From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Referral marketing is a method of Internet marketing that relies on gaining new customers by referrals, usually through word of mouth. Word of mouth is generally spontaneous and is achieved by businesses without any form of structured strategy.

Overview

Referral marketing is a structured and systematic process that maximizes word of mouth potential. Referral marketing does this by encouraging, informing, promoting and rewarding customers and contacts to think and talk as much as possible about their supplier, their company, product and service and the value and benefit the supplier brings to them and people they know.

Referral marketing takes word of mouth from the spontaneous situation to a proactive and highly productive solution, where maximum referrals are generated due to professional customer-focused strategies.

Online referral marketing, using digital marketing as a platform, is the internet based successor to traditional referral marketing. Given the advances in tracking customer behavior online through the use of web browser cookies, online referral marketing provides a higher degree of accountability.