We all know referrals are great but do you truly know how powerful a customer or employee referral is for your store? How many sales one customer can generate for you? How many customers would refer for an incentive offer/reward? How many more customers would become brand advocates if you had a referral program in place?

And if you are aware of just even one of those, are you honestly leveraging the power of word of mouth marketing and your happy customers to help sell you more cars or are you too busy putting all of your eggs in your digital basket, full of SEO, social media, retargeting, electronic displays, PPC, and more?

Your website isn’t the center of your universe. Your Facebook page isn’t the center of your universe. Your mobile app isn’t the center of your universe. The customer is the center of your universe.  – Bruce Ernst

Here are 30 referral stats that will make you want to start your own referral program today:

1. People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend – Nielsen
    
2. The lifetime value of a new referral customer is 16% higher than your average customer. –  Wharton School of Business
    
3. More than 50% of people are likely to give a referral if offered a direct incentive, social recognition or access to an exclusive loyalty program. –  Software Advice
    
4. Millennials ranked word-of-mouth as the #1 influencer in their purchasing decisions about clothes, packaged goods, big-ticket items (like travel and electronics), and financial products. Baby Boomers also ranked word-of-mouth as being most influential in their purchasing decisions about big-ticket items and financial products. - Radius Global
    
5. The Average Gross for a Dealership Referrals = $1,298, Fresh Ups = $817. - NADA
    
6. "Referral Marketing is the dark horse of marketing, a dark horse is a candidate or competitor about whom little is known but who unexpectedly wins or succeeds." - GIGAOM
    
7. Referrals have a 51% Service Usage, Fresh-Ups have just 29% service usage. - NADA
    
8. Word-of-mouth has been shown to improve marketing effectiveness by up to 54%. –  
   MarketShare
    
9. 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family. – Nielsen
    
10. "Word-of-mouth can prompt a consumer to consider a brand or product in a way that incremental advertising spending simply cannot." - McKinsey
     
11. 81% of U.S. online consumers’ purchase decisions are influenced by their friends’ social media posts versus 78% who are influenced by the posts of the brands they follow on social media. – Market Force
     
12. 74% of consumers identify word-of-mouth as a key influencer in their purchasing decision. – Ogilvy/Google/TNS
     
13. “And the trend toward word-of-mouth has been accelerating. According to Nielsen, the number of consumers who trust purchase recommendations from friends and family and online consumer opinions has grown rapidly since 2009, surpassing the number of those who trust TV and print media, which has plummeted.” - Boston Consulting Group
     
14. “WOM two times more effective than radio advertisements, four times more than personal selling, seven times more than print advertisements.” – Katz and Lazarsfeld
     
15. Referrals are 4x more valuable than a web lead. - Ken Krogue, President and co-founder of InsideSales.com
     
16. 1 offline word of mouth impression drives sales at least 5x more than 1 paid, and much more (as much as 100 times more) for higher-consideration categories. - WOMMA
     
17. 83% of consumers are willing to refer after a positive experience... but only 29% actually do. - Texas Tech

18. Referrals have a 96% CSI, Compared to 73% for Fresh-Ups. - NADA

19. 72% of marketers still do not recognize and leverage the value of customer referrals. - Loyalty360
     
20. 65% of consumers say that receiving rewards impacts their frequency of purchase. - Social Annex
     
21. 69% of consumers say that they’re more likely to try a brand if it gives rewards. - Social Annex
     
22. Customers acquired through referrals spend 200% more than the average customer.
     
23. Word of Mouth is STILL the most influential factor in driving purchases. - Nielsen
     
24. Costco's referral program led to sales of 398,875 new and used vehicles in 2014. - Automotive News
     
25. Referrals have a 61% Closing Rate; Fresh-ups have a 23% Closing Rate. - NADA
     
26. On social media, 58% of consumers share their positive experiences with a company, and ask family, colleagues, and friends for their opinions about brands. - SDL
     
27. When specific case studies were analyzed, researchers found a 10% increase in word-of-mouth (off and online) translated into a sales lifts between 0.2 – 1.5%. - MarketShare/ Keller Fay Group
     
28. 84% of consumers reported always or sometimes taking action based on personal recommendations. 70% said they did the same of online consumer opinions. [Nielsen]
     
29. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association reports that every day in the United States, there are approximately 2.4 billion brand-related conversations. People frequently talk about the products and services they enjoy, and the companies who offer them.
     

30. "As consumers overwhelmed by product choices tune out the ever-growing barrage of traditional marketing, word of mouth cuts through the noise quickly and effectively." - McKinsey

Worth Noting.

1. Facebook: “People influence people. Nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend. A trusted referral influences people more than the best broadcast message. A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.” – Mark Zuckerberg, CEO
    
2. Zappos: “We take most of the money that we could have spent on paid advertising and instead put it back into the customer experience. Then we let the customers be our marketing. Historically, our number-one growth driver has been from repeat customers and word-of-mouth.” –  Tony Hsieh, CEO
    
3. PayPal: "By directly paying people to sign up and then paying them more to refer friends, we achieved extraordinary growth. This strategy cost us $20 per customer, but it also led to 7% daily growth, which meant that our base nearly doubled every 10 days." - Peter Thiel - Co-founder

Pretty compelling stuff huh?