The world of referrals has changed a lot over the years. In the past, savvy businesses could convince customers to visit the company web and drop in the names, emails and phone numbers of friends they thought would benefit from a service or product. Coupled with an attractive incentive, customers would sometimes even take the time needed to refer 10 or even 20 friends.
In fact, that’s exactly how we started our business well over 15 years ago. Our company was built on an ability to design and successfully implement what we call “web-based manual input” referral programs. Our clients would provide incentives to their customers and we worked to turn them into motivated brand ambassadors who would scour their personal contact lists for relevant referrals and enter the information into a web form that captured the information in a database for follow-up.
That was then.
The exponential growth in smartphone ownership and usage put a quick and definitive end to the web-based manual input referral method described above; the very idea is inefficient and antiquated in the age of the App.
Today, therefore, the challenge for businesses that thrive on customer-referred leads can be put simply:
How can a business effectively generate leads which are essential to growth?
Many maintain the refer-a-friend form on their web site in the hope that some super motivated and data-entry loving customer will decide to type in the contact info of their friends. Others try Facebook and other social sharing methods, only to realize that social sharing fails to provide leads with which businesses can follow-up. And, many other “referral programs” one finds listed in Google search results could be more accurately described as buzz generation platforms which are uniquely designed for eCommerce web sites.
So, what about the millions of businesses whose product or service cannot be packaged and shipped off to the consumer? That’s where ShareSomeFriends delivers. ShareSomeFriends fills this much needed space since our app is designed for businesses that actually interact with customers in person and for whom customer-referred leads for follow-up are more essential than promotional social buzz.
Give it a try!