A customer’s view of Referral Marketing

No one in any era wanted something bad or worse, but question that embraces today’s mindset is “Do I want something good or something better or do I want “The Best”? Indeed I want The Best, in anything and everything I aspire for! I am successful, I have been working hard to earn my bread, and I have carved a different niche for myself with my sincere efforts. Yes, we do now live in a world of “I”, where we only post our that picture on social sites wherein we look not just good but glam enough to stop all eyes on us, don’t we? Be it a man or a woman, we all just want to flaunt that beautiful/handsome I!”

That I in ourselves always wants to look THE BEST, aspires for the most beautiful house, best car to drive and hence that I within us forces us to work hard, harder and still harder, hard enough to break our backs!

“Being whole day busy in the same repetitive work, which once used to be my passion and now gives me only tension, at times drives me crazy. All, this hard earned money can do to my benefit in spite of just fulfilling my basic needs is give me the freedom of wandering out with my buddies, shopping what best suits on me, be it clothing, accessories or any other luxury, all I need is a hassle free life!

Don’t you? Doesn’t everyone?

I suppose all of us need it. I love to shop! And I assume everyone does, especially the young ladies. Shopping is like an elixir that cures every pain from the inner self.  And if it comes loaded with surprises like the reduced prices, gift coupons, rewards for just a click, it becomes all the more enjoyable!”

As our sense to dress ourselves has changed over time so have changed the ways we resort to, for buy our favorites. Thanks to the great God, now it rarely happens that we enter a store to buy that beautiful dress we fell in love with a couple of days ago, but couldn’t buy only because we didn’t have enough money and now all smiles once again we enter the store only to find, the dress is sold out.  Aww! Where to find the same dress again? It’s not an easy task to look for all the different shops to find that same piece of dress.

Even if we had found our dream dress in the store we visited, were we sure enough we weren’t being overcharged? It’s indeed difficult to visit every store in town that may showcase that beautiful dress to find the prices being charged by different store owners.

A lot of hard work by some brilliant minds has certainly made shopping all the way easy for us, just as few sites and a few clicks away with the added advantage of choosing from as many options we wish to try without having to worry if the shopkeeper would entertain such a behavior or not! Great fun undoubtedly!

“But is that all? It seems satisfying, but what if it rains a deluge of discount offers or gift coupons before we have even made a purchase? Now it seems to be all the way exciting, beautiful, wonderful and no words I can think of to define it to the fullest.  World appears to have turned around! Wao! They are charging us with a reduced price even before we have asked for it. Take pride in yourself dude, you are important to them, they may have not said it in words yet but they have silently said so through their action!”

Yes, we as customers or visitors or the passersby who have just had a look at their store, the online megastore of e-commerce giants, play a very crucial role in the growth and expansion of the online businesses. The great discounts that we are offered come at the cost of simple referral program we work for without even acknowledging so much that we have done so! We help these brilliant minds increase their business. Yes we do! We guys are not just valuable customers to these big e-commerce giants; we in fact are their best marketing partners, in oblivion though! So generous are we you bet, we do and we don’t even recognize we ever did!

“Referral works on the simple principal that when a shopping enthusiast like me, goes to buy that beautiful dress on abc.com, it offers me a discount of say 10% only to share its website with my friends on my social circle, a cheap yet most influential way of promotion. This way I am excited on being fetched with discounted price for doing something that hardly matters me, and the business gets its required boost and coverage on being introduced to the masses. Oh it’s so very simple, isn’t it? Moments after sharing the info, I get the discount as promised on my very first purchase. Oh, I love this shopping site; I’ll indeed visit it again! Through my little efforts my friends and acquaintances now come to know about the website. Chances are, many may ignore it, some may visit it, a few may even opt to shop from it looking around for the products of their need and a very few, rather very very few may turn out to be real paying customers. But that’s not a loss, even if I could only generate a single paying customer for the business apart from my own self, and the chain continues then we are a part of a U235 nuclear fission man! I had seen a picture of that bursting U235 in school books but never thought I could be the key player for it! Just kidding! But, we work like the Uranium fission process diligently; I assume many of us are aware of it. Only important thing in the process is that the chain never breaks, even if it finds a single Knight every time to keep the flame lit! An unending chain of new customers is what encompasses the power to work wonders for the businesses. Now when a friend of mine to whom I had shared the website, makes a purchase, I am again offered a discount of say 15% for my next purchase whenever I visit the online store. I feel in heaven again! How humble, I’m not going to leave this website ever. They offer me so great discounts without bothering me in any way, I owe loyalty towards them! I do! I won’t ever leave this site. I’ll make all my purchases from here. I’ll recommend it to my friends also. Great products packed with great discounts will drive me crazy to make purchase again and again and my friends too!”

So what am I giving myself?

·         A great product

·         A great price

·         A great deal for my future purchase

·         An inundation of even greater deals in future on account of being a loyal customer and as thanks giving for generating revenue and consumer base

What am I giving to the business?

·         New customers in terms of me and people in my circle and their circle and so on…

·         A loyal customer, the business is sure enough, will return again

·         Few other loyal customers that I took pride to generate

·         Success of the least cost business expansion plan through Marketing , Awareness to the masses

AND

What so great effort had I put in all this while?

·         Shared the website with friends and acquaintances

·         Made a purchase

 

Did I really do anything tough enough to exhaust me completely? I didn’t even recognize when did I do that! A mere click worked magic for me and the business too! I am an important volunteer to the organization certainly!

Now, I think it’s clear enough that referral marketing is WIN WIN situation for both the customers and the businesses. We aren’t just “friends for benefits”; we thrive on a symbiotic relation wherein we both mutually benefit each other. We both are essential to the literal meaning of the term for each other’s very existence!