One of the first e-mails I got today had this huge headline on how I can earn $100 by referring friends to use services from a particular company. The thing that came to mind about this was how to my knowledge the business didn’t have a lot of sales people doing say cold calls to attract customers. So instead they were trying to offer their customers huge incentives to be the sales people, so to speak.
I know in a more traditional sense people would think that if they need sales then the route is to say hire a commission sales person to go out and generate business. With this example though would you not refer people to use say a product or service that you believe in if the company offered you good financial compensation to do so as well? Sometimes you just giving people that extra incentive is all you need and it can probably be the more effective use of a marketing dollar.