The Role of Age in the Referral Effect

Referral marketing and word of mouth are the most influential marketing techniques. Word of mouth has the power to influence more than 50% of all purchasing decisions. And conducting referral marketing effectively means to increase the word of mouth for your brand and vice versa.

However, the factor of age in case of targeting while doing referral marketing is crucial. The referral effect plays varied roles with different age groups. Understanding this will help you to conduct your referral marketing or word of mouth marketing campaigns better.

What Is Referral Effect

Referrals affect different people differently. And most importantly not all the referrals work the same. This is the referral effect. How a particular referral to professional impacts a specific client? Whether it will result in a conversion depends much on the referral effect. So, understanding how referral effect works with different people is crucial. Among the various other factors that may impact the referral effect, age is the most prominent one.

Why Age Plays a Role in the Referral Effect

People at various age levels respond to referrals in many ways due to their specific situation in life. As example, an elderly having years of experience with them have a fixed way to respond to their needs and are more likely to follow their old buying habits than responding to new referrals. On the other hand, younger generations have a constant search for newness and are more likely to get influenced by referrals to new services.

How Different Age Groups Respond to Referral

From the above examples, you can easily guess that the younger generations are much more referral friendly than the older ones. And this is a fact backed by various research now. Millennials are more likely to respond to referrals or to give referrals than other older age groups. It is such because millennials are comparatively new with the decision-making process when it comes to buying new products or services. So, they depend much on the advice from people around them. Another fact is that millennials love speed, agility and simplicity so just a quick referral from a friend or an online review or referral from a trusted source is all they need to make a swift decision.

What Does It Mean for Your Referral Marketing

Age and the referral effect on various age groups have a much bigger role to play in terms of targeting when it comes to referral marketing. Whenever you are running a word of mouth marketing or a referral marketing campaign keeping millennials as the first target group is essential for higher gains out of your efforts. Millennials have been estimated to spend $ 200 billion each year from 2017. So, with whom they are to do business with depends much on the referral effect of various businesses on them.

How Can You Improve Your Age Targeting?

To be in good referral terms with the millennials is not an easy job. Although they are the most referral friendly group Millennials are the most difficult to attract and retain as clients and customers. For attracting their attention and being accepted by them after they are referred to you, you have to match with their vibration and expectations. Being trending, up to date and true to your brand image is what matters to them the most.

NetProReferral can be of huge assistance when it comes to garnering the power of targeted referral marketing. NetProReferral has made the task easier both for the millennials to choose brands and the marketers get noticed. So, start getting expert referrals right away with NetProReferral.