Customers choose brands whose values they share. Brands that are familiar to them, even if your product is cheaper the customer is more likely to pay attention to the brand to which he is loyal. This can be used to your advantage and build audience loyalty to the brand. Social media can help with this and significantly increase loyalty to your business.
What is brand loyalty?
Loyalty is a concept from marketing that essentially means commitment and consumer loyalty to a product or brand. It is defined by such conditions:
- the frequency of purchases of a certain brand,
- the consumer’s attitude towards the brand,
- the likelihood of switching to another brand.
Some marketers define loyalty as a person’s resistance to marketing activities of competing companies, caused by emotional attachment to the brand. ΚΌ
On social media, a loyal consumer is subscribed to brand pages, willing to like and comment on brand posts, and participates in contests. He follows its updates and even recommends it to his friends.
Loyalty depends on the emotional component because a loyal consumer is ready to make repeated purchases of the brand. Especially it happens not only in connection with the products themselves but with related services of the company. Consumers like the way communication are organized and they trust their money to this particular business.
In today’s world, social networks are the main channel for consumers to communicate with the brand. Users order products, ask questions and make appointments in communities or in messengers. Social media plays an important role in the purchasing decision-making process. Here people find products, meet new brands, evaluate the quality of the product, and communicate with other users.
How to increase brand loyalty?
Loyalty to the brand is impossible if the brand does not have its own character and the consumer does not have associations with it. At the very beginning of business creation it is important to define the identity of the brand: its key values, Formulate emotional and service advantages. Personify the brand, and answer the question: what is he like? If the brand were a person, what qualities would it have?
Based on this, develop a tone of voice and strictly adhere to it in social media. Not only in posts on company pages but also when communicating with users.
You should also take care of the visual component, it is impossible to create a brand without basic attributes: a logo, corporate colors, the history of your brand, and the core values of your brand.
Develop a corporate identity and use it in all promotional materials, illustrations, and posts. It’s important to remind the user about you, you can also use ads for this. Brand products don’t just satisfy a need, but also solve the user’s problems. By answering customer questions and responding to mentions you can greatly influence the loyalty of your audience by providing them with service and support. Add interactivity to your content strategy. Subscribers will stop being passive listeners and start interacting with the brand – and that increases customer loyalty.
The right solution is to use a social media calendar. This will help you systematize your events and create activities for them to interact with your users. Be interested in their opinions, think in detail about interesting and useful contests, and don’t forget to thank them. Appreciate brand loyalty: motivate customers with discounts, special perks, and stories on company pages.
Brand loyalty metrics are fairly simple and logical:
- Customer satisfaction level. This is a measure of customer satisfaction expectations when interacting with your brand.
- Trust. It is very difficult to win and keep the trust of the consumer. But trust is very important often in communication with the consumer, the chance that they will choose you because your trust is incredibly high.
- Dignity. The reputation of a brand is incredibly important in today’s world, you can be very well known, but if your reputation is bad you cannot compete in the market, because you will lose audience loyalty. Customer loyalty to the brand is a must for successful product promotion.
- Reliability. Clients want to be sure of you, it is important for them to understand that by choosing your product they will receive the maximum return in the form of quality service and client support. Consumers are often ready to forgive small defects if you quickly fix them and will constantly be in touch and provide maximum help in case of disputable situations.
Of course, by now we can say that brand loyalty is one of the most important factors in business development. If you don’t have loyal customers who will buy from you again and again, you have to compete with other brands on such factors as price and convenience.
And when consumers choose your brand based on how affordable your products are and how low your price is, your brand itself becomes a commodity. You lose your uniqueness and find yourself in a hugely competitive environment in which you can only fight by lowering the price of your product or service.
You have to fight the devastating price drop and invent new advertising tricks, and in addition, you always run the risk of losing customers to competitors who can offer a better deal.
Precisely in order to prevent your business from becoming a commodity that can easily be replaced by a cheaper counterpart, it is important to develop customer loyalty. This will really help make your business successful and thriving.
About the Author
Mark Delarika is a content marketing professional who successfully uses strategies to attract visitors and increase leads through social media.
Leave a Reply