How To Build Brand Loyalty

Getting new customers is always a great feeling, but what is even better is getting repeat customers that love your business. Building brand loyalty helps you keep those customers coming back, and recommending your business to others.

What Is Brand Loyalty?

Brand loyalty is a customer’s consistent specific preference to one brand over its competitors. Brand loyalty goes deeper than a customer simply liking the product or service- it is built on trust, familiarity, satisfaction, and emotional connection.

Why Is Brand Loyalty Important?

You obviously want customers to continue to choose your brand, but brand loyalty provides value beyond extra sales. Acquiring new customers takes more time and money than keeping customers. The longer your customers stay with you, the more you learn what they like to personalize ads and offers. Building brand loyalty also encourages word of mouth marketing, so your loyal customers recommend and share your brand with their friends and followers.

How To Build Brand Loyalty:

Building brand loyalty takes time, but there are steps you can take to keep your customers coming back. Learning what your audience wants is one of the most important steps in building brand loyalty. Identifying your target audience and creating buyer personas can help you determine their wants and needs, and help you identify how to best meet those needs. Understanding what they are looking for and providing them with that shows them that you are listening to them, care about what they are asking for, and working to be the best solution for them.

Customer service is another important factor in building brand loyalty. Whether a customer has a question or an issue with their order, your customer service team is going to be the ones to communicate with the customer. While having an automated customer service chat can be helpful for some businesses, it is important to have an actual person they are able to reach. Having prompt and professional customer service can make or break a customer’s experience with you. Knowing that you will take care of them not only creates a better experience for the customer, it helps foster your relationship with them and encourages their loyalty.

User-Generated Content (also known as UGC) has seen a huge uprising in recent years. Sharing or reposting content made by current customers shows that your brand is reliable, and your current customers actually like your products. Not only does it inspire new customers to shop it you, but it can encourage returning customers to make another purchase with you or try a new product. UGC helps you build an emotional connection customers and allows them to create community with one another by discussing what they like about your brand and how they use your products or services, which encourages them to stick with you and your online community. UGC takes little effort, since you are not creating the content yourself. If your audience is not creating UCG organically, consider reaching out to influencers in your field and teaming up with them. Once you start getting UGC, other customers will likely be inspired to share their own experiences with you!

Quality and consistency go hand-in-hand with brand loyalty. Say you go to your favorite coffee shop once a week, and you order the same drink. You are going to know what exactly what you are getting every time you visit, and look forward to it. If you went in one day and they switched up how they made your drink so that it tasted different, you would most likely not be thrilled and question returning in the future. Customers like when they know what to expect, so offer them consistency with your products. Chance is inevitable with growth, so if you need to change or update a product or service, give them a heads up.

Building brand loyalty is all about offering your customers the best experience possible and listening to them. Having strong company values, transparency, and consistency are key to keep them coming back! What brands are you loyal to? How do you build brand loyalty for your own brand? Let us know in the comments!