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.