HOW TO BUILD BRAND LOYALTY WITH SOCIAL MEDIA
Brand Loyalty is when customers/people find your brand as their best pick. It is when your customers favor your brand over others. It is also when your brand comes top on their list of brands of same products.
Brand loyalty is the gateway to customer retention. When people buy off-brand products, they usually do so for price benefits. Though, once preferred brand may not necessary be the best there is, yet for some reasons, people tend to stick to brands that resonates with them. Scientists claim that lonely people and people that have fewer intimate friendships are more likely to fall for and buy from brands that have faces in their imagery. Because consumers are often anthropomorphic, they tend to imagine human-like characteristics in non-human visuals.
In our today’s connected world, brands must depend heavily on the power of social media to build and connect with prospects and customers. Building and communicating with customers on Facebook, twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn is a requirement and no longer an option. For customers to be loyal to your brand in today’s world, social media is critical.
Reason why People Favors One Brand Over Another
- Good Service
- Good and competitive pricing
- Quality product
- Business Experience
- Years in Business
- Business Policy and ethics
- Stand on social, political and environmental issues
- Moral leanings
- Combination of some or all of the above
- Etc
The truth is that brand loyalty is a race every business no matter the size or level must be in. Businesses must keep striving to maintain and build up their position in the minds of both prospective and dedicated customers.
People who became loyal to a brand can change when the brand loses the cord that tied them to her and in that occasion, an aggrieved consumer will seek for a way to punish their erstwhile beloved brand. Punishment mostly comes in form of negative word of mouth referral and may even spill over to the internet.
Importance of brand Loyalty
- Customer Retention
- Free Marketing through word of mouth referrals
- Visit to your website/blog
- Lead Conversion
-
profit
Research Support
90% of US customers confirmed sharing their customer experience with other people
81% of Customer trust recommendations from family and friends over those from
35% of millennials consider online forums prior to purchasing a product.
How to Use Social Media To build Brand Loyalty?
Have A Social Game Plan For Your Business
Social media for businesses has gone beyond posting without engaging. Businesses must not use social media as if it’s a one-way communication channel. Interpersonal relationship that exists in real human relationship can be carried unto the virtual world and maintained to some extent in social media. Remember, you are trying to make them your recurrent customer.
In all, social media is about advertising, marketing, engaging(communication), and selling. Businesses that aim to build and retain their customers on social media must efficiently utilize the medium. Besides, your competitors may already be doing so with your customers in the pipeline.
You can use social media to target audiences who are likely to turn to customers, focusing on gender, demographics and the age group they fall, while also avoiding the common pitfalls of social media.
Find a voice of your own and stick to it
Voices are means of identity even in the social world. Your voice must represent your business. Remember that people value familiarity that spills even into the social media.
Brands need to be consistent both online and offline with its business goal to create a sense of seriousness on its customers. That some or many of your physical customers will still find your brand online even without you knowing it is certain. A brand therefore needs to maintain a particular voice with which to interact, comment, or post information online.
What's your voice?
To find your voice, dig into your business goals and objectives. Look over your email contents and blog articles or past adverts to determine how you have unwittingly spoken to your prospects and consumers. Your real voice will be probably be hidden there. You can choose to be funny, authoritative or professional, but don’t forget your business goal.
How engaging is your brand voice?
Engaging your audience could take the form of asking them questions, asking for their advice or opinion on issues, or anything at all that can make them call, comment, share your post, share a link with you, recommend somebody to you or like or upvote your post. You need to treat your social network as you would treat your real friends. Social media is a two-way communication system and engaging brand voice will bring your human side to the audience.
Answering these questions will help you choose your voice:
Does it represent your brand? You shouldn’t be carried away by the fun or excitement of social media. You are in it for business, be mindful of that.
Is it professional?
You are still on social to build your business and convert your followers to customers and finally make them your brand loyalist. Ford for instance has an authentic and approachable voice while apple has a somewhat mysterious and distant online voice. Yet they are professional with it. Businesses evolve and voices can change over time, but don’t jump from one voice to anther in a short time.
Offer Solutions and Reward
Most importantly, it allows you to show that you're willing to reward the most loyal of your followers with offers, discounts, advanced access to content, and more. You can have contests or special promotions exclusively for your followers. This gives you an opportunity to cross-promote between networks, and when that information is shared, you have a great opportunity to get even more followers for your brand.
In Business, you must be willing to reward your most patronizing customers. Launching a promo for all your customers, or granting special access to a special group of customers will go a long way to bind their hearts and mind to your brand. These are all ways to make them remain with you. It is easier to retain an old customer than to make new one. Besides, your competitors will always be on your heels when it comes to launching enticing promo to draw your customers away. Don’t make your customers feel they are losing so much by sticking to your brand. If your business can afford, without much cost or trouble, the extra little services that makes buying from you a great experience, what are you then waiting for, go for it. Whatever it is your customers feel they are losing, make sure to provide them or at least try.
Also, to get all the mentions of your brand on the social media sites, you need to pay attention to social listening. It is obtainable that people that are not even your followers are already making positive or negative comments about your brand.
Customer service is Important
In my article, the benefits of social media to businesses, I wrote about how businesses can leverage on the powers of social media to drive customer service.
As social media is increasingly becoming part of everyday life, customers will always turn to their brand pages for complains, advice, opinions or inquiries. It will be bad for a business to ignore her customers, prospects or followers online, and worse to that is to have a negative customer experience.
The quality of customer service in business had been known to play a big role in driving customers and business sales. People have had enough reason to be stressed out, you shouldn’t be making it worse with carefree customer service.
With the help of good social media manager, business can be able to do a lot with little budget.