Last updated - November 10, 2023
Affiliate or referral networks are excellent ways to encourage more people to spread the word about your goods to a wider audience. One of the most underappreciated marketing strategies is referral marketing. Few people consider developing a successful referral marketing strategy after spending all of their mental energy on email marketing, social media marketing, and paid marketing.
The greatest technique to establish your brand while you are just getting started is to incorporate referral marketing into your marketing plan. Some of the most valuable leads you may obtain are from referrals. Compared to other forms of leads, referral leads often have lower acquisition costs and higher potential lifetime values.
In this article, we will provide insight into how you can use referral marketing to optimize your WordPress business.
An Introduction to Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is the practice of encouraging current clients to refer your company to other potential clients. In other words, you thank your largest supporters for promoting your business. One of the simplest methods to raise brand awareness and revenue is by converting your consumers into brand ambassadors.
Referral marketing comes in a variety of ways, including films featuring influencers and testimonials. But promoting your brand is the main goal of this marketing strategy. To put it another way, referral marketing is all about empowering your client base to promote your business.
Why Should you Consider Referral Marketing for your WordPress Business?
- Sales can be boosted by positive word-of-mouth five times more than by sponsored advertising.
- According to a recent survey, if given the choice of only one information source, more than 50% of US citizens would choose word of mouth.
- Customers who are brought in by word-of-mouth spend twice as much and recommend twice as many others.
- Compared to leads obtained from other sources, referred leads convert 30% better and have a 16% greater lifetime value.
- Referral marketing is reliable, strong, and affordable.
- Customers through referral marketing have a 16% higher lifetime value (LTV) than other sorts of consumers.
- Referrals outperform other leads in terms of the conversion rate for B2B brands by 70%.
Why Create a Referral Program for WordPress?
It is quite simple! You can increase the number of individuals who assist you in selling your goods and services by using a referral or affiliate network. You give them a tiny percentage on each sale they make in exchange. See our comprehensive guide to affiliate marketing for more information on how it functions.
It is like creating your own sales force without paying them a full-time wage, to put it simply. By directing their consumers to the best goods and services, affiliate marketers—typically content producers—earn money online. Affiliates can utilize a variety of practical affiliate marketing plugins and solutions to boost their sales.
However, in order to efficiently handle every part of an affiliate network, you’ll need your own referral or affiliate program. It needs to make it possible for affiliate marketers to sign up for your referral program and aid you in keeping track of the traffic and purchases that each affiliate partner refers.
5 Steps to Create Referral Marketing for your WordPress Website
Step 1: Select your Customer Referral Incentives
Prior to anything else, you must decide what you will provide for your devoted clients. Setting a budget for client acquisition and creating incentives in line with it can be a good place to start.
For both new and returning consumers, many businesses provide incentives. In the beginning, the well-known payment processor PayPal gave new users $20 to open an account and another $20 for referring friends. As a result, PayPal saw daily growth of 7–10% and amassed a user base of 100 million people.
On the other side, if money is scarce, you may provide the customer who recommends your goods an incentive. Costs may be reduced as a result of this.
Step 2: Select a Referral Marketing Program
Tracking and rewarding your customers who bring in friends and family is crucial. To keep track of all of them and simplify your work, you must use a software. If you are running your eCommerce business on WooCommerce, then here are a few of the best plugins you can use.
- InviteReferrals
- Refer A Friend for WooCommerce
- Gratisfaction
- ReferralCandy for WooCommerce
- Coupon Referral Program
Step 3: Ensure a Fantastic Product Experience
A terrific client experience combines excellent branding, first-rate service, a simple unboxing process, and lastly a fantastic product. This is what makes an impression on clients that lasts and inspires them to gush about your company. If consumers are aware of their positive experiences while shopping with you, they will return frequently.
Step 4: Share your Brand’s Core Values
If you express your brand principles clearly, it will help. By establishing connections with your consumers based on shared values, you may grow your business.
Saie, a skincare company, for instance, explains its standards and values on its website. It lists the materials it will never use, the fantastic ingredients it uses in its goods and why. It also displays its environmental certifications.
Step 5: Advertise the Referral Program
Promoting your referral program is the final stage. To get the word out about your referral program, employ social media and email marketing. Additionally, create a piece of writing that details the entire operation of your referral program.
Finally, make a landing page with a complete informational list of your recently launched referral marketing campaign. This is a simple method for developing a referral marketing strategy.
Ways to Optimize your WordPress Website with Referral Marketing
In order to optimize your WordPress website with referral marketing you will need a plugin. We will explain the procedure with the plugin AffiliateWP as an example.
Step 1: Setup a Referral Program
You can create your own referral scheme in WordPress with the help of this excellent affiliate management plugin. Installing and activating the AffiliateWP plugin is the first thing you need to do. More information is available in our step-by-step tutorial on installing a WordPress plugin.
Once activated, you must enter your license key on the Affiliates » Settings page. On the AffiliateWP website, this data is accessible under your account.
You must decide which page will be the Affiliate Area’s landing page after activating your license key. While AffiliateWP will automatically build one for you, you can choose another page from this menu if you’d prefer.
The ‘Integrations’ tab on the Settings page is where you should next navigate. The integrations you want to enable must be chosen from here. The most well-liked plugins for contact forms, LMSs, eCommerce, and membership are supported by AffiliateWP.
When finished, click the Save Changes button and then navigate to the ‘Emails’ tab on the Settings page.
You may edit emails that you send to your affiliates using AffiliateWP. Additionally, you can select a suitable email address, upload your company logo, make your own email templates, and send affiliate emails using any of these options.
Step 2: Add Links to your Referral Program
The next step after setting up your referral program is to add links to it. If you’ve allowed affiliate registration, for instance, you might want to add a link to the affiliate section so that any interested marketers can sign up.
Adding your affiliate area page to a navigation menu is as simple as going to the Appearance » Menus page. See our beginner’s guide on creating WordPress navigation menus for thorough instructions.
Users who click the link are directed to the affiliate section, where they may sign up to become a new affiliate or check in to their account to view their reports.
Step 3: Manage your Referral Program
With the help of the robust tools provided by AffiliateWP, you can manage your affiliates, check reports, and manage your affiliate program efficiently without ever leaving WordPress. Simply visit the Affiliates > Affiliates page to see affiliates who have signed up for your referral scheme.
You may view a list of all your affiliate partners, together with information about their earnings, unpaid earnings, referral visits, and more, on this page. Every affiliate account can be edited separately.
Step 4: View your Referral Program Report
Running a successful referral program requires reporting, and AffiliateWP has robust reporting options. For a detailed description, visit the Affiliates » Reports page.
The reporting period can be filtered by the name of a certain affiliate partner and time. Reports for affiliates, referral visitors, and campaigns are also available.
Step 5: Send Payments to your Affiliates
Two different Payout kinds are offered by AffiliateWP. The features of AffiliateWP’s Payout Services are the first. Through the parent business of AffiliateWP, you can quickly send payments to your affiliates. Direct deposits will be made through Stripe to the bank or debit card of your affiliate.
Visiting Affiliates » Settings and selecting the Payouts Service option will enable this feature for you.
Using PayPal, which is a distinct add-on made available under the Professional license plan, is the second approach. As an alternative, you may manually pay your affiliates by going to the Affiliates » Referrals page and selecting the ‘Pay Affiliates’ button.
Then, after choosing a time frame, you may create a payout list that you can use to manually pay your affiliates by PayPal, a credit card, online banking, or another method of your choice.
Conclusion
Referral marketing is a fantastic approach to produce more and better leads, whether you have an established company or are just getting started. We hope this article helped you with WordPress website optimization using referral marketing. Bookmark this article and start your journey toward a better WordPress website.
