Word-of-mouth promotion is the gold standard for selling techniques. According to a Nielsen survey, over 92% of consumers rate suggestions and opinions from their family and friends higher than any marketing messaging channel.
So, how do you leverage this finding to promote and sell your online courses effectively?
Through referral marketing.
Referral marketing gives you an excellent chance of getting more subscriptions and course purchases. Read on to learn more about referral marketing and how you can set up a program for your online courses.
Contents
- 1 What Is Referral Marketing?
- 2 Setting up Your Referral Marketing Program
- 3 Customer reviews are the best way to convert leads into paying customers. They help you build trust and establish credibility. On average, a consumer reads ten reviews before they trust a brand. Additionally, over 91% of consumers said they are more likely to buy products and services from a business with positive reviews.
- 4 So, how can reviews help in a referral program?
- 5 Wrapping Up
What Is Referral Marketing?
Referral marketing is the process of getting people to refer their friends, family members, and acquaintances to your business in exchange for a reward.
You can do this by sending out an email with a referral code or link. When someone uses that link to sign up for your service, they’ll be entered into a draw to win something. You can also offer rewards like discounts or free products, or commissions per referred customer through affiliate marketing.
Referral marketing aims to grow your business by getting new customers who are referred by people they know and trust. Referral marketing, when done right, can create a virtuous sharing cycle. Each cycle consists of four stages:
- Cognitive stage: where a new user signs up
- Affective stage: where they experience the product benefits
- Behavior stage: where they share the product
- Propagation stage: where other people see the product
As a result, with referral marketing, business owners can improve their marketing effectiveness by up to 54%. Besides, referred customers have been found to have a 16% higher lifetime value than customers who weren’t referred to the brand in the first place. Referred customers can bring you a 25% higher profit margin.
As a course owner, you can also reap the benefits of referral marketing by encouraging your current students to refer new students to your course. Referral marketing can help you grow your online course student base quickly and effectively. It’s also a powerful way to generate new leads and increase sales while simultaneously building your brand identity and reputation with your existing students.
Setting up Your Referral Marketing Program
But setting up a referral program for your online course isn’t as simple as asking your students to promote your product. You’ll need to go about this strategically to ensure two things: that your students actually promote your online course and that the people they refer to you actually convert.
That said, here are tips to follow to set up your referral marketing program for your online course:
1. Lay the Foundation
The success of all referral marketing programs is driven by a solid referral foundation. Without this foundation, you can’t expect your students to recommend what you offer to their friends and loved ones. After all, it’s also their reputation on the line.
So, how do you ensure a solid foundation in the first place? Follow these tips:
- Offer exceptional courses: When you have an online course that provides value, people won’t hesitate to recommend it to others. When they do, you can also expect conversions and even more referrals.
- Put the customer first: It’s not enough for you to offer a course that provides exceptional value. You should also make sure your students have a wonderful learning experience with you. So, address their concerns quickly. Make it easy for them to reach you if they have questions. Your goal is for them to love everything about what you offer, from the intangible course product to the student experience.
Once you’ve done these consistently, you can define the specific goals of your referral program. Goal-setting is part of laying the foundation for your referral program since your goals shall serve as your guide as you go about implementation.
Don’t just aim for higher sales. Consider goals such as building customer loyalty, which is essential for repeat business, and driving customer acquisition. Look at how your referral program can yield excellent results for you in the long run during goal-setting. This way, you can get the most out of it.
2. Determine Incentives
A refer-and-earn program will help you motivate your customers to participate in your program. Ask yourself, “What will incentivize a student to spend time and effort to promote your online course?” You’ll probably come up with the same answer as other people: A proper reward incentive.
Your incentive can be monetary, like 10-20% off the selling price of your online course. It can also be non-monetary, from free subscriptions to free gifts. It’s pretty standard for those selling online courses, however, to have a combination of monetary and non-monetary incentives to satisfy the needs of their audience. Ultimately, though, the reward you offer boils down to the types of students you have and what motivates them. Therefore, it makes sense to ask them first what they want.
Once you have decided on the incentive, you need to identify if the incentive is one-sided or two-sided. Whom will you incentivize? Is it only the referring source or both the referrer and the new customer? Generally, two-sided incentives enjoy higher engagement because you’re rewarding both existing and new customers. A staggering 91.2% of all referral programs–whether for online courses or not—use this approach.
3. Design for Conversion
With the reward structure out of the way, you can design your referral program. You want to convert students into your referrers. You can only do that if you disseminate a referral marketing message that resonates with them and if your program is easy for them to join in the first place.
Follow these tips so you can ensure your referral program is designed for conversions:
- Use Catchy Headlines
No matter what you’re selling, you need to start with a compelling headline. It is a powerful tool for attracting your students to join your referral program. So, make it short and sweet and use powerful words. For instance, you can include that incentive they can receive if they participate in the headline. So, a good headline could be “Refer a friend, get $5.”
You can use generative AI if you run out of ideas. With Ask Writer, for example, you just need to insert a prompt and enter. The tool will give you a list of catchy headlines you can use to promote your referral marketing programs to your students.
- Ensure Clarity in Main Referral Program Message
Keep your main referral program message clear and straightforward. The simpler the terms you use, the better.
In your main message, highlight again the benefits students who participate in the program can receive. If you’re offering the referred incentives as well, you can highlight those here as well. Just make sure your overall message is in line with the referral marketing program goals you set earlier.
Don’t forget to specify here the exact steps students should take to join your referral program and avail of the incentive. We’ll talk more about this in the next subsection. Specify here, too, how the referred can get their incentive, if this is offered.
- Make It Easy for People to Refer
A good referral marketing design helps your customers easily share your brand with others. If your referral program requires your customer to jump through hoops just to send a referral, you’ll likely lose them early in the game.
So, make it easy for your students to refer other students to you. For instance, you can have your website generate a link after they complete a course, which they can just share with their friends and family to avail of the incentive.
Another option is to create a referral template that contains your unique value proposition. Your students can just fill in what they like about your course, and then forward the template to a friend. The good thing about this strategy is that you can double down on how great your online course is in your template, increasing the chances of a referred person converting.
Once you have all these set, promote your referral marketing program across your marketing channels. Make it easy for students to share this message as well. So, if you post it on your site, incorporate social sharing icons, for example.
It follows of course that you should also leverage social media to promote your referral marketing program. This is a great strategy since it doesn’t just make it easy for students to promote your referral program messages. It can also help you boost social media engagement through Instagram likes and Facebook comments.
4. Use Reviews to Amplify Your Referral Marketing
Customer reviews are the best way to convert leads into paying customers. They help you build trust and establish credibility. On average, a consumer reads ten reviews before they trust a brand. Additionally, over 91% of consumers said they are more likely to buy products and services from a business with positive reviews.
So, how can reviews help in a referral program?
Assume your student already recommended your course to someone they know. That someone they know might decide to check you out online. Positive reviews about your course may just be the final nudge they need to convert. Track the performance of your referral marketing efforts using tools like Google Analytics. You can set up custom tracking parameters and view detailed reports. Based on the insights you gather you can realign your marketing efforts to boost conversions.
That’s why, apart from encouraging your students to join the referral marketing program, encourage them to leave reviews across different platforms, from social channels to Yelp and Google. The more positive reviews about your course online, the higher the likelihood they’ll be seen by potential customers.
What if some students leave a negative review? Then just learn how to handle those reviews. Apologize if it’s your fault. If potential customers see how much you care about the experience of your current students, they’ll still likely give you a shot.
Wrapping Up
It’s important to remember that your new students can be a happy customer’s friend or family member. If you don’t reach this potential student base, you’re missing out.
A referral marketing program can help you reach this audience. However, for your word-of-mouth marketing to be effective, you still need to be strategic about it.
You learned how to set up that referral program for your online course with this article. Just lay the foundation, determine your incentives, and then design for conversion. Also, use reviews to amplify your program.
Follow these tips and you’ll have a referral marketing program that yields excellent results for your online course. Good luck!
