Brand loyalty is the ever-elusive goal most companies build entire business programmes around. The path for a band of loyal customers used to be much clearer — provide top-notch products your customers love and they’ll reward you with unwavering support of your brand. Take a classic department store for example: once one of THE big brands smaller and newer companies attempted to emulate.
Now, their position is much less enviable. When brands begin to lose the support of shoppers it isn’t always because they’ve made a huge mistake, or their product quality has diminished (though those factors don’t have an impact). It’s because they’ve stopped creating amazing experiences for their customers.
Read also: Prices of top eight rice brands in Nigeria
As a brand, you will learn that many long-term benefits available to your business arrive through incorporating a high level of consumer interaction into your brand’s core concept. You will also notice that there is no better moment than when you are in the business formation phase to consider how you want to position your organisation for fruitful brand-customer connections.
However, before we explore these assets and the various routes to achieving them, you must have a solid understanding of the main concepts behind brand loyalty–and the acquisition of the Customers Lifetime Value. With this–alongside a basic economics lesson–you will be in power to obtain both concepts for the benefit of your business. Therefore, before getting into how to increase brand participation, let’s review the following foundational principles:
• Creating awareness to market your business brand: Usually, that starts with a specific budget set aside for various communication channels. This budget needs to be well revised–depending on what it will cover. A concerted effort is needed to bring in more customers, thus the continuing cost will appear on the balance sheet.
• Next, employ some math: If you can, develop a mechanism that enables your followers to refer friends and family members. With that, there is no reason to keep paying for awareness (marketing).
However, sometimes investing in marketing is necessary: There will be a very expensive beast that needs to be fed every time you wish to interact in this case. Investing time, energy, and money resources are very necessary to construct the respective brand loyalty for your upcoming clients.
In the end, as a business owner, you might need to join your consumers before they join you. Providing attention is more beneficial than receiving it. Customers frequently embrace the lifestyle that best suits them, and if your brand is a good fit, it may become a part of that lifestyle. Finally, after examining the data gathered from various studies, one may draw the conclusion that creating a brand community involves three basic steps.
• Lighting the fire: Business brands that successfully engage customers through great storytelling have a lasting presence. Initiate the first steps of forming a startup, work on it, and as you do, you’ll get confidence and start to take off. Once the brand becomes successful, donate a portion of the earnings to a series of charitable causes. Visitors to your website will be able to discover where you share this particular story. This style of storytelling is incredibly engaging and builds a bond with potential customers.
Read also: Whogohost rebrands as GO54 for digital domination
• Stoke the fire: You have the chance to establish relationships with personified concepts–as if you were speaking a shared language between your brand and your market. In this way, you will start to cultivate connections through storytelling. Customers will pick up your nicknames, slang, and shortcuts. Remember: consumers want to be a part of something they believe in.
Allow them to assist you by offering “in the know” references that they are happy to share or use. Customers appreciate the slang and feel like a part of something when they buy it, even though it is available on the website.
• Pass the light on: Offering your consumers a chance to spread the word about you can take many different shapes. It can manifest as using consumers as ambassadors, to casting them in your content! The key: they integrate into and engage in the communication that powers your business.
• Engender business loyalty: Last–but certainly not least–as a brand and a business, you aim to own your fans. When you have developed a robust following, you have a steady stream of feedback and a platform for an audience that can support itself. In your business plan, you don’t just want people to buy your brand; you also want them to become involved members of it.
Last line
It takes time to systematically build your company reputation, and it takes ongoing work to embed integrity into your brand. You can’t simply say you have integrity. You have to show it and prove it in everything you do. Your brand promise is a legacy that can last throughout your lifetime, and well beyond, if you choose
