Word of mouth –
- Member get member referral program where you incentivise existing users to add new users (e.g. recommend a friend and $$ commission) Same as an affiliate program
- Straight referral – where you make it easy for an existing user to share your product with others (e.g. please give us the name of 3 people you’d recommend our product to)
- Member get member prize draw – where you refer, and each additional referral adds to tickets in a lottery
- Referral for incentive – where you make a referral to get additional benefits (recommend a friend for access to new features)
- ‘Show off badges’ – where you use badges, certificate and other anchors of achievement and you encourage your user to show off, linking back to you
Community –
- Content seeding – where you create content and distribute within an niche community, the goal is for you to be positioned as a thought leader and therefore make your product a first consideration
- Commenting – where you comment on other content, engaging in debate and insight and use that to seed mentioned of your product, the goal is for you to be positioned as a thought leader and therefore make your product a first consideration
- Information consolidation – were you act to be a new source and hub of news and insight, at the centre of the niche community
- Targeted engagement – by observing communities you determine who thought leaders are, then engage with the though leaders to try your product and give feedback, encouraging them to share and promote you in due course.
- Answer questions – especially for sites like Quora – actively answer questions that your product solves from users asking for help