Driving traffic to Referral Program

Referral campaigns are a numbers game. The more people you drive, the more people will sign up, which in turn means that a higher number of people will refer their friends. A rookie mistake is to think that by simply adding ReferralHero to your page, people will magically appear from nowhere. Instead, you should see ReferralHero as a traffic-multiplier: if you send 100 people, ReferralHero will multiply that by 20-50%.

Let's see how you can send lots of traffic to your contest page.

Your existing mailing list

If you have an existing mailing list, you should definitely start there. They are your most engaged audience. They already know you and (in theory) trust you.

When messaging your existing mailing list explain to them, in simple words, what you're doing and what is in there for them. If done right, this is the best way to get high quality traffic because your users' friends will likely have the same interests.

One word of caution when emailing your existing mailing list: make sure what you're offering is valuable to them and don't do it too often. The last thing you want is to erode their trust.

Make it part of your marketing communication

Your referral contest should be the center of your user acquisition strategy. This means that everyone that gets in contact with your brand should know about it. Usually companies:

• Add an unobtrusive banner at the top of every page of their website
• Mention it in every email they send out, for example in the footer
• Add a link in their social media pages, Twitter's profile and Facebook pages

Write a blog post

If you're running a huge referral contest you should definitely write a blog post about it and publish it on platforms like Medium; you will likely get some free traffic.

Paid ads

If you have some budget, a quick and easy way to drive thousands of people could be paid advertising. We have seen good results when promoting posts on Facebook and Twitter.

If you're offering something for free, you can also consider sponsoring a newsletter related to your niche. For example, if you're offering a free kit for fishing, it could be worth promoting your contest in a newsletter about fishing. People love free stuff, especially when it's about something they love.

Website to list sweepstakes/raffle

If you're running a sweepstake/giveaway, there are literally hundreds of websites where you can submit your contest. We have put together a list of 20 on our blog.

It's worth noting that the quality of the traffic coming from these websites is usually pretty low.

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