Referral & Influential Retailing | Brick & Mortar, Mobile, & E-Commerce

Photo Credit: Kevin Curtis

It started with Multi-Layer Marketing strategy as a way of getting big, by spending less. 

Others have always believed in an organically evolved network of consumers; and that it has a more subtle effect on the revenue stream. Be it #Bars #Cafe #Facebook #Twitter ....

Hence comes the concept of Referrals and influential sales or leads. A predecessor that we can not ignore is the buying experience of the customer and the behavior it triggers. There are several methods for gathering intelligence on Customer's purpose of visit and satisfaction index. 

Now, how can we get our customers to send us referral or influence their social circle in buying from us. Like I have mentioned above actively paying your customers is one of the option but not a subtle one.

Passively passing on the benefit to your customers is a more sustainable model.

·         Referrals: Printed coupons sent via newspapers, direct mail, or email. Cases where user intervention is required. 

·         Influence:Digital coupons for shared over social platforms that are presented to specific group of users who click on an Digital Ad, Tweet, or post. 

Tracking IDs, Coupon Codes are used for determining how much the customer has promoted the Brand Sales intentionally (Referral), or how much Brand promotion has been done that has indirectly resulted in Sales (Influence). 

Metrics & KPIs used for such analysis are; 

1. Referral Count (metric)
2. Referral Value $ (metric) 
3. Referral Count / Customer Action Count (kpi)
4. Referral Value $ / Customer Action Count (kpi)
5. Influence Count (metric)
6. Influence Value $ (metric)
7. Influence Count / Customer Action Count (kpi)
8. Influence Value $ / Customer Action Count (kpi)

One way of managing data for clustering is based on demographics and impact magnitude. 

Let me know if the idea is worth a try for your business and what are the complications that makes it seem impossible.