5 tips for online referral marketing
Satisfied customers and employees are a prerequisite for referral marketing. Companies should therefore first check what their target group is dissatisfied with and then eliminate the points of criticism. Only then should referral marketing measures be initiated.
1. presence: Which platforms are relevant for my company?
The Google business profile (formerly Google My Business; see also “5 tips for search engine optimization”) is particularly relevant for local businesses. Review platforms such as werkenntdenBesten or TrustPilot, online marketplaces such as Etsy or Ebay, industry-specific platforms such as MyHammer (for tradespeople) or Jameda (for doctors) as well as editorial, local magazines such as PRINZ or Coolibri can also be important for companies with regard to recommendation marketing. You can register for free on many platforms and maintain your entry yourself. In the case of editorially maintained websites, i.e. local magazines and newspapers in particular, you are dependent on the favor of the editors.
2. reaction: How should you react to ratings?
You should respond to reviews for several reasons: Firstly, politeness dictates that you thank the reviewer for a positive review, and secondly, you signal to the reviewer that you are interested in their opinion and take criticism seriously. The latter should not be an empty phrase. Instead, in the case of a negative review, you should check what went wrong and how you can avoid such an incident in the future.
Although users often express harsh and sometimes unjustified criticism on the internet, as a company you should always remain polite. You can write a counterstatement, justify your own position or defend your employees – but you should never strike back and blame the customer.
3. quantity: How do you increase the number of ratings?
A low number of reviews is not very meaningful and also carries the risk for companies that negative reviews will carry more weight. With Google, the number of reviews also has an impact on visibility. In local searches for a product or service, the quantity of reviews plays a role in addition to factors such as matching the search term and geographical distance. It is therefore important to actively encourage reviews.
If you are in contact with customers by email, you can ask for a review when sending an invoice, for example, and send a direct link to write a review. You can also provide an incentive in a personal conversation, place a QR code with the review link in the checkout area or print it on a promotional item. Reviews are sometimes combined with discount promotions (e.g. “Rate us on Google and receive a €25 discount on your next order”). However, this is legally problematic and can be seen as an unfair commercial act. If this scam is used, it can also lead to a loss of reputation (for example, if attention is drawn to this procedure in reviews). Buying reviews on the Internet is also a no-go.
4. website: How can you embed customer statements and reviews?
In earlier times, quotes from satisfied customers were placed on the website in simple text form. As such statements can easily be falsified by website operators and only satisfied customers are quoted, they do not appear particularly trustworthy. It is therefore somewhat better to at least add a photo to the quotes – although very few customers want to do this. For this reason, more and more craft businesses are starting to embed reviews from rating platforms. Depending on the platform and content management system, this is easier or more difficult. For the widely used WordPress system, there are plugins that make it easy to embed Google reviews and are free of charge. For other systems, there are plugin providers such as Trustmary or Elfsight, although their free versions have limitations.
5. personal recommendations: How do you turn customers into ambassadors?
“Customers recruit customers” campaigns already existed in the last millennium, but they are still relevant today (e.g. “Bring a friend to your next hairdressing appointment and you will both receive a €10 discount”). On social media, it is often a condition of participation in competitions that you have to tag a friend in the comment – this is also a form of referral marketing.
Completely digital “Customers recruit customers” campaigns are technically more complex, as they require the creation of individual voucher codes that are linked to customer and new customer data. They are therefore only suitable for companies with a high degree of digitalization.
