Try these content marketing and brand loyalty tips to keep your customers in a tight marketplace.
We live in an age of ad overload, making it increasingly difficult for brands to stand out from the competition. In fact, consumers are exposed to more than 10,000 brand messages a day, according to the American Marketing Association. Keeping customers loyal to your brand is challenging when there are so many options and scores of other companies vying for their attention. Forbes Agency Council has compiled a list of top content marketing and brand loyalty tips to safeguard your brand when the struggle for market share gets tough.
Communicate Your Value
If the only competitive benefit you have to offer is a low price, your odds of keeping long-term customers are low. Eventually, one of your competitors will beat your price, and customers will move on. To keep them coming back for more, use inbound marketing strategies to show your current and potential customer base the values you have to offer that they won’t find anywhere else.
Always Follow Up
Remarketing emails can generate about four times more revenue and 18 times greater net profits compared to using untargeted mailings, according to Forrester Research cited by Moz. Email follow-ups like special offers and monthly events also keep your brand at the forefront of customers’ minds, increasing your odds of repeat business. Asking for customer feedback is another way to strengthen customer relationships by showing them you care about their experience and demonstrating your commitment to improve your product or service.
Plan for Customer Frustration and Respond to It
Building resilient brand loyalty starts by planning for how you might lose it. First, identify the top five reasons that are most likely to drive your customers away. Then, create a customer retention strategy to respond effectively to customer complaints by taking immediate action and letting customers know you’re willing to do what it takes to win back their business.
For example, Parallel Interactive manages customer relations via online reviews for a local hotel client. If a guest posts a negative review about their experience, we assist our client in writing a response to acknowledge the issue and assure the guest that the situation will be addressed immediately. We then notify management to make any necessary changes to guest service and pass along contact information to ensure the guest’s needs are satisfied.
No one likes to be told they’re doing something wrong. But by being able to recognize you’ve made a mistake, and taking actionable responsibility for it, you can increase the likelihood of earning a dissatisfied customer’s return business.
Have Real Conversations with Your Customers
Communicating with your customers doesn’t stop at asking for feedback and receiving it. Real conversation, engagement, and recognition humanize your brand and show customers you are listening.
For example, Starbucks CEO, Kevin Johnson, recently issued an apology video speaking directly to customers after a racial profiling incident at a Starbucks in Philadelphia resulted in the arrest of two black men. Following backlash from Starbucks customers and Philadelphia communities, Johnson issued a video statement apologizing for the incident and promising to require anti-bias training. Johnson’s video release not only created real conversation with the Starbucks audience, but also acknowledged the problem, took personal responsibility for it, and committed to making a significant change.
Be Authentic Above All Else
Every brand is a lifestyle brand. People are attracted to brands that represent their personal values. Companies that understand their audience and can authentically represent their audience’s values will create an organic loyalty. According to Cohn & Wolfe’s “2017 Authentic Brands” study, 91 percent of 15,000 consumers surveyed globally indicated that they were willing to reward a brand for its authenticity by making a purchase, an investment, or an endorsement.
According to the study, Amazon is the most authentic brand in the United States. Researchers graded more than 1,400 companies according to their scores on survey questions, focusing on three attributes of authenticity: reliability, respectfulness, and reality.
Keep Earning It
These brand loyalty tips are ongoing strategies. Maintaining brand loyalty is crucial because it is much harder to win back customers once you’ve lost them. The simplest way for a brand to maintain loyal customers is to keep earning their loyalty over and over again. That awesome product feature you created last week is gone and forgotten by now. Create a constant stream of innovative, value-based content to sustain your brand’s relevance, gain new loyalties, and retain old ones for years to come.
