As we mentioned before, referral marketing is one of the most powerful ways to gain new business. With that said, there are lots of different types of referrals, including customer-to-seller referrals, peer-to-peer sales, and business-to-business (B2B) referrals. In this post, you will find out how they all add up to your B2b referral marketing statistics.
As you can probably tell, gathering quality referral information is very important to succeed in referral marketing. Luckily, with the right tools, this process is quite easy!
There are many free and paid apps and software solutions that can help you track your referrers and get valuable data. Some even allow you to connect all these sources and analyze the information automatically!
In this article, we will discuss some b2b referral marketing statistics and how you can use them to improve your business.
Who is more likely to refer a friend
As mentioned earlier, your business’s success depends heavily upon word-of-mouth advertising. When someone else tells their friends about you or what they experienced with you, that can be very powerful exposure for your company!
By creating an engaged community, you will get people talking and generating interest in your services or products. This will create traffic for your site, and potentially new clients.
The easiest way to start building up this community is through referral marketing. By offering rewards for referrals, you can easily inspire action and results.
Here are some tips for achieving successful b2b referral marketing:
1) Create incentives that appeal to individuals
What if everyone who referred a friend received a free book? What if every person who signed up to your website got a discount coupon?
People like getting discounts so offering such rewards can work well. Make sure to target these offers to your market – people not involved in the industry may feel overwhelmed.
2) Use social media to promote it
Using social networking sites to advertise your referral program is another effective method. Post pictures of the reward item and include coupons or links to registration pages.
Add comments asking how many people you know that could use the product and ask them to try out for a chance to win it.
Sample B2b referral marketing messages
Messages that make you feel bad for referring others to a product or service are not effective referral marketing strategies.
If your competitors are using clever messaging, then making similar appeals may be successful in creating referrals for their products. The trick is to find creative ways to emphasize how much of a good job they do while still seeming appealing.
It’s also important to remember that people who refer friends will probably not advertise for your services, so it’s unlikely that anyone you know would be swayed by such messages.
However, there are some things you can do to inspire loyalty from past users through word-of-mouth recommendations. Here are some tips that can help you achieve this goal.
Tests to determine your target market
A growing number of companies are finding ways to tap into the power of referral marketing through social media. Companies that offer business services or products often need to know if their potential customers already have similar experiences to theirs before they will invest in their product or service.
By creating an online community of people who share your product or service, you create a way for them to advertise for you. By advertising on their behalf, these loyal individuals get credit for bringing in new clients!
Tests exist to make sure your targeted audience is truly representative of the general population. These tests look at several characteristics to see if there’s a significant difference between what you want and how people outside the industry typically feel.
If there is not a substantial discrepancy, then your test has failed and you must reevaluate whether this market is really appropriate for your brand.
Ways to improve your B2b referral marketing
As seen with our earlier statistics, making referrals is one of the most powerful ways to grow your business. But before you ask someone to do that for you, you need to know how to incentivize them!
As we discussed in our article about reasons why people get discouraged from referral marketing, offering poor rewards can be a major turnoff. If you are asking someone to do something for you, they will expect you to treat them well!
That is what makes it hard for people to refer you for things- you usually have to make an effort to win their trust first.
Offering a bonus
One of the most common ways to reward someone for doing something is to offer them or give them something as a prize. This can be for doing an activity, trying out your product or service, or completing a task.
Prizes are very popular because they create positive emotions in recipients. By giving away something that you want to keep hold of, they add incentive to do the activity (or whatever it is).
This article will talk more about rewards and gift marketing strategies, along with some examples.
Offering a product trial
An increasingly popular way to market for business is offering a free sample of your products or services. A common term for this is a product try-on, or trial.
By giving away some of your goods, you are creating awareness of your brand, and generating interest in buying more of it later.
This is very valuable marketing information as now people know what you have and who you supply them with, which can help establish your brand image.
Furthermore, by supplying their home or office with something from your company, they are showing how well connected you are within the community.
It also helps promote goodwill towards your company because most people like getting good deals, so when someone offers them free things, they appreciate it.
Some companies will offer a one month free trial of their software package, which is great if they purchase it after that time frame!”
There are two main reasons why having a trial option is better than no trial at all. The first is cost effectiveness – running a trial is usually less expensive than full length purchases.
The second is return on investment (ROI) – running a trial can give you data about whether or not your product works before you invest money into it. This data comes in the form of feedback either online or through other channels.
Having a trial makes sense even if you are not directly looking to make sales, as long as you are trying to create an audience or improve your reputation.
Offering a website link adds up to your B2b referral marketing statistics
As mentioned before, offering your audience a way to visit your site is a great way to gain new followers. However, making this offer more specific by including their company or organization can be even better!
By linking to an external source, your potential follower may not only come to you but also read all of the details about yourself and what you have to say. This increases your online presence and popularity, which are both important strategies for growth.
When doing referral marketing, make sure to include links to the appropriate pages or sites so people do not get confused. Also, don’t overdo it and spam the community, that does no good.
General tips: try to create content that people will feel motivated to share. If someone else has written a helpful article, comment on something related to that topic. Or if someone else posted an image that you like, add an opinion about it.
I hope you enjoyed reading some b2b referral marketing statistics. If you would like more information, hop onto social media and start looking around.
Offering a social media link
As we mentioned before, offering a social media link is one of the best b2b referral marketing statistics. This can be done by creating an account at a popular networking site like Facebook or Twitter and linking your business’s page to theirs.
Alternatively, you can create an entirely new profile for their website and include a link there!
Both of these are great ways to promote your company by exposing them to more people and giving credit to its social media channels. It also helps them gain exposure since most companies now require employees to have an online presence.