6 ways to Increase your Customer Loyalty
Customer Loyalty can be key to the long-term success of your business.
After all, loyal customers bring in more revenue than any other customers and, most importantly, they are advocates for your business. These loyal customers help you strengthen your brand and reach larger audiences through earned media and recommendations.
Today, we’ll discuss 6 ways in which you can increase customer loyalty in your business:
- Create a rewards program
- Ask for feedback and implement it
- Build a Community of Customers
- Adopt a clear and inspiring Company Vision
- Embrace Transparency and Responsibility
- Nail your corporate branding
What is Customer Loyalty?
First, a quick review of the basics.
Customer Loyalty is often confused with Customer Retention. However, they are quite different.
Customer Retention is fully transactional. As long as the customer continues to buy products from your business, they are considered retained.
However, they might have low customer loyalty and be willing to purchase from your competitor at any time.
Loyal Customers will not only purchase from your business but will also be “super-fans” of your brand. They will advocate for your business and publicly support your company’s vision.
Loyal Customers will also spend more at your business than any other customers, making them incredibly valuable for your business.
Want to learn more? Read our guide on what customer loyalty is and how it can help your business.
How to Increase your Customer Loyalty
Now, it’s time to get to the nitty-gritty of things.
Here are some of the best ways to increase customer loyalty and your business.
Create a Rewards Program
A great way to increase customer loyalty at your business is with reward programs. After all, you want to make sure that you’re offering additional value to your current loyal customers.
These rewards can come in the shape of discounts, free products, perks and more.
Implementing a rewards program is also really easy. It can be as simple as a stamp card or as involved as a dedicated mobile app for your customers.
Ask for Feedback and Implement It
Listening to your customers and letting them know that you genuinely care about their feedback is a surefire way to increase their loyalty.
But listening and saying your care is not enough. In order to nail your feedback strategy, you will have to also implement said feedback into your product and service. After all, some of your customers know your product as well as you do (or even better).
Build a Community of Customers
Building a community of customers around your business can also help you increase customer loyalty. For example, a pet store might build a community of local dog owners that get together every so often for pet-friendly events.
Remember, communities can exist both offline and online. Whichever way you decide to go with, remember that the value of building communities and framing conversations around your business.
Adopt a clear and inspiring Company Vision
People like to be agents of change and feel that they are helping the world become a better place. Adopting a clear and inspiring company vision can motivate your customers to advocate for your business when they share the same vision.
Your vision can be charitable, disruptive, or social. Whatever it may be, make it so that it is clear what your company stands for and seeks to achieve.
Embrace Transparency and Responsibility
Mistakes happen, there’s no way to avoid them completely.
What matters most, is how you respond when these mistakes happen.
Embracing transparency and responsibility when errors happen will earn the trust of your customers, as they will know you will do the right thing when things go wrong again.
Make sure to not only be transparent about issues but also make it up to your customers with proper solutions and remediations.
Nail your corporate branding
Another key component of increasing your customer loyalty comes with your own corporate branding.
After all, if you want customers to advocate for your brand, your brand needs to be clear and concise.
For example, Tesla has branded itself around a cult of personality around Elon Musk, Apple has branded itself around concepts of simplicity and seamlessness, and so on.
How you decide to brand your business will be reflected in how customers advocate for your business as well. As a result, you will want to have a clear and concise branding message across all channels and platforms.
Closing Thoughts
Improving your customer loyalty can help you increase the revenue of your business and its longevity too.
Remember, loyal customers are more likely to spend more money at your business and be a customer for way longer.