# Referral marketing: what it is and how it works · Zorraquino
> Referral marketing encourages satisfied customers to recommend a brand, often through organised programmes with incentives.
URL: https://www.zorraquino.com/en/dictionary/digital-marketing/recommendation-marketing.html

# Referral marketing

Referral marketing is the strategy of encouraging satisfied customers to recommend a brand to others, often through organised programmes with incentives

What it means, how it is used and where it comes up, with its related concepts.

[The whole glossary](https://www.zorraquino.com/en/dictionary)

## What it is and how it works

It builds on the trust that personal recommendations inspire and turns it into a managed process: a referral link or code, a reward for the referrer, the new customer or both, and a system that measures how many new customers arrive this way. Such programmes are common in financial services, telecoms, subscriptions and apps.

It differs from word-of-mouth marketing, which includes any spontaneous recommendation, and from influencer marketing, in which the recommendation comes from creators with their own audience. Schemes such as “pay with a tweet”, which unlocked content in exchange for posting a message, were examples of their time.

Topics

[Marketing and sales](https://www.zorraquino.com/en/dictionary/category/marketing-y-ventas)

## Related concepts

- [Word-of-mouth marketing](https://www.zorraquino.com/en/dictionary/digital-marketing/word-of-mouth.html)
- [Member-get-member](https://www.zorraquino.com/en/dictionary/digital-marketing/member-get-a-member.html)
- [Pay with a Tweet](https://www.zorraquino.com/en/dictionary/digital-marketing/pay-with-a-tweet.html)