Referral marketing

Referral marketing is a word-of-mouth initiative designed by a company to incentivize existing customers to introduce their family, friends, and contacts to become new customers. It differs from pure word-of-mouth strategies, which are primarily customer directed with the company unable to track, influence and measure message content, referral marketing encourages and rewards the referrer for allowing a company to do so.

The process is distinct from multi-level marketing, in that there is no incentive for the original existing customer to drive or influence the subsequent referrals of the new customer^{[clarification needed]} – only the conversion of the initial, primary customer is rewarded.^[1]