Speaker 1: 0:52

Hi Ed Dawson here, and, as I'm a bit busy at the moment and need a break, welcome to another one of my best of SEO is not that hard podcasts. These are the episodes from the back catalog that I think have the greatest hits and ones that are still relevant and provide great value for you. So, without further ado, let's get into the episode. Hello and welcome to. Seo is not that hard. I'm your host, ed Dawson, the founder of keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organise the questions people ask online. I'm an SEO developer, affiliate marketer and entrepreneur. I've been building and monetising websites for over 20 years and I've bought and sold a few along the way. I'm here to share with you the SEO knowledge, hints and tips I've built up over the years. Hello, welcome to episode 103 of SEO is not that hard, and today I'm going to be talking about referral programs. Now, this isn't affiliate programs, which is a one-way reward affiliate program, referral program. When you have an affiliate program, you pay somebody to promote your product or service and then they get a reward from you if anyone that they refer to you signs up. The person signing up doesn't generally get anything for that referral and the person who is doing the referring, the affiliate gets purely a cash bonus and that's it. Don't get anything else. So that's the traditional affiliate. That referral program is where you, instead of using affiliates, you use your own users, your own product users, your own service users as your marketing team. Essentially, what you're doing is you're giving your users the ability to easily share news and the word about your product, and so they can share this with their friends, their colleagues, and then, hopefully, push that message to those people who will then track back to your site, your product, and will sign up, become a customer, or sign up to a newsletter or whatever it is that you're trying to get them to do. So this is essentially, you know, utilising your user base as a marketing channel for you. Now, it's best to start with an example channel for you. Now, it's best to start with an example, and probably the most well-known example is that of Dropbox, who, in around about 2009, instigated a referral program where every Dropbox customer was given links they could share with their friends colleagues and if those friends signed up for Dropbox after someone's referral, then the person who did the referral got extra free storage space and the person signing up on their referral also got more storage space than the standard plan, all for free and forever. So they used this method so that their customers who are eager to get more storage space would share the message of Dropbox to their friends and then their friends would sign up and also get extra storage for both themselves and the person that referred them. Now what you'll notice with this example with examples of successful referral programs is one the reward is based upon the product rather than cash. So with Brockbox they're giving extra storage to people rather than just financial rewards, and also that it's two-sided, so that every um, every person who is referred, has an incentive to come back to sign up, because they also get something over and above um standards. So then if they would sign up from the referral from their friend, they would get extra storage compared to normal.

Speaker 1: 4:39

Now in the UK there's an energy supplier, octopus Energy, and I'm a customer of Octopus Energy and they have a referral program and for every person that an Octopus customer refers who becomes an Octopus customer themselves, both parties get £50 credit off their bill. So for every person I refer, I get £50 knocked off their bill. So if every person I refer, I get £50 knocked off my bill and the person who's been referred gets £50 knocked off their first bill. So everybody wins with that credit. It's a very successful programme. I use it quite a bit. I've saved a lot of money on my electricity by just referring people to Silent Froxopus. It helps that they're a great product.

Speaker 1: 5:16

But if it wasn't for the incentive to share, I'd be much less likely to share with people. Why I was so happy with them and this is where the referral marketing programs work really well is because a lot of customers who are happy will generally just reward you by continuing to be a customer. They might talk about you a little bit if you're lucky, but you've got to be really exceptional for people to go out and share off their own back, whereas a referral program will incentivize your happy customers to try and pass that message on to people they know, and it's an incentive for the people who have the message shared with them that there's a reward for them if they sign up. So it's just aligning the two incentives on both sides to to push the message out and then to for the message to be received on the other side. It's a well-known fact that people are much more likely to trust recommendations from personal friends and acquaintances than they are. Just, with the cost of advertising increasing all the time and the cost per acquisition increasing all the time. If you go through traditional channels, a referral program is actually a really low-cost way of getting your message out there and then a really low-cost way of getting your message out there and then a really low-cost way of then acquiring those customers. Now, if it works well, then you'll find that the people who you've been referred from, your customers, will then become referrers themselves, because A they know that there's a referral program, there's a reward program, they have an incentive to then go and share because that's how they've come in, so they've learned about the referral system straight away. So, yeah, it's a really, really valuable way of having your customer base become a marketing channel all of its own.

Speaker 1: 7:05

Now this subject came up to me, it's because we've been discussing in-house here at keywords people use whether to actually implement a referral program such as the ones we've discussed. We already have an affiliate program which works well for people who are experienced affiliates, who know what they're doing and know how to promote to a wider audience. But we've now got so many customers in our database and people using our product and it's a case of. Can these people actually help evangelize for our service? I mean, we know they like the service because they come back and use it a lot, but what would it? What do we need to nudge them um to make um more noise about us with other people in the industry? I mean, it's a fact that people in the industry know other people in the industry, so there's always going to be people there who they will be able to refer to. I mean, it's a fact. It's the same with B2B and B2C. B2c, obviously, you're going to refer to your friends and family, business to consumer, that is, and business to business you're going to be referring amongst colleagues and people in your wider. So we're still trying to um decide whether it's the right thing to do for us and whether we um have the right sort of bring together the right incentives to make it work for people.

Speaker 1: 8:25

So if anyone is out there who's listening here, as a keywords people use customer I'd love to hear feedback on whether you think this might be a good idea and what kind of incentives you think might work. Would you share Keywords People Use with more people and across more channels if you A had an incentive to do so, and B, it was made easy to do so. So it's like a one-click to share to Facebook, or it's a one-click to share to Facebook, or it's a one click to share to Twitter, or you've got an easy code that you can share, an easy link that you can share with people via email. I'd love to hear feedback on whether you think it's something we should or shouldn't do. Do, get in touch. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom that's podcast at keywordspeopleusecom or contact us via the contact form on keywords people use or on the little live chat on keywords people use.

Speaker 1: 9:16

You can get hold of us in a whole manner of ways. I'd really love to hear if you've got any thoughts on that. Um, so yeah, that's the topic today referral marketing, because it's in my brain. Um, do, let me know what you think and do let me know if you think we should do it at keywords people use. Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that if you'd like a personal demo of our tools at keywords people use, that you can book a free, no obligation, one-on-one video call with me where I'll show you how we can help you level up your content by finding and answering the questions your audience actually have. You can also ask me any SEO questions you have. You just need to go to keywordspeopleusecom slash demo where you can pick a time and date that suits you for us to catch up Once again. That's keywordspeopleusecom slash demo and you can also find that link in the show notes of today's episode. Hope to chat with you soon.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Thanks for being a listener. I really appreciate it. Please subscribe and share. It really, really helps. Seo is not that hard. It's brought to you by keywordspeopleusecom, the place to find and organize the questions people ask online. See why thousands of people use us every day. Try it today for free at keywordspeopleusecom to get an instant hit of more SEO tips. Then find the link to download a free copy of my 101 quick SEO tips in the show notes of today's episode. If you want to get in touch, have any questions, I'd love to hear from you. I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter. You can email me at podcast at keywordspeopleusecom. Bye for now and see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard.