1. Provide value

We talk about providing value a lot when it comes to content creation, but that’s because it’s so important for any digital marketing strategy. Offering value to website visitors and customers should be a top priority, from generating content ideas to posting the finalised piece and when looking to establish customer loyalty.

Use your unique selling point, find a new angle or take on your industry or establish a distinctive voice to make your brand memorable and encourage customers to return. You can see some great examples of this over on our reactive marketing blog post.

Value doesn’t just have to be industry-specific inside knowledge (although that’s good too) – you can provide your audience with value through entertainment too! Providing value can look like anything, so long as it’s suited to the audience.

2. Know your audience

On that note, you need to make sure you know your audience. Check out our ultimate guide to creating buyer personas, look at your competitors’ audiences, see who is interacting with your business. Knowing your audience is vital to creating brand loyalty, as it provides you with opportunities to engage on a more relatable level.

Have a look at the Sparknotes Instagram, for example; they remain relevant to both their brand and their younger audience by summing up classic novels and stories in memes, and the reward for their efforts is more than a quarter of a million followers.

Knowing your audience allows you to target the people who will engage with your brand more effectively, shop with it and return to it later.

3. Personalisation

This links to knowing your audience, because knowing your audience is key to figuring out what kind of personalisation will be effective in establishing customer loyalty and what could come across as intrusive or too much.

Using personalisation is a great way to encourage customers to come back to your website. For example, you could have your website greet them by name when they log in and direct them to the last products they were looking at, or send them an email a little while after they first buy from you and suggest similar products to what they already purchased.

This gives your website a more personable, human touch, which today’s consumers often appreciate. Learn more about why you should personalise the digital experience on our blog.

4. Consistency

You should try to ensure that your brand is as consistent as possible across your website, social media, email campaigns and any other content or graphics that you put out. Best practice for achieving this consistency is to create a brand style guide and apply it to everything.

We’ve already put together some tips for creating a social media style guide, but the ideas are broadly the same for creating a cohesive brand on your website too. Consistency makes you memorable, and being memorable means that when a customer is in need of your products or services again, your brand will be the one that pops into their mind!

5. Values and social issues

Nowadays, it’s often not enough for a brand to simply be a brand. The chances are, whatever you sell, you have hundreds of competitors selling similar items, and every one will have a different unique selling point.

However, many consumers agree that taking a stance on social issues and values that are important to them is appreciated and key to creating brand loyalty.

Think back to 2018 and possibly Nike’s most controversial campaign to date – the Colin Kaepernick advert. Not only did this get massive worldwide publicity, but when Nike analysed its main demographics, it was the younger audience that dominated the market. They were the ones who overwhelmingly supported Kaepernick, so they targeted their existing audience and, in support of the campaign, encouraged them to buy more from the brand because people often vote with their wallets.

Just remember that if you decide to take a stance on a social issue, you can’t just pay lip service – that can also turn your audience off. Instead, donate money to charity, or be transparent about making positive changes. Even opening up about where you’ve missed the mark can be useful, provided you accompany it with how you’re going to resolve it.

Check out this tweet from Google – they reference an ongoing social campaign (to get people buying from Latino-owned small businesses), use a suitable hashtag to be part of the conversation and announce a new feature they’ve realised in support of it.

6. Effective use of social media

Social media is a vital part of digital marketing and establishing customer loyalty. Each platform offers different opportunities for engagement and building a community, which will keep your brand in people’s minds. If you make your social media one that people want to follow, post consistently and communicate with your customers and prospects, people are more likely to return to your brand the next time they’re looking for a product or service you sell.

Check out our 20 social media tips for businesses to see how to build brand loyalty through effective social media.

7. Customer service

Your brand should be seen to be doing as much as they can for the customer with a smile. For example, if a customer has an issue with an order, ensure that your team follows up on the issue, investigates what might have gone wrong and efficiently offers a solution. Be transparent and treat every issue individually – nobody wants to feel like just another number.

Great customer service will set you apart, and when people know they can rely on your brand, they’re much more likely to come back to you in future.

8. Website user experience

Your website is often the first point of contact for your customers, so when looking at how to build brand loyalty, it’s key that customers can navigate it easily.

Make your website accessible and ensure that navigation is simple and easy to understand. Focus on best SEO practices and check that you don’t have any pages showing HTTP errors, as these can be frustrating. Try to improve your page speed and functionality, and remember that Google now follows mobile-first indexing, so having a great mobile site is really important.

It doesn’t matter how great your products or services are – if the process to buy them or learn more about them is painful, very few customers will be willing to put themselves through it again, thereby harming your ability to create brand loyalty.

9. Rewarding loyalty

This is one of the most straightforward ways to establish customer loyalty – incentivise it! For example, if it’s been a while since someone bought something from you, offer them 10% off their next purchase or a complimentary item in their next order. You could also do this with referrals, encouraging customers to bring their friends and family to your website in exchange for some reward.

10. Ask for feedback and act on it

Both parts of this one are equally important. Asking for feedback from customers who have completed their buyer’s journey with you is the best way to see what parts of the experience could be improved to fit your target demographic, and it shows customers that you’re willing to listen to them, giving them an element of choice in how they interact online.

However, you must also be seen to act on this feedback. It’s no good asking for feedback and then just ignoring the responses – really take it into account and act on it as far as possible. Even if you get negative comments, it’s all good information for how to progress.

Feedback might come in the form of a response form after their purchase, DMs or engagement on social media or a reply to an email campaign.

So that’s it – those are our top ten tips for how to build brand loyalty for your business and keep those customers coming back for more. If you’d like more information or would like to discuss getting some help with optimising and maintaining your business’s SEO, biddable media or content strategies, please get in touch with us at Zelst today.