While attracting new customers will always matter, you can’t forget about your existing customers (and building up their loyalty to your brand).
Just a 5 percent increase in customer retention can lead to at least a 25 percent increase in profit.
Fortunately, while consumers do have limitless options when it comes to the items they want to buy, about 90 percent still report being brand loyal.
Brand loyalty is when consumers strongly favor a specific brand over other brands.
Brand loyalty involves more than just retaining your customers, though. It’s about providing an experience that your customers won’t find anywhere else that will keep them coming back.
The following are six tips to create brand loyalty for your business.
Increase your focus on customer service
The quality of your customer service is everything. It can make or break your customers’ loyalty to your brand.
About 33 percent of customers say they would consider switching companies immediately following just one instance of poor service.
Remember that you want to address every inquiry in a responsive and timely manner. But beyond that, you should make every customer feel valued and appreciated.
Check out our six ways to be more responsive to your customers.
Understand (and share) your brand story and voice
Customers need to have a clear understanding of a brand before they become loyal to it. Your brand personality encompasses what your brand is all about, and it should be approachable to your target audience.
Clearly, you want to be as unique as possible as well so that you stand out from your competition. Take extra time when constructing your mission statement, which explains why your business exists and what makes you different.
See our nine expert tips to help you build your brand from scratch. In addition, check out our five tips for creating a brand style guide that can help you stay consistent in all aspects of your branding.
Success here makes your brand more recognizable and memorable to customers.
Consider a loyalty rewards program
Loyalty rewards programs incentivize your target audience to shop with you again. You can offer discounts, coupons or extra perks to repeat customers for any number of reasons:
- Customer anniversaries
- Repeat purchases
- Early bird perks
- Customer birthdays
Think about the products and/or services you offer and what makes the most sense for you to create as a loyalty rewards program.
Leverage your social media
You likely already have various strategic goals tied to your social media marketing, such as brand awareness, lead generation and customer service.
But think about what you’re doing on your social media accounts to promote brand loyalty. Sharing announcements and new products isn’t enough. You should dive into your brand story and find ways to share all the facets that come together to make your brand personality what it is. It should permeate every post in even the most subconscious ways.
Start with what matters most on social media: compelling content.
Find out what every startup company should know about social media, as well as what social media platform is right for your company.
In addition, you’ll want to review the difference between social listening and crowdsourcing so that you can better identify the opportunities when customers may not message you directly but will mention you on social media (for better or for worse).
Invest in a brand community
By “invest,” we don’t mean with money per se. Building a community that supports and celebrates your brand at the very least requires a major and consistent investment of time.
It all begins with understanding not only your target audience but your existing customers and what commonalities they share. Consider those engaged within your community as potential brand advocates, who are likely to share your brand with others and give honest reviews of your products and/or services. In the simplest sense, they have your back and are proud to be connected to your brand.
Depending on how your community largely uses social media, it might make the most sense to create a Facebook group or a branded hashtag or even a subreddit board. There’s no right or wrong here. All that matters is that the channel you chose to nurture your community on resonates with your brand advocates.
Social media is all about engaging with others, but it also requires you to be present for your community to help it grow and thrive.
Check out our 12 tips to use Facebook Groups to help grow your brand. A lot of these tips can be applied to other channels when building an online community.
Deliver value through quality
This may sound obvious, but there is no amount of great social media or incentives that can create brand loyalty if your products and/or services are not high quality.
Make it a priority to deliver on every promise you make and exceed every possible expectation you can think of.
You can regularly conduct customer surveys to better understand what you’re doing well and what could be done better.
In the end, customers will feel loyal to quality in all aspects.
In conclusion
Ultimately, your commitment to creating and maintain brand loyalty among your customers can help boost your profits, so it’s worth the effort.
Consider existing customers just as important as new customers.
As you’re developing a strategy to boost brand loyalty for your business, consider leveling up your digital marketing with DailyStory. Features include automating various marketing tasks, dynamic audience segmentation and more. Schedule your free demo with us today.
