Do you ever look at brands like Apple, Zappos, Starbucks, Sephora, Amazon, etc., and wonder how these brands have a massive following of loyal customers?
A direct answer to that is customer-centricity. These brands thrive because they center themselves around their customers.
Do you want to level-up your business by building a loyal customer base? You are at the right place!
From referral programs to customer support to social media, this post covers top strategies to help you achieve your goals.
Why Customer Loyalty is Your Biggest Asset
Customer loyalty is a customer’s desire to do business with your brand again whether it’s for your latest product or because they had a favorable experience with your brand. Loyal customers will likely return to purchase from your business. Loyal customers are also easier to retain than acquiring new ones.
Secondly, loyal customers are important as they turn out to be your biggest brand ambassadors. Being happy with your product or service, they are likely to tell their friends and family about your business.
Here are a few more reasons that highlights the importance of customer loyalty:
→ They keep marketing costs down. They do not require extensive marketing effort that potential customers do.
→ Customer loyalty plays a crucial role in giving tough competition to other businesses. Your competitors lose out on potential revenue when loyal customers spend money with your brand.
→ They are likely to leave amazing reviews. Reviews, as you know, are beneficial in improving sales.
Given below, are some top tips and strategies that will help you establish trust and build customer loyalty.
1. First Things First. Know Your Customers
Everything starts with having a clear understanding of your target audience.
One you know who they are and what they want, you can serve them better. It will give you a lot of clarity on how to market, what kind of personalized emails to send, etc.
One of the easiest ways to understand your audience is by creating buyer personas. Often what businesses do is consider demographics like age, location, etc.
However, it is also good to check your analytics. Go through analytics on your website, PPC campaigns, social media, etc. that will give you a detailed overview of your ideal buyer.
2. (Quick) Customer Support Should be Your Priority
You might have a whole support team in place. Not questioning that. Now, what you need to do is prioritize delivering quick support.
Customers expect quick responses from brands. They do not want to wait on hold while your support agents find the right solution to their query.
The first step in providing fast support is to put all the information customers need in their hands. Consider having a customer self service portal with a knowledge base.
With a knowledge base, your customers can quickly get answers to their questions without the need to call a support agent.
Secondly, also consider workflow automation to increase speed and bring more efficiency. Self service automation tools play a huge role in helping businesses and support teams to provide great customer support.
3. Encourage Repeat Business with Loyalty Programs
Customer retention is a tough task. Whether it is retaining an existing customer or a new user who just landed on your website.
If customer retention is a challenge you are facing, then maybe you want to consider loyalty programs. While there are different types of loyalty programs, choosing a program for your business depends on what you aim to achieve with it.
For example, a transaction-based program will help you get a lot of casual customers. But if you intend to create a long-lasting relationship with your customers, you need to deliver relevant and personalized experiences.
No matter what you choose, a loyalty program will benefit you by improving brand recognition, increasing sales, along with creating a loyal customer base.
4. Give Your Customers a Reason to Stay Loyal
Think of what your business does best. What is your unique selling proposition? What is something that sets you apart from your competitors? It all comes down to the values and strengths of your brand.
It is also important to ensure that your values align with your customers’ core beliefs. Brand value proposition is your chance to connect with your customers at a deeper level, and ultimately build trust.
A great brand value should be unique, memorable, actionable, and meaningful. Adidas is a good example of a brand having an impressive core value.
5. Take Maximum Benefit of Social Media
Social media is a perfect place to build relationships with your customers. If you want to make your brand memorable and want your customers to come back to you, you need a strong presence on social media.
Being responsive is the key to a successful social media strategy. Customers often ask questions or leave comments on social media platforms. So,consider having an active brand presence on the platforms by promptly responding to their comments.
Aim to build a community on social media. Communities promote engagement, attract more potential customers, and foster brand loyalty.
How to Measure Customer Loyalty
It is equally important to measure the results. Isn’t it? Here are some metrics that will help you measure customer loyalty.
→ Net Promoter Score is highly popular across all kinds of businesses to monitor customer satisfaction. Typically, in an NPS survey, a customer chooses a score between 0 to 10.
→ Repeat Purchase Rate is another metric. It is the percentage of customers who returned to your brand. Its formula is the number of customers who bought more than once divided by the total number of customers.
→ The third most popular metric is Customer Loyalty Index. It is a standardized tool that enables you to track customer loyalty over time. It involves questions related to recommendations, repeat purchases, etc.
Concluding Remarks
Focusing on building customer trust can bring great results in terms of increased sales, repeat business, and business growth.
While you can use various tips and tricks to build customer loyalty, nothing brings in more results than focusing on providing excellent customer support.
Nothing is more important to your customers than their queries getting resolved quickly. In such a case having a helpdesk software can benefit your business in delivering quick support to your customers. It offers a variety of features like ticketing, knowledge base, customer satisfaction survey, and a lot more.
Apart from that, also consider focusing on having a clear vision and mission strategy. Nowadays, customers prefer brands that are driven by purposes and values.
