Doing Referral Marketing Right Using Buyapowa with Gideon Lask

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. We are talking with Gideon Lask again to learn more about Buyapowa, the leading referral marketing platform for our listeners who are joining us for the first time. Here’s a quick recap on previous episodes: we discussed how to run a referral program and the power of the right messaging. Today, we’re going to learn how Buyapowa can help you do referral marketing right.

Referring people is a win-win for everybody. If I’m a big fan of XYZ company and I love their products, and I get an opportunity to tell my friends how much I love them while receiving a benefit in return, then my friends get great products at a discount, and they refer others too. You’re really doing everybody a favor. If you don’t like the product, you won’t refer it; but if you do like it, and you’re already talking to someone about it, knowing you’ll get a 10% or 20% discount motivates you to refer it to more people.

You mentioned Dropbox earlier when it first launched. I’ll never forget when they said, “Hey, we’ll give you extra space.” I didn’t pay for Dropbox for years because I referred everyone I knew and received an additional 250 MB for each referral. My account grew rapidly, and I knew I was referring a product that people needed while also helping them understand how to use it. I loved it—there was nothing better.

Today, you see this model in action everywhere. I want to refer good products and share the best offerings available. When you find something truly great, it’s only natural to tell the world about it.

I think that’s the thing. It’s thinking outside of the box. Because you would think energy when you said that. It’s obviously nobody’s gonna say, “I can get you 5% off your energy,” and you’re, “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” You should probably quit drinking.

But I do understand that: “Hey, this is awesome. Let me show you what I’m doing for my community or for the environment.” We naturally want to talk about how we’re doing our part. By putting that out there, the creative side is the way to go. There’s a way—you just have to figure out what the service is, the person you’re working with, or the people in your customer base, and then what they want to do. What is it? How’s it going to benefit them?

For me, it’s that I’m saving, doing my part for the universe. And I think that applies to electric vehicles. There are all kinds of things where it’s, “Hey, I’m doing my part. I’m buying a great vehicle, but I’m doing this because I want to help XYZ.” Everybody will know that I’m in for the cause, and this is what I’m doing to do my part.

I love that. It’s just a different way of looking at it. Shout out to the creative team out there doing some big things. I love that.

Yeah, I was gonna say that would be fun. That would be something I could super geek out on because then you’re looking at the psychology of this. What’s working with messaging and what isn’t? How are we going about it? You’re figuring out how to make it more convenient for somebody to share something they probably didn’t know they needed or wanted to share, but then when you give that opportunity, it’s like, “Whoa, this is really awesome.” This hit me at the right time. Now I feel good about sharing it once again, and other people are going to also like the messaging and the things going on there.

You’ve been doing this for 10 plus years. What have you guys seen? I’m trying to think about the evolution of this thing. What are you guys seeing here? Obviously, in the last 10 years, a ton has changed. It went from, “Hey, this is working. We’re seeing this in the music industry,” to collective buying, and now it’s, “Hey, let’s refer people because there are great products and services.” How are you seeing this thing evolve in the next few years?

I love that. So I think it’s funny—I never thought. It does make sense when you say it about the influencer side of things and the fact that a lot of these campaigns I’ve been part of, in the beginning, didn’t have clear attribution or ROI without software in the back end saying, “Hey, this is what’s happened. They did this,” unless you were using a code or something.

But with what you’re talking about, refer-a-friend shows direct attribution. It shows us, “Hey, listen, this is the campaign that we put out. This is the magnitude of what has happened. This is how many people bought things. This is how many people liked it.” That’s insane.

Yeah, I love that. I think that makes total sense. Because, once again, I know campaigns we’ve done on the back end are difficult to look at and say, “Here goes the reporting, and this is what we’re able to do,” other than noting we had an uptick in sales without knowing if that’s attributed to you or to another campaign that’s going on.

So what would you say? What are some of the features you have? Anything fun that you can tell us about that you’re working on for the next generation? You’ve been building this tool for 10 years, bringing it to a point where you’re in 27 different countries, in 21 languages, with over 100 clients. What’s the next step? What are the big plans? Can you tell us, or is it secret? Do we have to bribe you, or what’s the deal?

Gotcha. So you guys get got that bigger vision you’re looking to disrupt a little more. You want people to go from, hey, this was, this was the business, and now we’ve graduated, this is what you want people to know about, the bigger plan.

Disruption. I love it. Little disruption never hurt anybody. So I’m curious just how big is your team

That’s awesome. How did, how did COVID affect you guys at all? Was that? Does that help you guys? It? I mean, I know there’s some business. I know my business got hit right at the beginning, and we were able to weather the storm. But how did that work for you guys?

Yeah, it’s funny. I was doing a lot of consulting for SBA (Small Business Administration) here in the US because I wanted to help people in time of need. One of the big things I would tell people was to go back to your Rolodex—go back to the people who knew your business up until this point, especially with COVID and difficult times. When someone says, “Hey, I want to advertise. I want to do this,” what about your Rolodex of people who love your product? What about going back to them and doing a refer-a-friend program because they still love your product and service? They want to know that you’re still around, and then what’s something you can do there?

That was something I would tell them, knowing your platform. You guys are a huge platform, so most of the clients were smaller business-type situations, but that’s what I would tell them: “Go back to your Rolodex. You’ve already paid your advertising cost to get those people in the door, and now take advantage of them, making them feel good.”

It’s funny. I’m in Sacramento, California, and we’ve had a huge influx of people from San Francisco and the Bay Area because Google, Twitter, and Facebook now allow remote work. Everybody’s coming to Sacramento, which is awesome.

It’s definitely helped the real estate market—it’s gone through the roof. People are saying, “I like San Francisco, but it’s expensive, and now I can go somewhere else and work remotely.” We’ve seen that here in California and probably all over the world.

I love that capability of my full team; my team is remote as well. So I’m like, “Go wherever you want, as long as you’re getting your work done. Go have some fun, and send me pictures of how much fun you’re having,” so I can be a little jealous as I sit at my desk at home.

That was actually going to be my next question to you. So if you could travel—France would definitely be on that list, because I understand why you would want to go there. That makes total sense. If we didn’t have COVID—if we’re all COVID free, all vaccinated, and everything’s back to normal—what would be the one place you’d want to travel to without having to wear a mask? Where would that spot be for you?

No, but I literally, out of my last probably six podcast guests, I’ve had three of them say Japan.

I’m gonna move that up. I think it was in my top 10, but I’ve had enough people. That’s the real it. The reason why I asked this question, it has nothing to do with my audience, not that I don’t love my audience. It literally is for my to do for my list of where I need to go.

I’ve never been to New Zealand. I’ve been to Australia, but New Zealand looks like an adventure for hiking. New Zealand’s on my list. My list changes all the time because I talk to people, and the problem is that my list is growing, but I haven’t been traveling for a year or a year and a half. I’m used to speaking at events, and I haven’t been doing that. For me, my list just keeps growing. I haven’t taken anything off my list, and I’m clamoring—I’m ready to go; I even told my wife that I might be gone for a year. You can just come visit. I want to go places. I enjoy different cultures and different foods, and I love chatting with people and getting to know them. I really miss it. I get a little bit of that through the podcast, but it’s just not the same.

Japan went from my top 20 to my top 10, and now it’s probably going to be my top three. I’m going to look into it this week and figure out plane tickets, because I can’t have three people out of six. Tell me, Japan—how many countries are there in the world? And that’s…

I’ve got no problem. I’ve got a passport, and I’m fully vaccinated. I couldn’t be I’ll put on a little helmet, whatever I need to do to get over there. I’ll make it happen. So cool. My other question for you, this is kind of our little fun section of this. If you could get any you could choose any superpower, what would it be?

I could be in London tonight. We could be at a pub, having a beer. Snapping my fingers—oh, that sounds amazing, doesn’t it? I would keep snapping my fingers so I wouldn’t have to be gone for a year. I just tell my wife it’s going to be maybe a month now because I’m cutting down on my travel time.

That’s right, she’s going to be shocked. We had no idea you’d go for pints. And we’re like, “I know, baby, it’s not a problem. I’ll see a counselor here soon.” So, last question for you: do you have any favorite books or podcasts that have shaped your career or your personality—anything you think everyone has to listen to or read?

That is awesome. I will be in a I might even I’m actually going on vacation this this weekend. I’m gonna get that book that’ll be my new book lifespan.

That’s probably it—if I tell my wife that, she’ll say, “No, let’s just maybe keep you around for a shorter time; we don’t need you gone for that long. We’ll figure it out.” So, Gideon, this was awesome, man. I knew this was going to be a good interview. You’ve got amazing energy—you’re very charismatic. I mean, you can tell why your company has done so well. You’ve got a great vibe. I really appreciate you being on the podcast. If anybody needs to get in contact with you or wants to know more about Buyapowa, can I give some details?

There we go. Easy enough. And you guys, Buyapowa is spelled B-U-Y-A-P-O-W-A, dot com. Thanks, Gideon, for joining us. It’s been a pleasure having you on the Marketing Growth Podcast. Not many of you know this, but we’re on the Top 20 Marketing Podcast list by Marketing Logic. If you like this podcast, make sure you subscribe. Next week, we’ll be talking to another industry expert to help you get useful insights to power your campaigns. So, stay tuned.