Let’s talk about customer referral programs.
Customer referral programs can be great for bringing in new customers to your restaurant, while also encouraging repeat visits from your existing ones. But creating an effective customer referral program is no easy feat. This program needs to have a targeted promotion as well as useful incentives that encourage the customers to become brand advocates.
Your customer referral program should be unique to your business and should be designed in such a way that it gets the customers talking. In this article, we’ll provide you with some tips for putting together a successful customer referral program.
Here are a few simple tips to create a customer referral program
Tip #1: Keep it straightforward
The most important thing to ensure with a customer referral program is simplicity. Your program should be designed in such a way it stands out to the customers immediately. Make sure that the headline you use for the customer referral program is catchy. It should be a short one-line sentence, with the incentive woven in strategically.
For example, ‘Share the Love, “get 10% off” or “Refer a Friend, and get a free dessert”.
Tip #2: Make social sharing easy
Besides making the customer referral program simple, you also have to make sure that it’s shareable. The offers should be designed in such a way that the customers are able to share the link with their friends on social media platforms easily. If the offer you’re providing is good enough, your customers are more likely to share it with their friends. Encouraging social sharing is essentially a win-win for everyone, as your customers get to earn rewards and you get new customers.
Tip #3: Offer cost-effective yet valuable incentives
Restaurant customer referral programs are excellent for reaching out to your target audience without using any paid promotions and advertisements. But for it to work well, the incentives provided in the program have to be useful for the customers. At the same time, they should be cost-effective.
The most common type of incentives provided with customer referral programs is gift cards, cash backs/credits, coupons, discounts, access to special events, gifts, etc. Any of these incentives would work quite well for a restaurant customer referral program, but the most cost-effective choice would be discounts, restaurant credits, and special event access.
Tip #4: Promote Your Referral Program
Even if you’ve designed the perfect customer referral program, it will soon be forgotten if you don’t promote it. Holidays are possibly the best time to promote your referral program. Consider coming up with something around the theme of Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, etc. Use your social media channels to promote these offers.
You can also take the help of review sites and micro-influencers to promote your customer referral program from time to time. You might find plenty of food vloggers/bloggers on social media channels who can be the right conduit for communicating your offer to the target customers.
Tip #5: Use a ready-made platform to launch your first program
The best way to ensure success with your customer referral program is by using a ready-made tool to launch the program. These platforms can simplify the whole process for you in multiple ways.
Start Your Customer Referral Program Today
Successful customer referral programs encourage consumer loyalty and also get you more customers in no time. Apply the aforementioned tips and watch your customer referral program membership skyrocket.
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