Let’s start with a stat: 80% of customers would change brands if they found a better offer elsewhere!
If this is the digital marketing scenario, you can quickly put a finger on how important it is to foster brand loyalty. With so many offers, deals, discounts and givebacks floating around, it is quite difficult indeed to keep your customers hooked to your brand. After all, in terms of products and services, there is little in way of difference, right?
So how do you develop brand loyalty, or advocacy for that matter. I’m pulling out some strategies from my own manual to share how you can use paid tools online to help you achieve brand loyalty and retain it.
I’ll discuss the brand loyalty aspect first before moving on to the advocacy part.
My strategy begins with a simple logic: you are a different seller to a first-time buyer as opposed to someone who has already bought from you at least once. This makes sense because customers who have already experienced your product or service will know things that a first-timer won’t. You would only waste time telling them what they already know!
So, cut down on the fluff and look at offering unique discounts to repeat customers. You can upload a data field of existing buyers on your list. When they search for products that you sell, offer them discounts that are not available to others who are not your customers till date. This targeted offer will make second or repeat buyers feel special about buying from your brand. You can offer the discount on their search results page or adverts directed at them.
Similarly, develop landing pages unique to repeat customers. Let them know you value their business. Touch base with them occasionally through emails. Drive them to landing pages that address them as loyal customers instead of the usual marketing message you use for all potential customers across the board.
Another opportunity that often goes begging is the chance to cross-sell and up-sell products. When you unleash paid media on repeat customers, make sure that you are tapping into the opportunity to cross and up sell. For example, if a person has bought a TV from your brand, it is normal for them to look for booster speakers. Or someone who’s bought a computer to buy a router. Think innovatively and develop marketing messages to that effect.
It’s time to turn to the advocacy bit now. You have some loyal customers. Now it’s your turn to convert them into brand ambassadors. Equip them with incentives and freebies to recommend your brand to family and friends. If many of your customers double up as brand loyalists and ambassadors as well, you don’t need a digital marketer at all!
There are many ways to shake up your brand loyalists into advocacy. The more effective ones include discounts and offers to their email ids with unique codes if they recommend your brand to people known to them. This is similar to what Uber does: you share a code with your friends or family and when they take an Uber ride, they get a discount and so do you.
A proven method to advocacy is by the use of recommendations and reviews. Here’s a stat to boost my argument: 92% customers buy something after reading online reviews. When they write reviews, or provide seller points on your website or elsewhere, they get some freebies for their trouble. You can compile a list of reviews and recommendations on your landing page for first-time buyers.
Seller ratings and reviews have become the cornerstones by which a first-time buyer decides on their first purchase from your brand. Many digital marketers use fabricated reviews to achieve this purpose but to the discerning reader, somewhere the false ring to the review makes a loud ting. Why don’t you use paid media, which you are using anyway for various purposes? You will be amazed by how effective it can be!
Once you acquire customers after all the different channels of digital marketing, it would be criminal to let buyers off the hook with just one sale!
