History is famous for having brilliant subject matter experts who fail in business. The reality is that if you want to make your passion your job, you also have to be good at business, not just at the thing itself.
You are most likely passionate about education if you are selling educational programs. However, the market is full of educators, and you need something that makes you stand out and gets more potential customers to become actual customers.
For this purpose, a referral program can be an ideal way to drive marketing.
Before we can talk about the benefits of a referral program for educators, we must first establish what a referral program is.
Marketing, or the practice of advertising or pushing your product and service on the market, is the lynchpin of the modern economy.
In the past, the need for marketing wasn’t that great. For example, people selling you canned fruit would just have a picture of the fruit on the can. Marketing comes as a response to the increase in options and the globalized marketplace.
Nowadays, the same fruit merchant has a dozen other companies that are struggling to sell to the same customers. This creates a need for your brand to stand out and have a unique identity in consumer’s minds.
Obviously, the easiest way to market is to find people who are already popular (TV Personalities, Influencers, etc.), and then pay them to recommend your product. However, the average person is bombarded with hundreds, if not thousands of ads each month, so there’s an over-saturation in that regard.
Referral marketing is supposed to work around that drawback, as it relies more on word-of-mouth and less on sterile, pre-prepared, and pre-recorded ads. It may also be a much cheaper way to network and spread information.
Education affiliate marketing deputizes other people to spread the word, creating some sort of incentive structure for happy customers to promote your educational program, product, or service.
This can possibly solve multiple issues, as it not only recruits new customers but also benefits existing ones who are already loyal to your brand.
Ideally, referral programs are much more than simple advertisements, as they create an entire community interested in a specific service.
Here is how you can think about Peer-to-Peer Marketing, by breaking everything down into logical categories.
Being a good communicator is a skill, and not everyone can do it. In fact, the world is full of professionals who are extremely good at their jobs, but they simply can’t pitch the same knowledge to others.
In this regard, your affiliates may be extremely willing to help but do not possess the sales techniques to convince many others.
It is possible and recommended that they be supplied with some guidance beforehand. Be careful not just to give them an entire pre-recorded ad, as they may be tempted to simply recite it without any variation. This can be extremely offputting, so it is possible to supply them with some talking points in case they get lost.
Now, what if you are a brilliant physics professor, for example, and are great at the business and communication side of things?
If you can afford it, you can hire a company to prep your mission statements talking points, and even advise on your public image. But these types of companies can get quite expensive. And if your project doesn’t have a high return on investment, it won’t be worth contracting a professional firm.
There are alternatives, thanks to the internet. You can find many professional writers online, whom you can pay per word, avoiding a long and drawn-out contract. The affordable essay services have thousands of happy customers, so you can’t go wrong with those. Don’t be fooled by their name, as they can deliver much more than essay papers. You can even hire a writer to write your most important emails.
The first category of people, of course, is represented by existing customers. These are people who have used your program at least once. In addition, from this demographic, you determine the people who become affiliates. Most services rely on loyal customers to keep afloat, and yours won’t be any different.
There is this concept in sociology called “social proof”. This means that something or someone’s value increases naturally, the more people are interested in it.
Did you ever notice how the more followers you get on social media, the easier it is to get more? Or that girls appreciate a guy who is liked by other girls?
Basically, your instincts are telling you that this person or product is pre-vetted by dozens, hundreds of other people, so it is a proven value.
This is why products often feature reviews from happy existing customers.
The second category of people is represented by the public personalities and peers. These people don’t have to be Hollywood-tier personalities, and even someone with a few thousand followers can help your business.
Most likely, influencers and peers will float around in the same environment and social category as you. If you are selling educational programs, then your best partners are educational influencers and fellow teachers.
Ever since the 2000s, there has been an explosion in educational content online, and there are entire channels focused just on edutainment. People actually learn for fun, and the influencers who own those channels are highly beloved. After all, some of their followers watch them weekly, if not daily.
Finding such a person and discussing incentives for referrals in education is crucial, as you are natural business partners.
As for peers, they can be either fellow educators or fellow businesspeople. After all, even though you don’t consider yourself a businessman, you are trying to sell a product on the free market.
Building a community through referrals is an obvious step, as the physics teacher can advertise math courses, or the web developer can advertise the web dev courses of his teacher affiliate.
A natural pragmatic connection is formed, and it makes everyone stronger.
So far, we’ve discussed only the low-tech principle of affiliate marketing. But we are living in a new, high-tech age. It is now possible to design or purchase referral software for educational content, which smartly targets both customers and partners.
In addition, you can use metadata for your ads more precisely, based on the preferences of each user.
The proof of the pudding is in its eating, and the proof of a product is in the happiness of its current customers. Referral programs put a human face on your service and have real-life people discussing its benefits.
This system is proven to boost sales and enhance brand recognition.
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