Have you ever heard of the K.I.S.S. method? Keep It Simple Stupid?
The Key To Customer Rewards:
This week on the #MlmMonday show, Ben Dixon the CEO at NaXum shares the value of creating simple customer rewards programs to test if your members are fans and the power of keeping the more complex rewards for actual sales affiliates in referral marketing:
“Some companies fall into the temptation of creating really complex rewards programs for retail customers. When you’re a hybrid referral marketing company, meaning both customers rewards programs and affiliates who earn cash, there is a lot of merit to keeping the customer rewards program simple and keeping the more complex rewards for the affiliates.” — Ben Dixon
The Raving Fan Progression:
Over 8 years ago, the team at NaXum began sharing the power of hybrid referral programs through a concept called the ‘Raving Fan Progression’
The concept states that you maximize your referral marketing potential by creating different levels of participation available to your fans. The more and more the customer becomes a ‘fan’ of your company, the deeper and deeper level they can participate.
For example, to virally grow through direct sales, you just first look at how to take people who have never heard your story before(prospects) and turn them into retail customers.
Once they are a fan enough to be a retail customer, you can invite them to be a ‘sharer’ by inviting them to your customer rewards program. Many times customer rewards can be very simple programs like “refer 2 friends to the same subscription and your subscription next month is free” or “share this link and for every friend that buys at least $50 of products, you get a $10 Gift Card”.
If the customer is willing to be a ‘sharer’ you can then invite them to become a promoter(affiliate) to earn cash rewards for sharing your products with others.
The promoter opportunity can have a series of rewards and different payment structures to encourage a career path for affiliates to earn a part-time income or even a full-time income sharing your products and services.
What Mistakes Do We See?
Two core mistakes we see.
First, we see companies overcomplicating the customer rewards program. By overcomplicating the program, retail customers who are genuine fans of your product and service do not make the leadraise their hands to promote your brand and you miss out on the opportunity to create a bigger relationship with the fan.
Secondly, we see companies completely forget to create a compelling and compliant selling system for the promoters to follow that would maximize the conversion of prospects into customers. It’s not enough to just give affiliates a referral link today. With the AI-powered predictive algorithms being used by ‘gig economy’ companies across the marketplace, anyone in referral marketing must provide a ‘complete system’ to new people joining the company.
“When we saw the changed the gig economy was bringing on referral marketing, we saw the opportunity to create apps and platforms that were so intelligent that they felt like a top leader sitting next to the new affiliate on the team ‘suggesting’ what to do next. These platforms give members confidence and bring the client data and insights on the exact messaging that is creating sales in the market.” — Ben Dixon
Regards,
About The Author:
Ben Dixon loves referral marketing. His family found direct sales back in 2006 and had success using technology to create home-based businesses. Since 2010, Ben has focused on serving referral marketing, party plan, and direct sales companies across the globe with the technology they require to empower their passionate fans to virally grow their businesses.
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