If content is king, then video is its hype man. Video takes what makes content successful — targeting and relevance — condenses it into a bite-sized format, and gets audiences more excited and primed for action.
In the last few years, we've seen videos show up in more places online. From social media to websites, videos are everywhere. They're used to share ideas in a more engaging way, to cater to visual learners, and much more.
But one place we don't see video being used enough is in referral programs.
Instead of running the same kinds of referral programs, use video to breath new life into your efforts to get advocates engaged.
To get you started, let's look at why video is so important and three ways to use it in your next referral program campaign.
Why your referral program needs video
If we look at the stages of the customer journey, your advocates are retained customers who've used your product and experienced its value. As a result, these are the best customers to ask to share referrals because they're most likely to be loyal:
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It's important to keep advocates engaged at this point, so they don't lose interest in your product. Video lets you do this because by sharing your referral program this way, you:
- Quickly and easily explain the program and its value. This is key considering people retain 95% of what they see vs. 10% of what they read.
- Put a face on your brand. This helps you build trust. Plus, the majority of people trust recommendations from people they know vs. only taking the word of brands.
- Get noticed and boost advocate engagement. There are lots of images and text on the web, but video stands out. Video also helps drive traffic back to websites because they're so easy to share.
With these benefits in mind, let's look at three strategies to incorporate into your referral program. Use them independently or together to get your advocates interested in the program and prepared to participate.
1. Add a video explainer to your referral program page
Does your referral program page look like this one? Lots of white space but also lots of text?
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There's nothing particularly wrong with these types of pages — they give advocates details about the referral program and include a call to action (CTA) to make it easy for advocates to get started. However, with one small adjustment — adding video to this page — you increase visual stimulation and improve the chances of advocates getting engaged. Without visual stimulation, the page above reads like terms and conditions and is lengthy.
Studies show that people spend about 5.59 seconds looking at written content on a web page before they move on. Most people just scan without actually reading anything on the page.
To increase the amount of time advocates spend on your referral page, add an explainer video to the top of the page.
[Source] CaseComplete, a tool to track software requirements, uses an explainer video on their homepage to explain how their product works.
By using this approach for your referral program, you're able to quickly grab attention before you share program details. In fact, author James McQuivey shares in a recent study that one minute of video is the equivalent of 1.8 million words.
How to use explainer videos
Add a video explaining how the program works. Below the video, summarize the program details as a reference for advocates. With this approach, video on a referral program landing page has been shown to increase conversions by as much as 80%.
But it's not enough to just throw lots of facts into a video and call it a day. Make your video memorable by telling a story so that advocates remember what you've shared. For example:
- Introduce the program, show how it works, and end with a clear CTA.
- Include testimonials from advocates who've successfully used your referral program.
- Show your brand personality with humor, music, animation, and more.
This way, advocates pay attention to the video, your program becomes easier to remember, and advocates are encouraged to take action.
2. Introduce referral program updates on social media
Take advantage of the growth of social media use by using video to share your referral program.
By 2020, an estimated 2.95 billion people in the world are expected to use social media. This includes 77% of the U.S. population surfing sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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Plus, a third of the time people spend on social media is spent watching video. This also includes live video, which is on the rise on social media. It's expected that 13% of internet traffic will be from live video by 2021.
With the combination of having access to a larger segment of your target audience on social media and using video, you have a better chance of getting your audience's attention and introducing your brand.
Referral Marketing – The Best Practices You Need to Know
Written by veteran referral marketers, this guide will help you optimize your referral marketing program and supercharge growth.
How to use social media
Host monthly live videos on the platforms where your advocates spend the most time. Let's say most advocates interact with you on Facebook; a few days before your live video, post reminders for people to watch.
Encourage people to tune in and watch until the end by offering a referral bonus. For example, if you offer advocates $50 gift cards per referral, increase this to $100 per referral — for a limited time — if they watch until the end.
During the video, answer some of the most common questions you get about the referral program and encourage viewers to ask their own questions afterwards.
Finally, post your video in your news feed so that visitors who didn't see the live video still have a chance to get answers to questions they might have.
Instead of live videos, another option is to post short videos on your news feed or page detailing your referral program. Here's an example of an explainer video posted on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/jomparking/videos/243048396363677/
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3. Share referral program reminders via email marketing
Email marketing lets you get in front of people who are familiar with your brand and want to know what's going on. This audience consists of warm leads who are more likely to convert than people who are just finding you for the first time. Think of your advocates as warm leads and your goal is to convert them to referrers.
Use email marketing to nurture the relationship with advocates so that they understand how the referral program works and what they get when they participate. If your email nurture sequence has five emails, for example, send a mix of email types. Include a short video in the first email with a written summary of the program below it and a CTA. For the next email, send an email with a text and image combination, but put emphasis on the most important text. Like in this email from ibotta that emphasizes the $50 reward:
The idea with this approach is to make your referral program email marketing more engaging by sending different types of emails to keep advocates interested.
Keep in mind that in order to convert your email list, subscribers have to open your emails. Research shows that mentioning the word “video” in an email subject line increases the open rate by 19%. Test this out for yourself to see how receptive email subscribers are to your video emails.
How to use email marketing
In the emails include a video tutorial showing how the referral program works, how to track earnings, or testimonials from people who've referred friends in the past.
Here are two examples of this in action. TSYS, a credit card processing service, and ADP, an HR management software company, have created the types of referral program videos that can be sent in an email campaign:
TSYS referral program explainer
Just like this video from TSYS, quickly explain the benefits of your program and what advocates get for taking part. What's also great about this type of video is it shows viewers, in the tool, how to get started. Remember, 65% of the U.S. population are visual learners, so including visuals of the referral program process makes it easier for them to take part.
ADP testimonial referral program video
https://youtu.be/vpIvKpFCcDc?list=PLNpYfHSgNU0NqN6sTKjnGZUccmYYwVFUD
An alternative is to use social proof and incorporate customer testimonials into your email campaign. In this ADP video, customers talk about their experience with the tool, why they choose to refer it to their network of friends and family, and the incentives they received for participating.
Before your launch: video best practices
Now that you have three strategies to help you incorporate video into your referral program, let's look at how to manage your videos to make sure advocates respond and refer new customers.
- Include text with your video, so viewers can watch without sound. 85% of videos on Facebook are watched without sound, so make it easy for viewers to get the information they need. This can either be subtitles at the bottom of the video or animation that clearly outlines the referral process.
- Keep videos short to help people stay engaged. The point of videos is to get and hold your audience's attention, so your videos have to be short and to the point. For example, the optimal video length on Facebook is one minute and for IG it's 30 seconds.
- Lead with the value of the program first. Over 8 billion videos are watched on Facebook alone — per day. There are a lot of videos competing for your audience's attention, so get to the point quickly. This way, even if advocates only watch the first few seconds of your video, they hear about the value you offer.
- Optimize your video for mobile. In the U.S. alone, people spend on average an hour and 16 minutes watching videos daily on their mobile devices. With this increased use, use a 1:1 aspect ratio since this tends to outperform landscape videos.
- Include a clear CTA so viewers know what to do next. It's one thing to have a great explainer video, but if viewers don't know what to do after watching, you've wasted your time. Explain what advocates have to do after watching and also include steps in the summary below the video.
Bringing it all together
Now you're ready to start using video as part of your referral program. To start, experiment with each of these strategies to figure out where your audience is most engaged and go from there. If your referral program is still new, then share it on social media if you have more of a following there compared with your email list.
Also, don't be afraid to experiment with video types to find the ones that lead to the most conversions. Once you know, incorporate those types of videos into your referral program campaigns. Over time, you'll see more engagement from advocates because your videos resonate with them.
