WHAT IS BRAND LOYALTY? IS IT STILL RELEVANT?
56% of customers say they’re loyal to brands who ‘get them’. Brand loyalty is established when you create an emotionally-driven connection between your brand and the customer. By offering additional benefits and unexpected perks, you can improve customers’ experience and get them talking - taking the relationship from transactions to advocacy.
Here’s why you need to make it your focus this decade.
Is It Still Relevant in Today’s Digital World?
With greater choice and knowledge at their fingertips, consumers are more empowered than ever to make demands from brands. Companies are always coming up with new ways to get as many eyes on their product or service as possible. That’s why establishing a loyal customer base is essential to thriving in today’s market.
Technology has helped brands know more about their customers than ever before including their interests, likes and desires. Brand loyalty is considered to be the bread and butter of what keeps a business alive. We know it’s important, we know we need it - but how do we accomplish it?
Consistency: By creating a customer experience that’s reliable and familiar to your customers, it builds trust and they’re more likely to turn to you when they need what you supply. This applies to everything from in-store experiences to customer service. Think of tech giants Apple, all their stores are the same wherever you go in the world and it’s the epitome of a cult brand.
Personalisation: The more you tailor your brand to your customers, the better. With specific, highly-targeted marketing, customers will feel like you ‘get them”’. It could be recommendations based on past purchases or adding their name to marketing materials.
Collaboration: Another great way to cultivate brand loyalty is to collaborate with brands or causes relevant to your customers. You only have to look at cosmetics retailer Lush. This cause-driven brand works with charities that resonate with their shoppers.
Responsiveness: We know it’s not always easy to have somebody manning live chat 24/7. Chatbots and FAQ pages are perfect for customers who want to help themselves as they don’t always want to talk to someone to get their problem solved. Often, they want to quickly resolve their issue themselves and 81% attempt to take care of matters before reaching out to a live representative.
Value: Your customer should never feel like you’re doing something for the sake of it. Each of your marketing campaigns and actions should be relevant and enhance the experience of your product. This is where content creation and experiential marketing really comes into its own.
Creating such a loyal base doesn’t happen overnight. It requires engagement from brands and continued output of quality products and services. Cost will always be a factor but if you’re viewed as a trusted brand with a devoted following, it could prove to win over everything else - including price.
Enhances Your Brand’s Credibility
Loyal customers won’t just buy more from you but they can also increase your sales by recommending your products to others. A spectacular 92% of shoppers trust word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations from family and friends over other advertisements avenues.
Consumers want to buy from companies they like, know and trust. Having an authentic and transparent brand not only enhances your credibility with existing customers but it also helps you attract new customers.
Let’s take coffee as an example. It’s synonymous with Starbucks. They create quality products while the brand’s rewards programme is a strategic way to boost sales as it thanks loyal customers for always choosing them. Since acquiring new customers is often a costly process, enticing customers to come back time and again is essential to your long-term business sustainability.
Brand loyalty doesn’t always happen organically. It’s driven by passionate brands. However, you need to know you have the finances to facilitate fantastic loyalty programmes and engagement activations that keep customers coming back for more.
Use Our Campaign Budget Calculator to Increase Brand Loyalty in the Future
When you have clear budget figures, you can work out what you can dedicate to improving brand loyalty schemes. It’s not always simple to see how repeat customers and word-of-mouth marketing translate to ROI. You can use our handy little budget calculator so you can justify future branding budgets.
It’s easy to use and gives you clear figures to take away. Try it out using the link below.
Topics: Brand Engagement