Dan Martell - March 19, 2018


How To Create a Referral System for Your B2B SaaS

Hosted by
Dan Martell
5 Reasons Why Most SaaS Startups Fail How To Run Your SaaS Board Meeting

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

191.93

Word count

1,061

Sentence count

53


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Dan Martell talks about how to create a referral system to get your current customers to share your product with a new customer without overthinking it. He talks about the benefits of using a referral page and why it's a must-have feature in your product.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Hi, I'm Dan Martell, serial entrepreneur, investor,
00:00:02 and creator of SaaS Academy.
00:00:03 And in this video, I'm gonna share with you
00:00:05 how to create a referral page system
00:00:07 to get your current customers sending you new customers
00:00:10 without overthinking it.
00:00:11 And be sure to stay to the end
00:00:12 where I'll tell you how to get my exclusive
00:00:14 referral page blueprint to get you going as fast as possible.
00:00:30 You probably realize this but one of the easiest ways to get
00:00:33 high quality, excited customers for your product is to ask your
00:00:37 current users to share it with a friend.
00:00:39 You've seen this with the Dropbox.
00:00:41 Everybody knows their story but they went from a thousand,
00:00:44 a couple thousand users to millions of users by ensuring
00:00:48 they've incentivized their customers at the right time to
00:00:51 share their product with a friend.
00:00:52 I've been doing it in every one of my companies.
00:00:54 Most recently with Clarity.fm, before that Flowtown and it's
00:00:57 something that I coach all of my clients to implement in their
00:01:00 product day one.
00:01:02 Step one, choose a win.
00:01:04 If you've ever had anybody, and this could be like a gym or a
00:01:07 local business or even a software product you're visiting their
00:01:10 website, ask you to share that product with a friend before
00:01:14 you've even used it then you realize that that strategy does
00:01:18 not work.
00:01:19 The reason why is you need to figure out what is the moment
00:01:21 within your customer's user experience or journey that gets
00:01:24 them a win and prompt them at that moment because it's on that
00:01:28 high when they've just gotten the result that you've promised
00:01:32 that they're most eager and likely to share that product with
00:01:36 somebody that they know would be an ideal customer for them.
00:01:39 So you need to choose a win and insert the ask or the referral
00:01:43 at that moment.
00:01:44 Step two, give to both.
00:01:47 The super specific strategy that you need to implement when
00:01:50 you're building a referral system is not only to reward the
00:01:53 the customer you're asking to share it with,
00:01:55 but you need to give them something that rewards the receiver,
00:01:59 the new customer because you need to create the mindset that
00:02:03 there's an exclusive opportunity that their friend or colleague
00:02:07 will only get if they take action today.
00:02:11 Meaning that if they go to the homepage and they sign up for
00:02:13 the product, they're gonna get a list of features but if they use
00:02:17 the link that that person referred, they get an enhanced
00:02:21 version of the product.
00:02:21 This could be more space as Dropbox does.
00:02:24 This could be a longer trial as many B2B software tools do.
00:02:29 This could be any other little perk or tweak to the features
00:02:32 that allows them to get a benefit only received when that
00:02:36 individual shares their referral link.
00:02:38 That is key.
00:02:39 Both need to win.
00:02:40 Step number three, make it easy.
00:02:43 Most people do something simple as providing a link,
00:02:46 a referral link that if your customer shares,
00:02:48 it gets tagged to their account so they receive
00:02:50 the credit for that new customer sign-up.
00:02:53 But you need to take it to another level.
00:02:55 You need to make it so simple that within the interface
00:02:58 they don't have to leave to share.
00:03:00 Maybe it's as simple as clicking some check box
00:03:02 and sharing on their Facebook, Twitter,
00:03:04 or other social networks.
00:03:05 Or even more so, going to the next level deeper
00:03:08 and don't even make them think about the copy
00:03:10 that they should share in the tweet.
00:03:12 And better yet, and this is the ultimate,
00:03:14 if you provide the opportunity for your customers
00:03:16 to use email, write the email for them.
00:03:19 For you to think that your customer is going to be able
00:03:21 to explain your product or define the benefits
00:03:24 and the features in a way that's going to entice
00:03:26 the receiver to click that link, register,
00:03:28 and try out your product, you're dreaming.
00:03:30 Work with a copywriter, write the email,
00:03:33 make everything executable in one spot
00:03:36 and really make it easy for your customer.
00:03:38 Step number four, seed it.
00:03:41 You know, one of my favorite things to do
00:03:43 when I design product is to hint towards
00:03:46 the next step in the interface.
00:03:48 And that could be as simple as having an invite a friend box
00:03:53 in the top right corner of your product.
00:03:54 It could be a modal window, a pop-up that shows up at one
00:03:58 point and say, you know, at some point we might ask you to do
00:04:00 one of these three things.
00:04:01 It could be even a link in an email.
00:04:04 But whatever you do, you need to seed your referral system so
00:04:07 that customers know that it's coming and they can expect it.
00:04:11 And some people are going to be so excited, especially if you
00:04:13 offer, you know, extended trials or discounted pricing for
00:04:17 inviting new friends or you might actually pay them with
00:04:19 real dollars, you need to make sure that you bring that
00:04:23 awareness to them.
00:04:23 So many times I see products that have a referral system but
00:04:27 it's buried in the product and customers using it never get
00:04:31 exposed to it.
00:04:32 They don't see it via email, prompt in the interface or in
00:04:36 the navigation.
00:04:37 If you want to get people to use that and refer other
00:04:39 customers, you need to see it inside the product.
00:04:42 So quick recap, number one, choose a winning moment.
00:04:47 Number two, give to both parties.
00:04:49 Number three, make it easy, write the copy.
00:04:51 Number four, seed it in the interface
00:04:54 so they are aware that there is a way
00:04:56 for them to be rewarded.
00:04:57 As I mentioned, I want to share with you
00:04:59 an exclusive download, my referral page blueprint.
00:05:01 You can click the link below in the description
00:05:03 to download the wireframe and the specific features
00:05:06 that you need to build a referral system
00:05:08 that's not complicated and doesn't get you
00:05:11 to overbuild that process.
00:05:13 If you like this video, be sure to click the like button below,
00:05:15 hit subscribe and share it with a friend.
00:05:18 Thanks for watchin', I'll see you in the next video.
00:05:22 I don't understand, Jared, I wasn't doing the story before.
00:05:25 I would just get into it.
00:05:26 Are you saying I should do it?
00:05:27 At the end of last round.
00:05:29 Okay.
00:05:30 So we weren't doing it.