The best type of advertisement for your small business is word of mouth, which is referrals. Here are some easy and effective ways to build Referral programs for small businesses.

1. Assessing one’s current referrals is an important step. Although many small business owners know where their customers come from and what they want, most have no idea about how their customers find them.

In order to figure out how to get more referrals for your business; at first, you need to understand how many you are currently getting.

As an example, you can create a system, where if a customer signs up for your service you ask them how they came to know about you and what it is that made them decide to go for you.

This way, you’ll realize how your current referral program is working and what it is that attracts new clients, which will help shape your target later.

2. A referral program that rewards both the current customers and the friends the customers refer to the company, can indeed be a very effective one. For example, your company can offer a 10$ gift card to your customer for referring and another 10$ gift card for the friend on ordering service.

This sort of referral program for small businesses can be a small but very positive part of greater customer experience which requires consistency.

3. You can collect a few brand advocates by providing products and offering services to your current customers. This is one of the effective most ways through which referral programs for small businesses can be created. For example, offering free service for a product you sell for one year, will surely gain you many referrals and new customers. You can ask your customers about how they feel about your service and keep a record so that later you can ask those who think positively of you to participate in official referral programs.

4. A referral program needs to be easy to use. Nobody has the time to dig deep into your website to participate in it. Using trigger and time-based emails is highly recommended to make people participate in your referral program. You can create a system which will send every customer an email after one month of signing in, asking if they would like to refer your program to somebody.