Referral marketing
Referral marketing means getting someone to recommend your business to others. This could be by word of mouth or an online referral programme, usually in exchange for a reward.
When customers become your brand ambassadors, the people they refer are more likely to be loyal and profitable.
Follow these best practices for referral marketing:
- Make your referral programme easy to find on your website.
- Offer the right rewards.
- Time it right – ask customers to refer soon after they buy.
- Be honest and transparent about your process.
- Consider if who is referring aligns with your brand and the values your customers relate to.
- Invest time and resources to plan your referral marketing and measure its success.
Email marketing
Email marketing usually involves sending:
- special offers
- free resources
- advertisements.
It’s most effective when you use it for personal messages to targeted groups.
Compared to social media marketing, email marketing is more trusted, is better at maintaining relationships, gets people spending more money and gives you more control.
Email marketing – Digital Resources
Choose the right email marketing service
The best email marketing service for your business is the one that helps you achieve your goals.
When you search for reviews on email marketing services, look for these features:
- templates you can customise easily
- ways to segment your mailing list so you can target marketing to specific groups
- automation that makes your marketing easier
- email opt-in forms to build into your website or online shop
- detailed analytics to see if your email marketing is working
- cheap or free providers.
Develop a plan
Every time you send an email, think about:
- what you want to achieve
- who you’re sending the email to
- how you’ll measure your success
- how often you are sending emails
- how customers can opt out.
Build a contact list
A contact list is a list of potential customers you can email and develop a relationship with. It’s easier to get someone to sign up for a newsletter than to get them to buy something, especially if they don’t know your business.
Your contact list will help you:
- turn interested people into buyers
- understand your customers
- know where customers live
- tell the right people about new products or services.
Build your contact list with existing and new customers, but make sure they agree to receive marketing updates. People who have agreed to stay on your contact list are interested in your products and services, so you can develop a better relationship with them.
These are some tips for building your mailing list:
- Offer a freebie – for example a promotion code, an e-book or a webinar.
- Make exclusive offers and promotions.
- Tell people what they get for signing up.
- Make it easy for people to sign up and give them plenty of chances to do so.
- Review your list often and remove addresses that bounce or don’t react.
- Add a ‘share’ button to encourage referrals.
Get permission
Customers must agree to be on your list. For email marketing to be legal, you must:
- tell people that by signing up they’re giving you permission to send marketing material
- give them an easy way to unsubscribe.
Respect customers’ privacy
- Only ask for information you need.
- Keep customers’ information safe.
- Tell people what you’ll do with their information.
- Only use it in the way you promised.
- Don’t give it to anyone else.
Use the Privacy Statement Generator to create a free privacy statement.
Privacy Statement Generator – Office of the Privacy Commissioner
Content marketing
Content marketing helps you reach people who ignore ads. It positions your business as an expert and builds trust. Content marketing involves giving customers information that’s useful to them.
Examples include:
- news commentary
- industry insights or research
- solutions to common problems
- updates on your business.
Make a plan
Making a plan helps you look professional, organised and consistent.
Your plan should cover:
- business goals
- target audience
- content format
- who in your team will work on what
- marketing channels
- publishing dates and production deadlines
- success criteria and how to measure it.
Choose your formats
The main formats for content marketing are:
- social media
- blogs
- videos
- podcasts.
These formats are good because they are immediate and allow people to engage easily. Choose the most popular platform with your audience.
Communicate clearly
Keep your content engaging by:
- delivering key information in the first paragraph, or within 5 seconds of video or audio
- using plain language
- using ‘I’ and ‘we’ to sound approachable
- organising your message logically
- checking privacy and copyright if reusing someone else’s photos
- ending with a call to action – for example, signing up for your newsletter.
Engaging customers with online chat
Chatting with customers keeps them engaged and makes them more likely to buy and spend more.
Make sure you have a way to know when someone sends a question so you can stay on top of it.
To get the most of your chat, limit where and when you show the chat box on your website. For example:
- when visitors have been on a webpage for a certain time
- on latest product pages
- when visitors click an ad or a marketing link
- when visitors are in countries that speak the same languages as your staff.
Consider:
- staffing your chat at peak times
- setting the chat to turn off automatically if you have more than one chat going at the same time
- a chatbot with automated replies.
Coordinate chat with marketing activities. For example, standby to answer chats when you have a promotion that’s likely to bring more visitors to your website.
Take time each week to check in on your chat and look for patterns. This may show:
- how visitors feel about your business
- what they need help with finding on your website
- what you could explain more clearly.
Making these improvements can reduce the number of basic enquiries. That means happier customers and more time for staff to focus on complex chat.
Learn more about