There are different types of marketing, but one of the most common and successful forms of marketing that human beings have been attributing for ages is word-of-mouth marketing. In the new digital era, the same method has evolved and continues to do so, and there is a term which is used generally for this type of marketing, it is called referral marketing.   

Referral marketing is one of the most successful marketing strategies. All the companies from startups to MNCs have been practising for a long time. It is the most traditional form of marketing that evolved into a new form in the new era. In referral marketing, people refer to your product to others, it can be either to their family, friends or the people they know, for each sale, they get a commission which also benefits the brand to grow. Referral marketing allows brands to increase their popularity as well as convert leads.

In short, it is one person recommending a product to another and based on the quality of the product, the referring process continues. Recommendations are more likely to succeed since all of us tend to trust the words of the people we know well hence it becomes more trustworthy to hear about a product from our acquaintances.

Referral marketing also uses strategies such as offers and free services to attract more leads. No need to say specifically, but as the first step, like every kind of marketing, Your product needs to be good, especially when you want your customers to recommend it to others. Here your customers act more like an influencer, therefore influencer marketing is also a kind of referral marketing.

Instead of just posting some ads and hiring big celebrities, finding the influencers from social media and letting them give a review about your product, benefits you unimaginably. People who follow them tend to believe in their words. More brands are into referral marketing as it brings huge revenue than any paid advertising could. Referral marketing is powerful and cost-effective and it also has an emotion to it, when people buy it by getting recommendations from a trustworthy source.

Performance Marketing          

As the term indicates, in performance marketing, the advertisers pay the companies for the actions people are taking for the certain campaigns they conduct online, it can be for lead converts, clicks or any of such intended actions taken. The primary goal is to get the actions done which could be sales, pay per click, leads etc. Performance marketing can be achieved through the joint effort of brands, advertisers/publishers, affiliate networks and marketing agencies.

For performance marketing, companies use platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Marketing and selection of advertising channels should be based on their target audience, it is important to make sure your product is reaching the right people who could possibly be your potential customers. Therefore when you select the target audience based on their age group, gender, geographical area etc, the marketing channel should also be chosen accordingly. For example, if your product is focusing on the elders above the age of 40, social media like Snapchat and TikTok won’t work because most of the users here are youngsters; but on Facebook, you can reach a wide diverse audience. So primarily, understand where your right audience is and perform the task based on that. 

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is people generating income by the means of promoting and making sales of the product of other brands and companies. It is a process like whenever you make a sale on another product you get a commission out of it which benefits both parties. Affiliate marketing can be done through apps, blogs, websites etc.

This is a kind of passive income you could acquire with your creativity and effort, whereas the main perks are that you don’t have to invest a huge amount like owning a company, a manufacturing unit, office space etc. you only have to use your ideas and talent to attract people to buy the product. 

You can either be an affiliate merchant or an affiliate marketer while the previous ones are the real owners of the product who allows the latter to promote and earn commission out of it. But the affiliate marketers should have the patience to get a good income until they build a proper network and constant customers to create enough traffic. Affiliate marketing could produce immeasurable popularity for the brands as it generates leads and gets attention through several affiliate marketers.

The companies can look at the analytics, to know the sales from the leads. They can also save lots of money on advertising as affiliate marketing doesn’t cost as much as in traditional marketing. So many large companies like Amazon come up with affiliate programs, with strict criteria to avoid misconducts, where lots of people sign up as affiliate marketers.

Growth Hacking

Growth hacking is a method of obtaining more customers and creating traffic without spending much. Increasing traffic and converting visitors to customers is a big task for growth hackers. After creating a product you need to market it continuously for its growth. Brands usually would have different strategies on their scale for growth, which include creating content, making contests, offers & giveaways, blogging, social media marketing, influencer marketing, referral marketing, affiliate marketing, SEOs, email marketing etc.

Usually, startups use the idea of growth hacking widely, because they are always making tactics to grow quickly by spending less money while using creativity and talent as a bonus. The main focus of growth marketing is Growth. To achieve the goal, they use different means. Any company should focus on creating great content for social media, websites and other digital platforms. So in order to grow your company, you should make sure to be active on the platforms where people gather and grab attention through your content by making videos, posting interesting blogs etc.