Why Is It Important to Build and Improve Your Brand Loyalty?

Loyalty is the lifeblood of any business. Without happy customers taking the time to spread the word and make frequent purchases, businesses are far more vulnerable during times of economic downturn. 

Taking the time to Improve brand loyalty is, therefore, an essential part of any business’s long-term success. Without an engaged network of loyal followers, your company will struggle to grow. 

In this guide, we’ll explore why it is so important to take action to build brand loyalty towards your brand and how you can form a better emotional connection with your target audience.

What Is Brand Loyalty?

Brand loyalty refers to how your current customers perceive your business, often based on their previous experiences with you. If a customer is brand-loyal, it means they believe that your business offers a better quality product and better services than any of your competitors. According to Zendesk, 72 percent of customers feel loyal to at least one brand. 

Typically, brand-loyal customers will make fewer total purchases during your customer-business relationship, but they’ll likely spend more when they do buy from you.

Brand loyalty is fairly easy to retain once you’ve got it—assuming, of course, that your product quality and service remain to their standards. Taking the time to improve brand loyalty also incurs less marketing costs than customer loyalty, which requires you to constantly offer low prices and discounts to keep your best-deal-on-the-market status.

Why Is Brand Loyalty Important? 

Brand loyalty helps to keep success sustainable so businesses are more resilient against competition from other businesses and economic downturns. Building a strong customer base is the linchpin of long-term success.

Let’s say a company launches a successful marketing campaign that generates $3,000 in sales. While a great achievement, without building a rapport with these 3000 new customers, they will likely not generate any new returning customers in the future.

Paying attention to building brand loyalty and customer retention is clearly an essential aspect of generating revenue.

Here’s a closer look at why choosing to improve brand loyalty is so important for businesses, no matter their size.

1. Repeat Business

Customers who are brand loyal are far more likely to come back and buy more products and services from you so that you can guarantee a steady stream of revenue, even in quieter sales periods. They keep your business financially stable and allow you to continue growing your bottom line.

2. Less Spent on Marketing

Finding and acquiring new customers is typically far more expensive than just keeping your existing ones. Building brand loyalty prevents you from having to pay for extensive marketing efforts to attract new customers for your company.

Focusing on your current customer satisfaction levels allows you to prioritize your resources on profitable customers who have already bought from your business, giving you a higher return on your initial investment.

3. Word-of-Mouth Marketing

If your customers are loyal enough, they will advocate for your brand and recommend your business to their close associates. Positive word-of-mouth marketing is incredibly powerful, perhaps more so than expensive marketing campaigns, and is also free.

So, investing in your loyal customers is a way of getting organic promotion, which will expand your reach and increase how many people recognize and associate with your brand. You’ll secure new customers without having to spend thousands on ads.

4. Better Protection Against the Competition

Brand loyalty acts as a formidable barrier against competitors. If you have customers by your side who have a strong affinity for your brand, they’re less likely to look elsewhere. With a base of loyal customers, you won’t face the constant pressures of price competition and fluctuations in the market.

5. Higher Customer Lifetime Value

Your loyal customers will have a higher lifetime value to your business compared to one-off buyers, as they’ll likely keep buying from you and may even become brand ambassadors in the future. This will help your business maintain sustainable revenue and maximize the economic value of your relationships with customers.

6. Differentiation in the Market

A strong base of loyal customers is a testament to your brand’s unique value proposition (USP) and reputation. This helps you to distinguish your business from all its competitors and reinforces your brand as trustworthy in the minds of potential customers. 

To improve brand loyalty, you need to build an emotional connection between your clients and your brand, which competitors will struggle to replicate.

How Customer Experience Affects Brand Loyalty 

The experiences that your customers have when purchasing from you go a long way in cementing their loyalty to your brand.

Every single interaction that a customer has with your business, whether it’s online, in-store, or through a customer service channel, will directly contribute to how they feel towards you.

A customer may feel more positive towards your brand if they experience an easy buying experience or have a personalized interaction with you, building trust and satisfaction. These consumers are far more likely to recommend you to friends and family or even write positive reviews about your business online. Using white label digital marketing services can enhance these experiences by providing tailored marketing strategies and solutions that ensure every customer interaction is seamless and engaging.

Negative experiences can cause reputational damage and drive customers away, undermining the loyalty they have for you. For instance, if you’re too slow to process a return or you call the customer on a phone number marked as spam, they’ll begin to lose trust in your business.

With customer experiences being integral to building brand loyalty, your business needs to work on delivering consistently outstanding experiences for customers across all its touchpoints. As you start to build your brand image, recognize that every single interaction, no matter how small, will have an effect on how you’re perceived by consumers.

Integrating UX/UI expertise into your business strategy means that every interaction is designed to meet customer needs and expectations, making your brand look even better in their eyes.

One poor interaction might not seem like a big deal, but it can lead to negative word-of-mouth spreading about your business. So, take the time to address every customer inquiry carefully.

Tips on How to Create Brand Loyalty

Creating loyalty towards your brand requires you to use multiple strategies at once so you can engage with and retain as many customers as possible. Here are our top tips for making your customers loyal to you.

Start a Rewards Program

A rewards program is one way to incentivize your returning customers to make multiple purchases so they can take advantage of discounts and exclusive offers. One surefire way to build brand loyalty is to create a customer loyalty program, offering points every time a purchase is made. That way, customers can build their points over time and secure free items from you.

Develop a Go-to-Market Strategy

Building a marketing strategy is a way to get your brand name out there to consumers who might’ve never heard of you before. One effective type of strategy is the go-to-market strategy.

Wondering how to create a go to market strategy? You need to start by clearly defining what makes your brand unique and then communicating it consistently across all your marketing channels, whether that’s on social media or your business website. 

Then, tailor your messaging to address specific sections of your target audience to build deeper connections with every aspect of your customer base.

Get Feedback from Customers

Seeking customer feedback is a way to better understand both their negative and positive experiences with your brand so you can offer better services, which will improve brand loyalty over time. The best way to do this is by giving your new and returning customers multiple ways to share their experiences, whether through online surveys or by posting a review.

Offering ways to contact your business is a fantastic way to build brand loyalty. According to a 2022 survey, nearly eight out of ten of consumers cite good customer service as a way to keep them loyal to a brand.

While it’s great to hear from a satisfied customer, it’s perhaps even more valuable to get negative reviews, as this will help you to listen and respond accordingly. Having a hands-on approach with dissatisfied consumers will help you build more trust over time and provide excellent customer service in the future. This will make them far more likely to offer you their repeat business.

Publish User-Generated Content on Your Website

User-generated content (UGC) is a surefire way to amplify your brand’s reach. By encouraging your satisfied customers to share their positive shopping experience with you through testimonials and photos of your products, you’ll likely engage better with online communities within your niche, looking for authentic endorsements.

User-generated content could include publishing:

• Customer testimonials
• Social media posts
• Product reviews
• Product demonstrations
• User-generated blog posts and articles

Using UGC from brand advocates, you’ll build both trust (as consumers identify more with real customers) and foster a strong sense of community within your business’s customer base, helping you to improve brand loyalty. 

Nurture Your Brand Loyalty and Stay Resilient in the Market

Building loyalty towards your brand is vital to keeping your business resilient against downturns in the market and rising competition. Your loyal customers will act as advocates for you, encouraging their network to check out your products and services.

Once you’ve established brand loyalty, retaining it is relatively easy as long as you consistently provide good service. Try implementing reward programs and gathering feedback from your existing customers to find out what you’re doing right and how you can improve so you can better retain your audience.

By embracing these brand loyalty strategies, your business will be able to navigate the complexities of the marketplace with confidence and resilience.