From budding businesses to established companies, it is long known that repeat purchases by existing customers are what makes a business profitable. If we talk about e-commerce businesses, the ability to retain and attract customers through their online portal can be quite easy, if one knows what they are doing. This is what brand loyalty is all about.
Multinational businesses will already have an idea about how important the factor of customer retention is, but for small and upcoming e-commerce companies, it’s never too late to learn about the relevance of building a solid customer base for your products.
Since the festive season is right around the corner, you should make the most of it by attracting as many customers as you can and retain them for future sales and promotion of your brand.
What is brand loyalty?
Brand loyalty is an emotion wherein a customer is inclined towards a particular brand of his or her choice due to previous experiences with the brand. In simpler terms, it is the emotional connection an individual feels towards certain brands, irrespective of the cost, and relevance.
If we take an example of Apple, it’s evident that though the price range of the accessories and products is sky-high, the brand has become a synonym for premium mobile phones and accessories, and people still have the motivation to purchase the products offered by them.
Brand loyalty isn’t limited to repeat purchases by a consumer, it also gives an insight into the psychological behavior that people possess while making recurring purchases. Furthermore, brand loyalty emphasizes the importance of communication between the buyer and the seller as well.
Importance of brand loyalty
Any marketer knows that the first step in improving the sales volume of his/her business starts by having a loyal customer base. After all, the ultimate aim for any brand is to retain the current customers and attract potential customers for future sales and the growth of your business.
- Since 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, brand loyalty lets you save your expenses in acquiring new customers and enables you to allocate and spend your expenses on different marketing channels
- If a buyer is satisfied with your product or brand, he/she has a high probability of speaking positively about it to others. This type of brand advocacy is an effective method for involuntary promotion and marketing
- Brand loyalty acts as a self-evaluation tool for you where you can find the value of your brand in terms of the demand for your products and services, which also helps you find out your place among the competition present
- If your brand has a loyal customer base, it brings out a sense of brand dependency where your customers feel obliged to purchase any new product offered by your brand, as they know that it would most satisfy them, irrespective of the cost
Factors that affect brand loyalty
Once the foundation of trust is built between the buyer and seller, it is very hard for the consumer to sway from that particular brand. Considering that brand loyalty gives the customers a feeling of confidence and trust, there are certain things that the buyers evaluate before conducting repeat purchases with the same brand.
Keeping this in mind, let’s have a look at the various factors that affect loyalty towards your business:
- How your brand is perceived by the outside world in terms of the efficiency shown in day-to-day operations
- The values, philosophies, and principles that are followed by your brand
- The level of transparency shown by the brand in terms of being vocal about any malpractices, misinformation, etc towards your customer base
- The rate at which your business has been uniform with the delivery of products and services
- How your brand or product ranks among the existing competition in the market in terms of price, sustainability, and suitability
How to build brand loyalty
The primary source for retaining your customers over the long term is the ability to keep them closely associated with your brand over a prolonged period of time.
Though it isn’t an easy task to execute, here are some of the ways through which you can improve the probability of retaining your customer base.
- Understanding the wants and needs of the customer sets a platform for a strong relationship-building process, which will ultimately lead to healthier business transactions between you both in the future
- Providing your customer with additional rewards and incentives gives them a sense of happiness and makes them feel “wanted”. This helps in strengthening the bond between you and your customer base for the times ahead
- Traditional businesses have always relied upon word of mouth of other reliable business entities to get their business operations up and running. This method of giving positive testimonials from friends and family about one’s business almost always works
“Make sure that you give a positive experience to your customers so that they act as brand advocates and help spread the word about your brand or product to the outside world.”
- Gathering relevant information about the customer so that they can get an idea about the brand and setting up solutions that cater to the customer’s requirements creates a “win-win” situation for both
- The implementation of effective customer loyalty programs that helps you engage with your customers, improve their experience, save your marketing costs, and stay ahead of your competition plays a huge role in customer retention and attraction
Brand loyalty through social media
Social media has changed how people interact with one another. The abundance of content available online has made it very easy for the viewers to decide which brands to follow.
The trend of sharing user-generated content (UGC) has uplifted how brands use social media as a tool for promotion. In terms of marketing, brands can connect to their customers through social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.
Sharing posts of your customer base on your official social media channels also builds up an organic relationship between the two, and also allows more viewers to get a better understanding of the brand as well.
Using the method of “influential” marketing where another reputed “influencer” promotes your brand to the age-appropriate audience ideally boosts the traffic around your brand.
Conclusion
For any business to thrive, the need for a solid customer base is vital for its existence. If there are no loyal customers, to begin with, the reputation and the value of your brand plummets.
To keep a brand afloat in the market, utmost attention and care are required to keep the customers happy and within the circle of keeping them updated about any changes as well.
To ease the pressure of keeping your customers happy all the time, Razorpay can assist all businesses, enterprises, entrepreneurs, and freelancers to adopt digital payment methods to grow their businesses.
If you have a tool that does all the tricky work for you, it enables your business to have a hassle-free experience and deliver efficiently to your customers as well. Additionally, this in turn helps in building up brand loyalty and ideally results in acquiring more customers.
