As marketers start to plan for the coming year, there are a few key referral marketing strategies and notable social media trends to consider. How are you leveraging the power of word-of-mouth with your customers? Are you running multiple programs, like affiliate and influencer campaigns? Are you using new platforms like Tik-Tok? Are you engaging partners to expand your reach?

In digital marketing, where the landscape is changing at the drop of a dime, it's important for marketers to lean on proven strategies - like word-of-mouth marketing - rather than wasting time on the latest fad that might negatively impact your bottom line and eat up resources.

As marketing leaders, one of our primary jobs is to position our business for the future. To do this, we keep tabs on trends and opportunities, and take action when we see something that could help us create lasting competitive advantages. In the process of doing this, we test new technologies and tools, experiment with new tactics and concepts, and hope that doing so will help us identify the biggest trends before everyone else does.

If you’re a marketer, remember the days of yore when you had to log into Facebook and post an update, and then sign into Twitter to check your last tweet’s engagement, and then keep a pulse on LinkedIn to see how many followers your brand had? All social activity was siloed by network and it was time consuming to manage all the different platforms whether you were engaging, reporting, or just plain browsing.

Think about the last time a word-of-mouth referral program influenced one of your purchasing decisions. Maybe a friend shared their love of a subscription service like StitchFix, a co-worker sent you a referral code for free Uber credits, or a neighbor recommended their favorite contractor. Or maybe it was as simple as a friendly suggestion on where to go to dinner. Regardless, you probably acted on the referral, in part, because it came from someone you trusted.

When it comes to formulating a plan for your organization's program, outlining the referral marketing incentives portion can be tricky. How much to reward? When to reward? How many activities to reward? We receive all of these questions (and more!) from a number of incredible B2B brands when we build out their referral programs.