, family, or colleagues.  You can include a request for referrals in your follow-up emails or order confirmations. 
• Create a Referral Program – You can entice them for successful referrals through discounts or freebies.  Design a referral program that rewards customers for referring others.
• Leverage Social Media – As always, encourage your social media followers to share their positive experiences with your products or services.  Share user-generated content and testimonials to showcase real experiences by satisfied customers.
• Highlight Referral Stories – Share success stories of customers who were referred by others and had positive experiences. This can inspire others to refer and attract new customers.
• Incorporate Referral Links – Include unique referral links to facilitate sharing.  These links can be tracked to identify successful referrals.
• Send Personalized Invitations – Reach out to your most loyal customers with personalized invitations to join your referral program. Make them feel special and appreciated.
• Use Referral Software – Invest in referral software that can automate the tracking of referrals and rewards. Referral Factory, Refersion and CrewFire are leading examples of referral tracking software that can be integrated into the marketing campaign to track characteristics of successful referral efforts. 
• Run Contests and Giveaways – Host referral-based contests or giveaways where participants earn entries by referring others. This can generate excitement and encourage referrals.
• Collaborate with Influencers – Partner with influencers or individuals who have a strong online presence. Their recommendations can carry weight and introduce your business to a new audience.
• Show Appreciation – Recognize and thank customers who refer others. Publicly acknowledge their efforts on social media or through your marketing channels.
• And finally, if something negative happens, immediate put out fires as fast as you can.  More effort is required to develop positive brand perceptions than negative ones. 

Building a strong referral program takes time and consistent effort. Make it easy for customers to refer others, and always focus on providing value and exceptional experiences. As you create a network of satisfied customers who are willing to refer, your business can grow through the power of word-of-mouth.

Extending your reach to maximize your audience is probably the most important focus area for your development as a social media promoter.  Pursuing a wider audience is the foundation of what it means to be an online marketer, and with a wider audience exposure, more people will see your brand, your engagement metrics will show results over time, and you will be able to sell your products and services to a larger and more diverse audience.

Core Strategies

This article addresses core strategies for extending your reach and how they can impact your online presence, including bringing growth to your customer base.  A larger reach means more potential customers, and draws new customers to your universe.  With a wider reach, you are more likely to see an increase in engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and clicks. More people interacting with your content can lead to a more vibrant and active online community, thereby increasing your brand awareness among a larger audience.

The underlying and undeniable truth to all of this is, having a large audience also gives you greater credibility.  A brand that reaches a substantial number of people gives a sense of confidence among potential customers, and come across as authoritative. When others see that your content is being widely shared and engaged with, they’re more likely to view your brand as trustworthy and reputable.  At the same time, you also increase your chances of experiencing the ever-elusive viral post.  While a posting that goes viral is generally not something to plan for, for it to be in the frame of possibility, it helps to know your audience, have a strong message that hits a chord, and to have a large audience to begin with.  A viral posting for a small-time blogger is just another article for someone with a large and well-cultivated audience.

To achieve a successful extended reach in your social media promotional campaign, it’s important to develop engaging and shareable content, utilize appropriate hashtags and keywords, collaborate with influencers, run targeted advertisements, and actively engage with your audience across various platforms. Keep in mind that while extending your reach is important, maintaining the quality and authenticity of your content should always be a priority.

Action Items

With that as the basis, there are a few key actions items that must be on your activity list on a regular basis to achieve audience and engagement growth over time.

• Use Relevant Hashtags – Research your market and commonly used hashtags.  This step could be rated as the easiest step with the largest benefit for the amount of time it takes to simply add some hashtags.  There will be other articles in the future on the effective use of hashtags.  Get the basics done first, by incorporating popular and relevant hashtags in your posts.  The benefit of this simple step is that hashtags will increase the discoverability of your content by making it visible to users who have similar and relevant interests. 
• Collaborate with Influencers – As the next step in your development, and with a growing base of followers which would make you attractive to another early-stage social media promoter, find someone with a similar area of interest – not necessarily the same, but ideally someone whose products/services/blogging topics complement and are tangentially relevant to yours.  Partner with influencers in your industry who have a substantial following, and keep getting the word out about your online presence. 
• Post Consistently – Maintaining a consistent posting schedule is absolutely critical, as a major metric of nearly all online algorithms is the frequency of posting, as an indicator of the quality and reliability of you and your organization as a source of good content.  Regular posts keep your audience engaged and increase the likelihood of your content being seen by a larger number of users.
• Optimize Content for Each Platform – Customize your content for each social media platform. Tailor the format, visuals, and messaging to suit the preferences of the specific platform’s users.
• Use Eye-Catching Visuals – Visual content tends to attract more attention. Use high-quality images, videos, and graphics to make your posts stand out in users’ feeds.
• Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC) – Encourage your followers to create and share content related to your brand. Reposting UGC not only showcases user loyalty but also extends your content’s reach to the creator’s followers.
• Engage with Your Audience – Respond to comments, messages, and mentions promptly. Engaging with your audience encourages more interactions and can lead to higher visibility through shares and word-of-mouth.
• Run Paid Social Media Ads – Invest in paid advertising to reach a broader audience. Social media platforms offer targeting options to ensure your content reaches users who match your target demographics.
• Host Contests and Giveaways – Organize contests or giveaways that require participants to engage with your content (like, share, comment). This not only boosts engagement but also exposes your campaign to new audiences as participants share with their followers.
• Share Timely and Trending Content – Stay updated with current events, trends, and holidays. Creating content that’s relevant to trending topics can help your posts gain traction and visibility.  Craft content that is informative, entertaining, or emotional enough for users to want to share it with their networks.
• Leverage Stories and Live Streaming – Stories and live streaming are temporary yet engaging formats. They can draw attention to your campaign by showing up prominently at the top of users’ feeds.
• Cross-Promote on Multiple Platforms – Share your campaign content across multiple social media platforms. Tailor the content for each platform to suit its unique features.
• Network and Engage with Peers – Engage with other brands, individuals, and organizations in your industry. Like and follow their posts, and make yourself part of that community, as a means of generating curiosity among other readers about your community. 
• Monitor Analytics and Adjust – Regularly review your analytics to identify which types of content and strategies are driving the most reach and impressions.

Improving reach and impressions takes time and consistent effort, and without time and effort put into continuously refining your messaging, then you risk repeating the same mistakes time and again. 

Jot down a list of bullet points for each of the strategies described above, what you intend to do, and specifically, how this strategy applies to your promotional efforts.  While the volume of tasks would feel overwhelming at the start, picking them away one tick-box at a time will yield positive results over time.  The other good impact is that before long, these activities will become second-nature.  It will be a part of your basic skill set as a digital marketer. 

Skills Development

With the basic skill set in place, you will be able to create more sophisticated strategies to support higher-value outcomes.  As your reach grows, along with the number of potential leads and customers increases, you will also be able to manage your campaign to more effectively increase conversion rates.  Having more data on successful messaging enables you to expand the diversity of your audience, and hone messaging to attract more nuanced segments.  This level of detail and complexity will be a key factor in building a competitive advantage against others who, up to now, have more experience than you have. 

Extending your reach can give you an edge over competitors who might not be as proactive in engaging with a larger audience.  Ultimately, a consistent cadence in reaching your audience will build recognition, which will improve your branding, and ultimately customer loyalty and their online advocacy will grow.  When you reach this point, you now have an audience of followers who effectively engage in your marketing efforts on your behalf, and you don’t have to pay them anything to do that!

For now, start with the basics, and keep doing that consistently over time. 

Analyzing the success of your social media campaign is a key step in increasing your audience over time.  It gives you the chance – and the information you need – to improve, enhance and refine your messaging.  Your audience is your best resource for knowing what worked well and what didn’t work well.  This gold mine of information is being given to you freely by your audience, and with a little sweat equity added to the data (ie., your own effort in pulling out lessons to be learned), you can effectively identifying areas for improvement in your promotional processes, and ultimately, to your overall objectives.

This article highlights some key metrics and methods you can use to help differentiate yourself and maximize your promotional time and effort.

Capture Basic Engagement Metrics

• The most basic way to begin is by tracking Likes, Shares, and Comments.  These metrics indicate how well your content resonated with your audience, with increasing importance for each.  Higher engagement suggests that your content is interesting and relevant.  Even if you get trolls (who can say some very unfortunate things), that can be seen as a hallmark of your success in reaching a wide audience of people you don’t know, or didn’t know before (because for sure, you don’t have any friends who would make nasty trolling comments!). 
• Click-Through Rate (CTR):   It’s not just about getting Likes, but also attracting people to your online world.  Measure the percentage of people who clicked on a link in your post. A higher CTR indicates that your content was compelling enough to drive traffic to your platform or commercial offer.  What is a typical CTR to expect?  Around 1 or 2%.  Spam email may get one-tenth of that.  Nonetheless, with an engaging campaign message and a focus on personalized attention to your audience, you can effectively increase these metrics and generate a small volume of high-value customers (more about this in future articles).

Focus on Reach and Impressions

• Your social media reach is the number of unique users who saw your content. It shows how effectively your content is being distributed to a broad audience – as opposed to how many individuals will click your content, which is conveyed by…
• Impressions, which is the total number of times your content was displayed. It gives you an idea of the overall exposure your campaign received.

Track a Steady Growth of Followers

• Monitor the growth in your social media followers. This metric is especially important if you are undertaking a planned social media campaign that may be coordinated across several different platforms or accounts. 
• Everyone aspires to the “viral posting” that gets distributed to millions of people.  If that happens, enjoy the great success, but consider it a bonus.  Keep the consistency going, because that is what pays off in the long run.
• Clicks to website is also key to measure how many users clicked through your social media to visit your website.  This information will be the basis for you to…

Monitor Conversions

• If your promotional goal is to drive specific actions (e.g., sign-ups, purchases), you will be able to track the percentage of users who completed the targeted action as a percentage of the CTR/impressions, giving you an indication of your messaging effectiveness.  This metric also forms the basis of more sophisticated analysis, and enables you to undertake A/B analysis (later in this article). 

Referral Traffic

• Where posting on social media may be a direct way to reach your audience, referrals will be crucial to helping you build that audience.  Website analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics) will be needed to enable tracking of the amount of traffic coming from your social media channels.

Hashtag Performance

• Hashtags are an easy and effective way to extend your reach.  Track these as their own category.  Know your hashtags and those of your audience.  Test different ones to see their impact.  Hashtags with a large volume of users are not necessarily better.  Aim for the niche. 

Time and Day Analysis

• Analyze when your posts received the most engagement. This can help you optimize your posting schedule for future campaigns.  (Another upcoming topic:  how to determine a good time for posting)

Audience Demographics

• Understand the demographics of the users who engaged with your campaign.  Not to generalize or stereotype, but your content will attract people with similar traits and characteristics.  These may be demographic in nature, or otherwise, you can identify activity or personality-based characteristics.  Look for surprises, ie., people you didn’t expect would be interested in your content, then understand why they are interested.  This type of analysis can open up a whole new world of possibilities for content and monetizable offers, particularly if you have found an active niche, where you are filling a gap in demand that nobody else has found. 

Sentiment Analysis

• Understanding sentiment takes your audience analysis a step further than mere demographics.  While the data is essential, the art will be in generating a storyline about why your audience feels the way they do. 
• How to monitor sentiment itself is an art.  Analyze the types of comments that people make, and the way people say things.  It is a more subtle and subjective analysis, but over time and with enough data points, you will begin to recognize patterns in mood and feeling among your audience.  Have you hit a sore spot with the audience?  Is there a problem they are expressing, that you can solve?  Are they excited or motivated by what you say?  These questions are the nuts and bolts of a sentiment analysis, and understanding the answers can help to open new possibilities for marketing and monetization.

ROI (Return on Investment)

• Go as far as you can with free promotional strategies.  If you are tired of waiting for organic results, then lay down your credit card and give your account a boost.  If you had a budget for the campaign, measure the ROI by comparing the costs incurred with the benefits generated, such as increased sales, leads, or brand exposure.  No need for advanced math skills, just divide profit over cost. 

A/B Testing

• For advanced promotional strategies, A/B testing is absolutely essential.  How do you know what is the most effective message for your audience?  You don’t have to guess.  If you tried different approaches within your campaign, such as different ad creatives or post formats, compare their performance to determine which strategies were more effective.

Feedback and Surveys

• Sometimes there is no need to be clever.  Just ask!  Collect feedback from your audience through surveys or direct messages.  Look for qualitative data can provide insights into your audience’s sentiment and to understand how well your campaign was perceived.

By analyzing these metrics and methods, you can gain a comprehensive view of your social media campaign’s success and make informed decisions for future campaigns. The specific metrics you focus on should align with your campaign objectives.