A business spends about 500% more to get a new customer compared to converting an existing one. This means that an existing customer is more natural to become a buyer. And it doesn’t stop there. These customers are also far more likely to spend more. This may be because they already know your brand and have bought from it before. And probably the reason why they have developed a trust to purchase from you again. This fosters brand loyalty. These statistics can shed some light on your business and how you can use existing data to power your business revenue.
In this article, you’ll learn about brand loyalty and how you can encourage it in your business. It is all about utilizing existing customer data to your benefit and using the power of referral programs to drive more people into your website.
What is Brand Loyalty?
You may have seen it in your customers. Their willingness to buy from you increases once they have completed at least one transaction with you. This is provided that they are satisfied with their purchase and have a positive customer experience. This triggers brand loyalty. This means that they will buy from you again, given a chance to do so.
Today’s brands really cannot claim to be successful without customer loyalty. You see, brands can only do so much when it comes to marketing. This means that there is a limit to what they can do, and the number of new customers that they can recruit. Having loyal customers indicate that they don’t have to promote the brand overly. Their customers can do it for them.
So it is imperative to know what constitutes brand loyalty. You need to look at the facts. This may mean that you should stand back and look at the metrics. This will let you know the requirements that you need to complete in order to get your customers to buy from you again.
Why Increase Customer Loyalty?
1. Automated Promotion for Your Brand
Do you want to promote your brand manually? This usually constitutes mundane tasks such as submission of links and guest posting. While these methods are effective, it is far better to have an army of customers who are willing to promote your brand for you. There is more power in more people. It is far better than doing your promotion alone. By setting up a referral program, you have a system that your loyal customers can use to promote your brand.
2. Loyal Customers Has a Higher Chance of Conversion
Think of this as approaching an old friend. When you approach someone who knows and likes you and asks for a favor, they are far more likely to say yes. You can apply the same concept with loyal customers. Since they are not new to your brand, they are familiar with you and your products and services. They also have an idea of the customer experience that you provide. It is with these reasons why converting a loyal customer is easier. They know that they had a positive experience with your brand before, and they have a higher likelihood of doing it again.
3. Loyal Customers Have a Lower Chances for Abandonment
Through the years, eCommerce sellers have been trying to find out how to stop shopping cart abandonment. But you don’t have to worry about any of that with your loyal customers. Loyal customers will buy from you again and again. They may add some items to the cart, but they have a higher chance of proceeding with their purchase.
4. Loyal Customers Spend More
Loyal customers are often happy with your products and services. This is the reason why they keep on buying from you again and again. This may be because they liked your products, or they wanted the overall experience that your brand provides. Because of this, they are also far more likely to spend more. They already know that they can trust you. So if they find products in your store that they like, they are far more likely to buy. I think that this is the reason why popular shopping sites like Alibaba and Amazon are killing it. They have millions of loyal customers to power their brand.
5. Loyal Customers Spread The Word
Loyal customers can also act as brand ambassadors. When someone mentions that they need a product, they will likely recommend your brand if they have bought from you before. It is usual for people to share their positive experiences with others. It is also the same as your loyal customers. The best part is that they are far more likely to do this for people who are close to them. This can be their family and friends. Since these people are close to them, the people that they refer to tend to convert better. This has something to do with the relationship that they have with the existing customer. They take the customer’s word for it. They buy out of their trust for that person.
How to Find Loyal Customers
1. Create a Referral Program
You cannot collect customer data unless you have a referral program. This will do more than allow your existing customers to promote your brand. It will also allow you to track your customers’ behaviors when it comes to this action. This means that you will see the customers who are making the most referrals, and you can put that side-by-side their purchasing analytics data.
Fortunately, creating a referral program is easy. You need a referral software. You need to consider the platform of your website for this to work. If your website runs on WordPress, you should look for a WooCommerce affiliate plugin. If it is on Shopify, then a Shopify app will do. This is what Best Drums Set Labs did with success. With this tool, you will be able to launch your referral campaign in a few clicks successfully. Creating a successful program depends on the rewards that you choose, along with the players you wish to reward.
2. Look at Referral Program Performance
As mentioned, you can only discover your most loyal customers if you carefully look at their data. You can only do this if you look at their referral performance, vis-à-vis their past purchases. Remember that you should not stick with referral performance alone. There may be some website visitors that will promote your brand, but they have not bought from you yet. These are people that you will not be able to categorize as loyal customers. These are people who are considered as referrers but not customers. So you need to look at past purchasing behavior as well. This will give you a clue on how loyal they are to your brand.
3. Implement a Points System
From here, you need to quantify their purchasing and referral behavior. You can only do this if you assign some points to each. Before you do this, you need to stand back to see the metrics that matter the most to your business. From here, you can create a plan on how many points you will assign for each fulfilled parameter. Once you do this, you have to assign points to every customer that you have. You may need to hire a virtual assistant to do this for you if you have hundreds or thousands of customers, but it is well worth the effort. From here, all you need to do is rank that customers based on the points that they have garnered. This will show you your most loyal customers.
4. Have Exclusive Offers
Now that you know who your customers are, it is time to give them some VIP treatment. After all, these are people who like your business. They are also responsible for most of your revenue. So it is essential to give thanks to them by giving them some exclusive offers.
You need to think of an offer that you can give them. These offers need to be exclusive to them and are meant to reward them for their loyalty. This means that you only give your reward to your most loyal customers.
You can also encourage loyalty by showcasing your exclusive offers in the forefront of your website. You can make it apparent that you will give a VIP treatment or an exclusive offer to your most loyal customers. This will encourage existing customers to be faithful to you. This can happen, especially if you have an enticing proposition.
5. Implement a Tier System
For some businesses, a tier system works better. This is where you categorize customers based on their level of loyalty. For some companies, they automate this. They automatically assign cards based on their customer’s purchase activity. From here, they tally the points in the cards and upgrade or downgrade the member’s tier depending on the accumulated points.
But if you like to do this manually, there is a way to do this as well. You can tally the points of all of your customers and grant them tiers based on point ranges. So if you have customers in the 1-50 point range, you can assign levels for the 20-30, 30-40 and 40-50 point range. In this system, it is evident that your most loyal customers have the highest points. But it also gives a chance for those in the lower point range to move up a tier.
6. Find Brand Partners
Did you know that having a list of loyal customers makes you much more convincing to brand partners? You see, business owners are always looking for ways to get more traffic and sales to their business. If you prove that your brand has a loyal following, then other business owners are far more likely to partner with you.
The same can happen with influencers. Influencers are often looking for ways to increase traffic to their brand. If you can show them that you have a strong brand with loyal customers, they are far more likely to work with you because they know that they can get some new followers out of the deal. A company doing an awesome job at referral marketing is hunting bow labs which helps companies to find hunting bows.
7. Create a Community
You can also make your most loyal customers connect. You can do this by creating an exclusive community. I have seen many brands do this, especially elite brands that create ‘inner circle’ communities for their most loyal customers. They also invite these customers to exclusive events allowing them to meet their customers and see them connect with like-minded individuals. Creating a community can do more than solidify your brand. It can also develop a sense of camaraderie, which makes your customers feel like they belong. They will see that there are people like them who are in love with your brand, and this will make their affection for your brand to grow stronger.
8. Implement a Membership Model
Once you have a stable community, you can also implement a membership model. In this model, the members can have exclusive access to the tier’s benefits by paying for them. It opens up opportunities to those who cannot fulfil the spending threshold but want access to the exclusive benefits. Overall, it creates another way to invite even more loyal customers to your site.
What is the value of finding out your most loyal customers? Well, you will not only be able to grow your community because of them. You can also see their unique characteristics so that you can attract customers who are exactly like them. We are lucky to have lived in such a time where data power everything. We now have tools that can help us gather information for us, and we can use this data to our benefit. It can also help us power our business.
I hope this article has been helpful to you. We now have access to tools that can reveal the analytics of our website, our online store, and our referral program. You can use these tools to track the traffic, sales, and referral behavior of your customers. If you put all of these three metrics together, you’ll have a formula of what makes a loyal customer.
Wish to acquire web data for analysing consumer behavior and assess brand loyalty? Get in touch with your requirement.