If you’ve checked out our recent on-page SEO blog post, then you’re no doubt incorporating what you learned to help your content rank higher - things like ideal content length, optimizing your H1 tags and the importance of targeting the right keywords.

Countless online conversations about your brand are happening every day. Oftentimes, curious customers have learned all that they need to know about your brand long before your company can formally introduce its own products or services via marketing campaigns. Forrester reports that by 2020, 80% of the buying process is expected to occur without any direct human-to-human interaction.

The marketing industry is filled with more tactics to consider than you can count and a host of strategic solutions positioned to address challenging pain points. Every once in awhile, the opportunity arises to hone in on a persistently untapped channel to create a new marketing category.

The following is an excerpt from Ambassador’s most recent eBook, “Opening the Referral Floodgates: A Strategic Framework to Optimize Referral Marketing Results.” To read the full eBook — and access more than a dozen tips to dramatically improve referral program enrollment, engagement, and activity — download your copy here.  

Did you know that 74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision? To put it simply, customers value share-worthy experiences and have gotten used to passing on good news to others.

So, I have a confession to make. A year ago, I had no clue “referral marketing” was anything but a buzzword. I certainly didn’t know referral marketing software existed. Sure, I understood the value of referrals (I’ve been a marketer for more than 20 years — it’s hard not to understand the value of organic word-of-mouth). But referral marketing? In my experience, referrals weren’t truly optimizable or scalable — two core characteristics of any modern marketing strategy.