Hey friend! I hope you had a lovely weekend and a celebratory Mother’s Day

So I’ve been questioning referral programs because on the one hand, there are case studies of companies that have reported very successful referral programs and we use these case studies to build referrals into our strategies in the hopes that we will be as successful as them and on the other hand I have too many experiences where referral programs have either flat out flopped or had cases of fraud - customers gaming the system and somehow getting more rewards for no referrals at all.

So do referral programs work in the African market?

The most famous case studies are from American companies i.e. Paypal and Dropbox, who launched their referral program because of Paypal’s success. This begs several things to consider as a marketer or business owner thinking of setting up a referrals program:

1. Think about other contributing factors. Referral programs don’t exist in a vacuum. Your product, the market, and the time you are launching your program matters too. Paypal and Dropbox, as they recount their referral success, fail to mention these factors and only talk about how they structured the programs and the incentives, and boom they exploded.
2. Paypal is reported to have spent $60-70 million in rewards - referral programs require you to have capital and might not be feasible if you are strapped for cash.
3. Difficult to quality control - You really cannot control who is referred to you - they may be a valuable lifetime customer or end up being an expensive customer that takes away revenue instead.
4. These referral success stories sometimes fail to give you the timeline. Generally, success is seen after a very long time, maybe even years and sometimes a startup or business doesn’t have the luxury to invest in something that takes that long.
5. The trick to referral programs is giving an incentive that people cannot resist - in the African market majority of the times, that is monetary which takes me back to the point of it being a costly endeavor.

That being said, I know referral programs when they work, they work and the benefits are astronomical - so my take is really think through this strategy. Make sure that your product or service is right for it, think through the cost implication, think of it as a long game and as part of the big picture and not a survival strategy. Make sure you think through all the loopholes and make your offer ironclad and then sell the hell out of it - Referral programs are not for the faint of heart! 😅

I might be terribly jaded so please share with me referral program success stories in Africa - yours or others you’ve seen.

A quick rant:

I saw these ads on LinkedIn and the person was applauding the marketing team that did these. They were applauded for managing to position this maize flour as premium and for “a culture-shifting idea”

I think the image aesthetic def positions the maize flour as premium and the 'ridiculously easy to cook' tagline is perfect. 'Jaribu soft life' - ties it all in with the TA. A high-end customer has better things to do than to fight with flour in the kitchen so yeah it should be easy to cook, it should be served in opulent settings and it should def give soft life. BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE FRENCH? Are we not capable of evoking opulence and luxury by ourselves as a people? This to me is giving colonial and as a person silently fighting colonial oppression it's an immediate turn-off - Maybe I am overthinking it. Anyways end of rant!

In case you missed it:

Hiphop wars like we are back in the 90s! Honestly, it’s been fun to see all the content people have created with that Kendrick song​

The Internet was down in EA on Sunday because of some fault at sea - it’s giving apocalypse lol

There was a solar storm over the weekend - the strongest in 21 years - who knew that was even possible! But would have loved to see the colors!

My Fave things this week:

Audiobook: Million Dollar Weekend - The surprisingly simple way to launch a 7-figure business in 48 hours. I wouldn’t say this book changed my life but there were some tidbits in there that were super valuable and things I personally needed to hear so for that it deserves a mention.

Reel: There is a lot of negative perception around social media and for good reason but I always defend it because there is so much education on there and if used wisely you can truly learn a lot. This video basically saved my bread.​

P.S: Great satisfaction comes from sharing with others

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