5 Top Tips to Build Your Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is something that all businesses strive to achieve which results in returning customers, better word of mouth, and wider reach. If you create high brand loyalty for your businesses, you’ll be attracting new customers based on your reputation alone. Since getting new customers is five times more expensive than retaining the ones you have, you must add this to your strategies as soon as possible.

The Importance of Brand Loyalty

Did you know that selling to new customers comes with a 5 to 20% chance of success, while selling to existing ones can go up to 70%? To increase these numbers for your brand, you need loyal, active, and engaged followers that will keep bringing new people to your pages.

All this is done by building brand loyalty. Now that social media is more popular than ever, what better place to implement your new strategies than on your social pages?

Some of the things you’ll achieve by working on your brands loyalty are:

• Beating the competition.
  New competition will come every day, but only the established brands will survive in a crowded market.
• Engagement and satisfaction.
  Indifferent followers might show higher numbers on social media, but it’s the loyal ones that really matter. Having 100 loyal followers is better than having 1,000 inactive, uninterested ones. These people are engaged; they share your content and spread the word of mouth.
• Brand advocates.
  Brand loyalty means that you have customers that also act as advocates for your business. They talk about your brand, praise its work or products, often even without any persuasion or incentives. Social media has become a hub for sharing feedback, which means that quality work can turn customers into loyal fans and messengers for your brand.

Source: @monicasauro, Unsplash

How to Increase Follower Engagement on Social Media

As a marketer, you should strive for more than an aggressively growing number of followers. Your biggest aim should be to get followers that are also fans and advocates for your brand. Here are some tips that can help you with this.

1.   Only Share Quality Content

Buying followers is one of the biggest mistakes you can make but, this doesn’t mean that you cannot effectively cultivate real followers on social media. The best way to make this happen is by sharing quality, user-generated content often and on several platforms.

The best and also the most time-consuming trick for inspiring brand loyalty is to share valuable content – and very often. How you pick your topics, craft your content, and even present it to the audience matters a lot, too. Creating it is not enough and you also need to aim it toward the right audience, post it on the right platform, and pick the perfect time for each piece you write.

2.   Share Positive Feedback

Brand loyalty is mirrored in positive feedback. So, whenever someone leaves a glowing review for your brand, whether it is on your site, pages, or anywhere else on the web – share it. Don’t just keep it to yourself as people feel a lot safer when they buy from a brand that’s been praised by others.

Sharing positive feedback is an excellent strategy for attracting new people and reinforcing your customers’ trust in your business. It’s social proof, a word of mouth that makes people more eager to trust you and buy from you. Customers book accommodation based on reviews they read, are more likely to cook a dish if someone has left great feedback on it, and more. Social proof is an amazing phenomenon that can build your business from the ground up.

Don’t have reviews just yet?

Don’t fret. There is no reason why you should wait for people to leave you comments on their own. Sure, if you have impressed them a lot, they might be tempted to do so but, since most people are busy and some might not even think of it, there’s no harm in asking for reviews directly.

For example, if someone praises your work or product via message, reply thanking them and asking them to share their opinion in an official review and then share it on social media.

One trending way of sharing social proof is by using influencers. More than half of the users of social media prefer to get information from people who’ve used selected brands. This is best accomplished if they hear it from someone established i.e. an influencer.

Find an influencer that’s relevant to your image and brand, as well as followed by your target audience. Reach out to them and offer a deal. You’d be amazed at the results these strategies show!

3.   Keep People in the Loop

What is happening in your company? People don’t like to be left in the dark, especially not your loyal customers. The more transparent and open you are, the more connected will they feel to your brand. Over 63% of customers prefer brands that are open about their plans, strategies, practices, and products.

Social media is perfect for this tip. You can use it daily and make it your ideal platform for keeping people in the loop. You can post updates, share your website’s blogs, interview employees, take photos or videos of your business and workings, and share events. This is an ideal opportunity for you to introduce new products or keep people informed about when they’ll show on the market.

Customers support brands that know how to share their values. In addition to posting photos and videos of your company’s latest workings or office environment, share the ideals and goals of your business. People will love to hear what your plans are. This is a great way to encourage brand loyalty from people who need what you offer or share similar beliefs.

Source: @nordwood, Unsplash

4.   Use Dynamic Ads

Building brand loyalty takes time. The more persistent and active you are, the higher your chances of getting your name out there. Soon enough, the numbers will grow and more and more people will get value out of your brand. One great way to speed this up is by using dynamic ads on social media.

How is that?

Dynamic ads will entice users to come back to your site or business and make a purchase. These show them products that they’ve shown interest in before i.e. similar to the ones they’ve bought, put in their cart, or viewed.

This sounds complicated, but such information is much easier to get these days. In fact, social media has it automated. You can set up dynamic ads on several platforms including Instagram and Facebook. You can do this by connecting your product catalog to the platforms and allowing them to choose relevant products for the target audience, based on their previous behavior.

5.   Acknowledge People

People are active on social media. If they are happy with what you offer them, they will probably take some action and like or share your posts, leave feedback, or recommend you on their pages. But, they expect something in return. Most people expect brands to acknowledge them.

Research has shown that 72% of millennials are more loyal to brands that respond to them. Postcron has found that 15% of Twitter users unfollow brands that are unresponsive and non-communicative.

Source: @austindistel, Unsplash

To build brand loyalty, acknowledge all actions taken on your social media pages. Respond to queries promptly, provide concise and informative answers, and communicate with your customers or other interested parties. By doing so, you’d be leaving a footprint as a business on social media platforms.

Shoppers today use social media to ask questions, make orders, and communicate more than they use traditional methods like on-site or website shopping. They are frequently active on social media, which makes it highly likely that they’ll reach out if they are interested.

Acknowledge any response to your answers and see all conversations through. The more personal your service is, the more likely you are to build a long-lasting relationship with customers. Not to mention, this will prompt them to spread the word around, which is your primary mission after all.

Key Takeaway

Connecting to customers is essential if you want your business to grow and expand. By keeping the people who are interested in your business happy, you are creating a name for yourself as a business person. In other words, you are increasing your brand loyalty, allowing your company to expand its reach and grow faster.

Pushing content or posting things without much thought is not a good enough strategy if you want to achieve this. People want things of value – and they want them often. They also want to be informed, acknowledged, and prefer responsive brands. Knowing all this, it’s time to begin planning for your next strategies to attract more social media followers and ideally – customers. Use these tips to build a long-lasting impression on people who hear about your brand or visit your social media pages.