The Secret Sauce For a Successful Sales Promotion Campaign For Special Days
Be it the New year, Valentine’s Day, Republic Day or any celebratory day and most marketing teams would hound on the opportunity as soon as possible! The hounding does not stop there, in case you were wondering; it is further extended through several tactical strategies deployed by loyalty program companies in order to increase their sales. Companies often bank on these special occasions such as so and so days, international observatory days, etc to pump up their sales and build a connection with the clients. It’s also a great time when loyalty companies generate higher sales and convert potential buyers into loyal customers.
Just like you can’t repeat a dress to every fancy event, every occasion must have different sales promotions planned accordingly. “One size fits all” does not quite settle in, in such cases!
We’re sharing insight on the secret sauce for a successful sales promotion campaign for special days.
1. Keep it personal
The more you personalize your loyalty program, the easier it is to get a customer’s attention. The attention of your customer must not sustain only for a short span and to increase the same, your loyalty programs must deploy rewards and incentives that are specific to the special day it’s being launched on. The use of artificial intelligence can help with predicting your target audience’s preferences and choices.
2. To the point
Introducing a point system is a perfect strategy to utilize during festivals or special days. Encouraging your customers to buy during a specific celebratory day would fetch them a specific number of points. Each point represents a certain percentage of discount. These points are then rewarded to the customer in order to motivate them to shop again from your brand during the span of the special day’s offer. An accumulation of these reward points helps them purchase more by paying lesser. This point-wise reward system works great during Valentine’s day, Mother’s day, etc.
3. Exclusivity
A great way to ensure that you have a successful loyalty program that guarantees you with immediate sales hike and long-term customers is to please the existing ones. Offering your existing customers helps in getting traction and an increase in your sales. This also adds to the word-of-mouth marketing. When you market your loyalty programs exclusively to the members, it ties in a sense of exclusivity and allows them to feel special. Knowing that some offers are exclusive to member creates a positive feeling amongst them.
4. Time is ticking
Making your customers believe that the time is ticking encourages them to act on an urgency. Validating your offers to a specific time plays an important role in making them feel the need to utilize the opportunity before the time runs out. It automatically aids in the sales growing manifold.
5. Charming non-members
One fantastic way to rope in customers during special occasions is by projecting the benefits that members receive when they enroll in specific loyalty programs. Enticing offers showcased for non-members drives more attention home. Inquisitive buyers will enquire and subsequently enroll in the program if the incentives match their requirements.
Loyalty programs must evolve and customize itself in order to stay in tandem with what the customer wants. The simplest way of boosting your loyalty program is by utilizing the frenzy that naturally occurs during any celebratory day and package it in a way that lures target audiences with ease. Value-added loyalty programs are one such way to capture buyers who return for more.
Top 10 Sales Promotion Trends for 2019
A company’s success or popularity is measured by several means but the way it performs in sales is one of the most important ways of gauging its success. Every brand’s value or rate of success is often dependent on its sales promotions and how they project themselves to their audiences and hence, it is an integral part of creating a successful brand. Sales promotions are the process through which a company or brand pitches their products or services to their target audience. This often consists of different promotional methods such as online marketing, direct sales, public relations, advertising, and several others. The use of media and non-media communications directed towards the audience for a pre-determined time frame helps generate customer demand and inquisitiveness amongst the people leading to an increase in their overall sales.
Sales trends are often fast-changing as the target audience and their taste keeps evolving with time. The strategies that worked wonders for a company at one point might stand null after a point and is highly dependent on the way or mode you choose to deploy for your product’s sales promotion. Some trends, however, have withstood the test of time and are a sure-shot sales promotion trend and the trends enlisted are ones that are likely to stay and emerge in the year 2019:
Buy One Get One Free
You may have heard plenty about this trend but the truth is that it is here to stay! Nothing sells better than another product of the same kind for free! It’s an easy but sure-shot way to engage and bring customers to buy your product. ‘Free’ is often an eye-wash but a powerful one as the strategy is to hike the price of the product and project it in a way that allows customers to believe that they are at a profitable position!
E-retailing
Gone are the days where you receive pamphlets of different brands selling customers their products at great offers as most of the buyers are now buying things virtually. So, it is imperative that you shift your sales tactics to the virtual sector as well. This gives brands a greater reach as the targeting can be narrowed further down which implies that sales are likely to increase automatically.
Social media influencers
The world is on the web now and so should you! Utilizing someone’s popularity to strengthen and sell your goods and services is likely to help both parties grow. Through promotions of your product on platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, influencers are likely to generate a healthy, organic growth for both, your brand and theirs. A collaboration between the two parties helps enhance the overall traffic on the influencer’s account and the brand they are collaborating with.
Testers and Samples
Apart from allowing your customers try and sample your products and services for free, having your brand advertise and promote in cultural events, fests, and exhibitions, giving out free samples or freebies aid in enhancing your customer’s loyalty towards your brand. It gives them an assurance of the genuineness and authenticity of the products or services that you may be offering. This automatically builds a stronger base for your brand to remarket to these customers.
Sales promotion trends that have ruled the market and are likely to build more rage in the year 2019 are listed above. Many more trends are sure to emerge in the year to follow as the way customers perceive brands are ever-changing and are constantly evolving and to keep up with the fast-paced audience, the way a brand sells themselves will need to constantly upgrade.
Digital Sales promotions Ideas & trends 2019
The most crucial way of reaching out to the target audience for any brand or company is through advertising and promotions. Every company relies on promotional techniques of various kinds for the success of their services or products and marketing via digital media has become the most effective and efficient means of promotion for brands at this point of time. As buyers are frequently distrusting of advertising and marketing strategies, it has become all the more critical for brands to penetrate into their target audience.
The audience to which advertisements and commercials are directed to have become more aware of matters and inquisitive as well, which has further pushed the companies and brands to constantly keep creating and innovating in order to stay at pace with the fast-growing consumers whose taste change at a rapid pace.
We’ve curated a list of trends and ideas that are employed for digital sales promotion by different companies. These are trends and ideas that are likely to appear or have already helped brands in promoting their products and services:
1. Authentic and Real Content
It has become imperative to go in the path that supports and projects only authentic and real content. Consumers are no longer hooked onto things that appear pre-concocted, lack reality or are “clickbait” content. The more raw and real you keep your advertising or promotions, the easier it is likely to get through to your target audience. Influencer marketing is one of the trendiest ways to gather people’s attention towards a certain product or brand. The element of “human trust” adds to the brand value and a real testimony helps them connect to the brand better than a highly edited video made for the purpose of selling. The idea is to sell an emotion through pointing out to subsequent aspects of the product one wants to sell. This indirect approach seems to be working for several brands already and is set to be one of the biggest trends of 2019!
2. Interactive Ads
Ads that do not sell products, sell the most number of products! The logic is strange but in reality, the lesser descriptive your promotion is, the higher the attention your audience would pay. Ads in the forms of interactive videos where the protagonist of the ad talks directly to you cause customers to believe that they are being made to be a part of the scenario. Ads that require customer responses or are in the form of a poll helps increase the interest and engagement of the audience resulting in a better sales scenario.
3. Voice Search is the thing!
With automated voice search devices such as Alexa and Google Assistant, people have become all the more dependent on these applications and gadgets to help them do tasks. The ability to make a device such as a phone or a tablet recognize and respond to your voice and help you with your browsing is incredible and can help marketers reach out to their audience by sectioning or categorizing them into specific keywords so that their ads appear on the top when a person voice searches for a product or service.
4. World of Social Media
A person’s presence is felt when they are doing things in different places and their information travels in the form of word-of-mouth and that’s exactly how brands aim to reach out to more and more audiences. They are keen on penetrating into the different outlets of social media based on their type of goods or services and after analyzing what is best for their brand image. Social media can help you brand become visible and highly approachable as it allows you to spread out and cater to different audiences based on which platform you use. Live streaming, contests, quizzes, giveaways, they’re all strategies to amplify your sales through digital media. For you, the choices are endless as you can promote your products and create brand loyalty on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr, LinkedIn and several other platforms!
5. Visual Search
We all know that artificial intelligence and machine-learning is speeding up most technological processes with each day and brands and companies just have to hop onto that wagon to stay at pace with the fast evolving consumers! Visual search is helpful and is likely to boom in the coming years as it is the basic concept of converting visual information into text-based data. This will not only help marketers make their products more visible but also help people learn about different and new brands through the process.
Consumers and brands are always changing and all of it happens in tandem with the scientific advancements made by researchers. An amalgamation of technology, digital marketing ideas and brand positioning, sales of any goods and services is imperative! These trends and ideas are just a few ways of enhancing the sales promotion through the new media but there are plenty other interesting ways in which, brands and advertisers can make better sales!
Importance of Emotion Based Marketing Campaigns
Emotions prompt our actions according to the famous psychologist Daniel Goleman. The customer buying behaviour is too motivated by their emotions. Consumers no longer want products to be pushed upon them. Marketing campaigns have to be more humane and sensitive towards the sentiments of the people. Emotional appeal advertising aids in achieving the same. Marketing campaigns need to be redefined so that the customer’s heart meets his wallet and there is a synchronisation between the two. These emotions have to be tapped at the right time and rightly guided to the social media and other public visibility outlets to gain the movement of customers towards the brand.
What are the Diffrent types Of Emotion Involved in Marketing Campaign
1. Positive emotions
Positive emotions provoke good feelings about the brand in the minds of the customers. Mostly people associate themselves easily with high-value lifestyle products which increase their status in the society. Apple did a business storytelling around the iPhone before launching it. When they launched iPhone mobiles, it became a hallmark of style statement from teenagers to young adults to all age groups. Today, most Americans prefer buying iPhone over other mobiles. This is an example of emotional marketing campaign driven by positive emotions like joy & acceptance which are associated with the purchase of iPhone.
2. Negative emotions
Negative emotions on the advertisements display the harsh realities of life. An anger or disgust emotion is usually used to evoke thought provoking feelings in the minds of the consumers in order to spread awareness and encourage donations for those in need. ‘Save a child’ advert was used to display the effect of wars especially on the children.
3. Surprise emotions
Advertisements of Insurance companies tease the fear or surprise element in the lives of the people. The fear of the unknown and growing risks of deaths due to health ailments & accidents is strong enough to coerce people to buy life/health insurance to protect their dependants against difficult times. Instead of distracting customers from chief information, these emotional marketing campaigns should speak about the brand and attract the customers in order to boost quality leads.
4. Emotional Content Marketing
The CSR activities are an excellent example of emotional branding. It increases the customer participation by involving them along with the brands to carry these activities. Stories connected with the event when told reflect on the values business stands for, such as fighting for a social cause or combating environmental issues. This emotional storytelling about the event or activity helps to evoke empathy for the brand. Moreover, this reaches still larger audience especially middle class buyers.
5. Run time for these marketing campaigns
The run time for the emotional marketing campaigns has to be optimum. While it achieves its desired purpose, one cannot overlook the fact that people start to construe a different meaning when the same campaign is running for too long. They either get overwhelmed or bored. Similarly running it for too short time will not make enough time available to let them associate with the emotions exhibited through the message of the advertisement.
5 Ways To Drive Sales Promotion Through Social Media
Sales promotion aims to increase the sales of the products or services to customers or clients. Routinely it targets at the low moving products or high consumption products/services. The process initiation utilizes distinct media and non-media methods.
Social media is very effective in reaching larger audience and there are 5 key methods by which social media can drive sales promotions for your business.
1. Understand the audience
As a rule of the thumb, understanding the buyer persona is imperative to gain insights into what the customers are searching for. Social media offers interactive platform where millions of users share their opinions. An informal approach sought after increasing the scope of trust building within the customers. The click through rate increases and hence greater conversions as users now wish to seek brands who have gained there trust and they now want to visit the business website again and again. Besides, being well informed about the customers’ buying behaviour prevents the businesses from getting tempted to bombard wrong advertisements at the wrong occasions.
Once you know the buyer behaviour, the next step is to approach the audience through targeted advertisements on product promotions.
2. Target the audience
Advertisements on social media suggest discounts and offers on the products or services. It conveys the offers to a substantial number of customers in a jiffy. However, not every customer bears similar interests. The social media is inundated with various advertisements every single day and directing the business advertisements to the right audience is essential. Targeting the right audience based on various parameters like demographic, region, ethnicity etc. keeps the sales promotion strategy on the right track.
3. Choose the right platform
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms have varied features and each can be used to drive promotions. Linkedin is a professional development platform and mainly limited to professional communication. It is less likely to be effective for product discounts for customers, albeit it is constructive for B2B promotions .The Dynamic ad option particularly is a direct way of actively seeking engagements from individuals as well as businesses. Pinterest is well accepted among women groups. The sales promotion strategy should be aligned with the basic offerings of the platform and the sort of audience virtually active on it.
4. Perform Competitor analysis
As almost all businesses reach out to their customers through social media, it is easier to understand the competitors to ensure that the business does not lag behind the competition. This creates awareness of the opponent’s approach. While keeping this in mind, businesses can devise better creative methods. Additionally, one can track the seasonal and off-season trends for introducing the promotions on social media to prevent the clash of offers.
5. Schedule the promotions
Social media monitoring tools help to monitor and control the response to the promotion ads. This was never achievable with offline marketing methods. Advertisement posts have to be timed according to the peak usage hours to ensure maximum returns on the social media promotional efforts. The seasonal promotions have to be in congruence with the real trends which can be tapped online through social media.
The Inevitable Bond Between Social Media and Loyalty Programs
Social media has become one of the most important aspects of digital marketing today as it has been influencing all of our lives in one or the other way. If you are not using it to promote your brand, then you have been missing a lot of easy and affordable marketing opportunities. It is one of the most easiest and useful digital platforms to increase business visibility.
Loyalty programmes have started using this platform to leverage their customers since most of communications happen over mobile phones these days. The response and actions have become faster than earlier since it’s a direct approach to hit the right customer at the right time. People receive offers as pop-ups right on their phone screens that allows them to send a response quickly. According to a consumer survey done by Deloitte Consultancy, 61% per cent of participants checks their mobile phones first after 5 minutes of waking up every morning. This is isn’t surprising since more than 31% of the global population are connected to each other through social media. No matter where you are, thousands of people are right there for you to hear what you say on your social media pages.
As social media continues to permeate every aspect of the shopping experience, it’s quickly developing into a tool that is all about building relationships with your customers. Each time your customers check their social media profiles, they get the opportunity to communicate directly with your brand. Count it from direct messages, reviews to refer a friend, your customers can interact with your brand 24/7 through a variety of social media platforms.
This proves that social media plays a huge role in reviving your customer retention policies. So what better way to engage your target audience than by integrating your social media strategy with your rewards program? Customer loyalty solutions allows customers to connect to you easily and also rewards customers who buy from you frequently. It encourages customers to buy your products or use your service regularly. The encouragement comes in the form of discounts,free products, rebates or any other form of appreciation .
Brands use loyalty programs to strengthen their relationships with customers, increase in sales numbers and most importantly turning a prospective customer into a frequent buyer. A loyalty management program must ensure that the services meet the needs of the customers.
With so many users all over the world, social media is the ultimate resource to help you create curiosity about your rewards program on a global scale. You just need to determine on which platform your target is most likely o interact. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and Snapchat are adding new features to their platforms everyday and these changes bring countless number of ways to communicate and express the value of your loyalty program through an amalgamation of creative and visual content.
How Mobile Phones Are Changing Traditional Promotional Strategies
Surfing internet on a desktop or laptop is a thing of the past. Today, smartphones have taken the concept of surfing internet to a whole new level. And thanks to its immense progression, people are connected to each other anywhere and everywhere now.
Gone are the days of traditional promotional strategies on newspapers, magazines and traditional electronic media such as television and radio. Nowadays, people checks for Google recommendation before visiting a restaurant. Most of websites adapting mobile apps and Google inc. accepting only mobile-friendly websites. And with this progression, traditional promotional strategies slowly started getting obsolete. In this growing digital age, planning mobile-friendly marketing strategies is a must since it’s has become the most convenient and cost-friendly way to reach your target audience.
It’s Fast and effective:
Mobile marketing strategies are comparatively easy to execute since it’s less time consuming and easily accessible. easy to plan and so the campaigns become easy to execute. More and more devices have been becoming user-friendly and with the advent usage of internet, companies are able to connect with their customers directly with texts and calls. Through mobile promotional strategies, a business gets engaged with the right consumers who want to interact with their brand. The right set of customers receive messages, forwards it to their friends and creates an easy brand awareness.
A personalized approach
Brands establish personalized relationships with their customers through mobile marketing. Customers can choose and personalize what they receive on their phones and allow only those offers that matters to them. Most brands promote offers through their respective apps and customers access them whenever they check their phones since no one has time to go through their mails anymore.And this is the most easiest way out there to get direct engagement with their target audience.
Also,many customer provide their feedback on social media and other e-commerce platforms and this helps the companies to decide on their future course of action.
Impact of Social media
Companies should take social media as the first option to consider while carrying out any promotional activity. The impact of social media is so huge that every small or big business houses have started handling their social media profiles seriously. From branding to customer engagement, consumer feedback to interaction, social media has it all. Consumers can get all required information about their favourite brand by clicking on a single pop-up on their mobile screens.
In a nutshell, it’s impossible for a brand to expect a successful branding exercise without promoting it digitally. Planning your strategies according to the feedback data plays a vital role in carrying out a successful branding exercise.
Father’s Day Marketing Ideas
Despite it being a slightly low-key celebratory day, it has gained enough popularity on the social media at least. And hence, capturing a huge section of audience becomes quite easy on different social media platforms. Here are a few ways, you could cater to your employees/audience and market the idea of Father’s day to them:
Promote on Email
Irrespective of your company being the type that celebrates such days or not, or if you don’t specifically cater to the type of audience that does, promoting in-house events related to the day or events that are in correspondence to the same can be promoted within your target audience. Building up on catchy headlines/subjects for such promotional emails are highly likely to attract greater audience.
Team Up
It can be a significantly healthy and fruitful idea to have your company approach local restaurants, eateries, bars and even fitness centers and partner with them and host vents or promote deals and offers that cater to the audience who are likely to be attracted by the same. Some offers such as ‘Bring your dad & the beer’s on us’ or ‘Like father-like son fitness challenge’, etc can prove to quiet a hit amongst younger generations.
Rule on Social Media
Having set up a contest specifically promoting the bond between fathers & children can be a great idea too. Running a contest that encourages people to post selfies of themselves with their father or having to write the funniest incident they shared with their children/father can also turn out to be a successful strategy to grab attention. Having the winners announced & distributing a promotional voucher or even a freebie of your own brand can do the company a whole world of good.
Spoilt for choice
Making your audience/customers part-take in events organised by you that celebrates father’s day & having fun games and rules set up for the same could be quite interesting. Partnering with fashion brands or clothing lines can also be an off-beat option but still quite impressive, though mothers are more likely to be interested in the shopping part, but that’s where it gets better. Your sale/event can have all the members of the family invited and participate in a game that requires them to select pieces of clothing each & the father gets to pick his favorite which can be given to him as a prize or at a discounted rate, etc.
These are some of the fun, interesting and practical ways to market Father’s Day to people in a more economical, interactive and impressive way for a wide range of audience.
Give your brand the edge it needs with RewardPort. Get end to end solutions for all your sales promotion needs! Team up with the best in the business to to make your most loyal customers feel rewarded with innovative loyalty programs that truly make a mark.
Top 5 Trends That Will Drive Sales in 2018
Sales – The word don’t go well with many of us. It has the tendency to pull our attention towards a lot of never ending hard work to attain a certain amount of desired result. Not sure how many of us would agree on this but every single job is somehow related to sells. We are either getting paid because someone is selling products made by us or we are selling some products made by someone else. Believe us or not but sales are as important as the air we breathe. And with every passing year, it has been becoming more progressive.
What’s in store for sells in 2018? Videos replacing text in mails, increased focus on sales training, the rise of micro influencer, messages replacing calls – there are many things to look forward. Let’s find out.
1. Automation, AI, and Machine Learning
Advancements such as email intelligence will make sales process more efficient. Big data is slowly changing the way business decisions were made earlier. There are advanced machine learning training that works on success outcome data and can help train sales development representatives(SDRs). Their conversations can be recorded, translated, transcribed and presented to their managers. With so much new technology merging into sales, it will be possible to figure out metric-centric selling to analyze each sales based role and turn focus into more customer centric approaches . Bosch have sensors embedded in their washers and dyers. And they can actually alert the service centre when some application is not functioning.
2. Rise of subject matter experts
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are changing the way business and consumers used to interact with each other. Modern customers don’t communicate through traditional mediums of communication when social media revolutions are in full swing. These days consumers check your social media pages first and then goes to your website. And if you don’t know your pages inside out, chances are you losing a big number of your prospective customers. SMEs, such as digital marketing specialists, can help you with deep insights and value selling. They are worth hiring and they can provide you a deep understanding of the solution landscape.
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Most of businesses have started taking more customer centric approach in selling their products. The concept of CRM aims at gaining long-term oriented customers and it’s hugely technology driven. The primary focus of CRM is on customers rather than products. For example, bonus points, collective numbers and cash back options.
4. Videos replacing texts on mails
Video prospecting emails have been used in the B2C communication for a while now but marketers never used them in a terribly targeted manner. AI is helping B2C sellers to send video-based sales emails to get through hard-to-reach decision makers working in SME and business houses. Marketers using videos to split-test among a vast list of subscribers or landing page visitors.
5. More focus on micro-influencers
After a few targeted aggressive selling from top influencers, advertisers have started to niche down and find more customer centric approaches to get products in front of consumer’s eyes. Big influencers are always concerned about who and what they recommend since they don’t want to turn off any of their followers. Thus, they leave the doors opened for micro-influencers to enter.
It is still early to predict the upcoming future since technology is ever progressing. But whatever it will be, staying updated with new updates and trends should be the main focus for every organization to drive sales. Using traditional methods would be a failure if you don’t implement AI and machine learning in analysis. With social media platforms introducing new features such as live video streaming, and video carousel ads, the competition will become more intense.
Top benefits of customer retention
‘Customer Retention’ or ‘Customer Acquisition’, these are the two conflicting ideas marketers face when deciding what is more important. And with so much importance given to ROI, marketers overlook the reason of just why are they in business- that is to serve the customers. Old school marketers used a multichannel wide net marketing strategy to reach out to more number of prospects, however much like the definition of this strategy has changed, so has this mindset developed. Multichannel marketers now see that it’s about using different touchpoints to interact with customers and create a more personalized experience.
As alluring as customer acquisition may seem, the truth is that it is important to invest time, effort and resources in maintaining a relationship once the customers are on board. Customer loyalty and brand loyalty initiatives facilitate companies to retain customers, beginning from the first contact one has with the company and endures throughout the period of the relationship.
In this article, we’ll make the case for customer retention and explain why it deserves the same amount of focus as acquiring new ones:
Low Marketing Cost
Acquiring new customers requires a lot of resources, efforts, and expenses. By focusing the marketing strategies on existing customers, customers who show a demonstrable interest in the product and the willingness to buy increases the chances of converting them and making a sale. This not only significantly reduces the ad spend but also is a chance to showcase the brand’s commitment to rewarding the customer’s loyalty.
Loyal Customers Boost Sales
Loyal customers have a relationship with the company and trust the brand more than new customers do. Since a current customer has been with the brand for some time and has experienced the product or service first-hand, they’re more likely to upgrade or make a repeat purchase. Also, loyal customers are better at word of mouth and so your customer acquisition costs decrease.
Improve Brand Image
Brand Image is the customer’s interpretation of the product and services of a brand. A positive brand image helps businesses acquire new customers, cross-sell and upsell and reduces marketing cost. One of the best things about customer retention is that the brand gets an idea of who the customers are, what they want and the data collected facilitates in creating personalized and targeted promotions to maximize chances of success. It’s impossible to overstate the vitality of a brand profile, as prospects connect with it directly and build a relationship.
Retention equals acquisition
A price cannot be put on customer loyalty and can even result in the further acquisition of customers for the brand. Word of mouth or WOM is not only a free advertising tool but possibly one of the most credible forms of advertising. It’s a fact, that customers will talk and prospects will listen. Happy customers will give positive referrals will which in turn increase the profitability of the company. Acquisition can also be increased through retention by giving incentives to existing customers when they refer the brand to family, friends, and acquaintances.
In today’s competitive market, it is really difficult to differentiate your brand from its competitors. Arguably the most important driver of a company’s good health is customer satisfaction and retention. A loyal and satisfied customer is more important than one who is not. While closing new business might be exhilarating, your company won’t truly advance and grow without retaining your current customers as well. The bottom line is to not lose sight of the existing customers in pursuit of new ones and it’ll definitely pay off.
Selling Through Referrals- A Powerful Strategy to Grow Revenue
There are a number of sales strategies, but it is no secret that selling through referrals is one of the most effective technique to acquire new business. In simple words out a referral is a sales lead that comes from a customer, basically an intermediary. Sales referrals help bridge the gap between the product and the referred product and hence they provide great value to the brand.
Why Referrals? – The Only Leads That Count
If you love sales, stop the time-wasting, irrelevant, unproductive, frustrating prospecting activities you think you should be doing. Stop sorting leads into cold, warm, and hot. There’s only one kind of lead that should be in your pipeline. Only one kind of lead that counts. Only one kind of lead that management cares about. Only one kind of lead you should care about.
That’s hot leads—the kind you source through referrals from trusted allies.
The Returns – The ROI of Referrals
Every seller agrees that referral selling is, hands down, the most effective prospecting strategy. When you prospect through referrals:
- You bypass the gatekeeper and score meetings with decision-makers every time.
- Your prospects are pre-sold on your ability to deliver results.
- You’ve already earned trust and credibility with your prospects.
- You convert prospects into clients at least 50 percent of the time (usually more than 70 percent).
- You land clients who become ideal referral sources for new business.
- You score more new clients from fewer leads (because all of your leads are qualified).
- You ace out your competition.
The Process
1. Start a monthly advocate program
Once a year, do a customer genealogy to see who or what was responsible for all the additions to your customer base. Odds are, you’ll find between 5-20 primary referral sources, ranging from current clients to friends, partners and suppliers.
Make an “advocate list” of these active referral sources, and develop a concrete plan to keep in touch with them on a regular basis.
2. Develop a culture of referrals
Another approach that can help you develop a steady stream of referrals is to ask questions that benefit your customer first. One Engage customer doubled her referrals simply by asking the following client-focused question at the end of every client meeting:
“Now… how can I help you?”
The Practice – Referral Selling is Common Sense, but Not Common Practice
The business case for referrals is loud and clear:
- Decision makers will always meet with a referral from someone they know and trust.
- If your competition gets to the decision-maker first, you’re out of the game.
- When you get the referral introduction, you win.
No other sales or marketing strategy delivers such powerful, predictable results. Yet, referrals are the missing link in every company’s business-development strategy.
Ninety-five percent of companies do not have a written referral-selling strategy, written weekly referral goals, referral-selling skills, accountability for results, or a system to track and measure referrals.
It’s time to make referrals the way you sell. Fill your pipeline with only HOT referral prospects, and you’ll never have to worry about hitting your numbers again.
Digital Rewards in Today’s World
Brands have been utilizing loyalty and rewards program within their customer community to keep their customers happy and well away from competition. From loyalty cards, discount coupons to scratch & win offers, brands have been using rewards as an incentive to create a customer base and also keep them loyal to the brand.
In the new digital age, such rewards have been upgraded. Digital rewards are the new ‘in’ thing that bring many advantages to both the customer and the brand. From making it easier for the customers to get their rewards to spreading the word about a brand, digital rewards have given the marketplace a new tool to expand brand reach and loyalty.
Digital Rewards are Both Diverse and Abundant. These are a few up-and-coming rewards that are catching the eye of the marketers:
1. E-Gifts
According to a study by Mercator Advisory Group, it was found that in 2015 most of the money spent on gift cards was redeemed as eGifts. With the heavy increase in digital buying, it makes more sense for brands to motivate customers through eGifts.
Moreover, brands can also use eGifts to rewards employees to acknowledge their hard work on projects or commemorate special occasions. This builds the confidence in the employees and helps with brand loyalty.
2. Coupons and codes
With greater numbers opting for online buying, it makes sense for brands to give their offers and discounts in the virtual world. Coupons and codes that are sent exclusively to loyal customers makes them feel special and helps retain them.
3. Mobile wallets
Incentives like cash backs and discounts, mobile wallets have taken online marketing by storm. Creating a niche where customers are incentivised for their buying behaviour has only increased the appeal of mobile wallets.
Benefits of Digital Rewards Program
1. Increases the brand’s value
The power of digital rewards is that it gives the customer a sense of empowerment. With every amount they save or a prize they win, it helps build an image of a brand that it is not in business for the profits. It builds the image of a brand that genuinely cares about its customers.
2. Provides the customers with more choices
The brand gives the customers the option of choosing the kind of rewards they want. Either it would be as loyalty points that can be redeemed for discounts or gifts or in the form of promotional codes that are given to an exclusive customer community.
3. Customised rewards
Each reward program is made around the customer, their preferences, previous encounters with the brand and their redemption history. This makes the program more relevant and useful to the customer.
4. Instant gratification
Unlike the days when one had to send a letter to a brand with a token to get a gift, the digital rewards program helps both brands and customers get instant rewards. As soon as a customer provides a preferred action (like, tweet), the customer is provided with their reward. It needs less effort from the customer too.
5. Get rewarded anytime, anywhere
There is no limit to the application of digital rewards. People can be rewarded just by signing up for a newsletter and this can be done from anywhere. Because of the high mobility of the digital market, people can redeem their rewards just about anywhere.
6. Brings positive interaction between brand and customer
Everybody likes free gifts. Digital rewards help people collect more rewards doing what they do the most nowadays – being a part of the social media sphere. Reward programs also help in spreading the news about a brand since people share the newest offers with their friends and family.
7. Incentive to be a loyal customer
With the reward point application, people tend to stay loyal customers to get greater rewards over time. But the rewards need to be good enough to keep the customers interested.
8. Helps engage on the social media
Facebook and Twitter are where most of a brand’s customer base is situated. Potential customers also reside in the digital sphere. Having current customers talk about a brand on their social media helps in increasing exposure and value. Digital rewards do just that by giving customers freebies when they engage with the brand on social media.
9. Cost-effective
The cost of setting up a digital rewards platform takes less money than the traditional card-based loyalty programs. It is also easier for customers to check-up on their points and look for other offers that are available.
As can be seen, ‘digital rewards’ is the new mantra to creating a brand identity that is more personal and effective.
With RewardPort programs, your brand gets higher visibility among its customers.