Reward Buddy launched in 2019 after Luke Santamaria implemented and brought to life a referral program for a physio group that he managed.

From there, Luke saw an opportunity to help other businesses, especially those that aren’t digital and trade online, to leverage their word-of-mouth and grow their referral programs.

RewardBuddy is great for service-based businesses such as cafes, gyms, trades, health providers, and those that don’t have a lot of time or money to put into marketing but who rely on word-of-mouth and referrals.

The platform also helps retain clients with a loyalty reward aspect with a points system for using business on the platform as well as reviewing businesses on the platform. The great thing is, those points can be used with any business on RewardBuddy.

Further, the platform provides the flexibility for businesses to create and implement bespoke reward programs so they aren’t forced into a one size fits all or pre-determined packages.

One of the advantages of the platform is that through a business’ reward system, they are collecting names and contact details of their customers; something that is sadly overlooked by a lot of small and medium businesses.

I found out about RewardBuddy on a Facebook group I am a member of where Luke had posted an article titled, 8 Ways To Get More Customer Referrals. I thought it had some great and practical advice especially for those on limited budgets because a lot of what Luke talks about can be implemented without spending a lot of money.

Being the passionate word-of-mouth and referral advocate he is, Luke went way overtime on covering the eight ways to get more customer referrals. As such, I’ve split the chat with Luke up into two episodes. You’ll hear the first half here, in episode 18, and the second half in episode 19.