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[February 2024 🤠 Roundup] Doubling Down on Experiences w/ SEO and Referrals

[February 2024 🤠 Roundup] Doubling Down on Experiences w/ SEO and Referrals

The brand experience is going to be more and more important + we're here to help

February 29, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Welcome to the February 2024 roundup, where we share what’s new at Referral Rock. 🤠 Other semi-monthly editions include Data Insights and Feature Updates.

Hi there,

We believe the “user experience” is going to be more and more important for businesses. AI is coming for the low hanging fruit, so “just being in the right place” is going to be less and less of a competitive advantage.

Personally I’ve gotten a lot of questions about SEO lately from non-technical business owners, particularly service-based businesses in industries like health care, travel, and creative production.

Here’s the beginner advice I give to those just starting out with SEO:

Pick one target keyword for your homepage and service/product pages and ensure that keyword is in the page title, meta description, body copy (including 1-2 headings), and at least one image alt tag.
Write 1-2 pieces of long-form content in an area of your expertise and optimize it for one target keyword (use this free keyword research tool). This could be a list of best practices, customer FAQs, a deep-dive on your approach. Choose something you’re interested in writing about that would also appeal to your target audience (and that you can repurpose). Tip: They Ask, You Answer is a great resource for this!
See if there are complementary businesses or directories that could link to your website (note: some of these may be paid).
Most importantly, master the basics before trying to do it all. SEO is a long game, so focus on quality over quantity.

For less competitive industries the beginner advice still applies. BUT for more competitive industries, you’re going to differentiate yourself by leveling up the user experience.

Yes, this means instead of just talking about how to calculate a reward; you build a calculator into your article.

For example we built a coupon code generator to level up our own content and went a bit above and beyond with templates to make it super easy to use. We’re also starting to investigate doing more video in the future (if you’re like me you probably aren’t looking forward to it).

What can you add to your own content and marketing mix to “level up” your experience. Just remember you don’t have to go full-on Netflix studio, but you do have to stand-out vs your competition.

Which also leads to a preview of our own product “experience” update coming to the member portal.

And now, onto the updates!

-Erin

P.S. This will be my last email update. I’ve enjoyed writing these, but I’ve made a change in my career. The next newsletter will be from Mica Longanecker, who is excited to step up and share his referral marketing expertise he’s gained from being at Referral Rock over the past 7 years.

📣 Product Updates

Member Portal updates - coming very soon!
We’ve made significant updates to the Member Portal to provide a better sharing experience, inspired by customer feedback!

The Referrals and Rewards pages now have a new card view, robust filters, additional fields, and lots of customization options.

Here’s a sneak peek of how the new card view on mobile will look for program participants.

Now your members will easily be able to search for rewards or referrals, see coupon codes, figure out where a reward was sent, and much more.

This feature is planned for the March 7th software update, and then you can request to have it turned on for your account.

ICYMI: Bulk Member Program Migration:
You can now move a batch of members from one program to another within Referral Rock (from a referral program to a brand ambassador program, for example).

Go to “Members > Import > Migrate Members” in the top menu to upload a CSV file and move members over (see help article for details).

Did you know? 🤔

You can sync all your referral shares and tracking data into your system of record (CRM or e-commerce platform), so your data is always up to date. Learn more >