“80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your existing customers.” as revealed by Gartner Group statistics. This adage tells us that your core customers (the 20%) are the main contributors to your bottom line. It also reveals the sheer importance of keeping these customers satisfied for a successful business – and the best way to keep them happy is by increasing brand loyalty.
Reasons Why Brand Loyalty is Vital for Your Business
Lower Marketing Expenses
Businesses naturally tend to be obsessed with acquiring new customers. However, it’s 5 to 25 times costlier to attract new customers than it is to retain an existing one. It’s also harder to convince first-time customers to buy your product chiefly because they have never experienced your brand before. Significant time and resources are needed to craft marketing messages that attract and engage them of which, might not guarantee success.
It’s much cheaper to market to your brand loyal customers who already know and have engaged with your brand. After all, they bring in 80% of your sales.
Generate Repeat Purchases
As we’ve mentioned, your existing customers already trust and have experienced your brand. This makes them more likely to open your emails, view your marketing campaigns, and other products or services. A study by Marketing Metrics found that existing customers are 60% to 70% more likely to buy from you.
Less Pressure from Competitors
All things being equal, people typically switch brands due to lower prices. However, beating your competitors by lowering your price only harms your brand with lower bottom line.
With strong brand loyalty, you’ll have a better sense of security knowing that your customers already love what you’re providing, making them more likely to stick with your brand despite cheaper alternatives.
Acquire new customers through word-of-mouth
Brand loyalty can also grow your business by having customers introduce your brand to others. That means, they’ll be talking about your brand to their friends, family, and colleagues. A study found that 92% of people trust recommendations from people they know. This increases the likelihood of you generating new customers, helping you to grow your brand.
Increasing brand loyalty is easier, costs less, and has the ability to generate more revenue than acquiring new customers. Let’s now look at how a local brand keeps their business successful with strong brand loyalty.
An example of a local SME that focuses on brand loyalty for success
Our client, Fixics Solutions (S), has been an IT solutions provider for over a decade. Comprising of a small but passionate team, Fixics services a large pool of existing clients built since its inception despite little marketing over the years. That’s really amazing and we’re glad to be able to show you how they managed to do so as an inspiration for you to implement and increase brand loyalty for your business.
6 Ways Fixics Builds Their Brand Loyalty
#1 Never Letting Customers Down
Fixics relentlessly ensures they do their best to help their customers, no matter how trivial. This high level of attention develops trust with customers who’ve come to associate Fixics as a brand that they can always count on. This fixation on customer satisfaction is achieved by placing customer service at the heart of Fixics’ business model.
#2 Living and Breathing Customer Service
Fixics places customer service at the core of their business process. Over the years, Fixics knows the needs of their customers and with that knowledge, they revamped their business process with a unique customer support model such that customers are always able to contact an experienced staff whose skill set matches the customers’ needs.
Customer service is important for increasing brand loyalty and it starts with your team being genuinely interested in helping customers solve their problems. Even the little things such as answering calls promptly or speaking in a positive tone and behaviour can show your dedication to them. Do that, and you’ll develop strong brand loyalty in no time.
#3 Being Authentic and Consistent
Authenticity delivers consistency and these two go hand-in-hand. If you’re authentic – in your beliefs and passion – they’ll be consistently evident in your personality and behaviour. The Fixics team is a champion for authenticity and consistency.
This behaviour naturally drives them to recommend solutions that go beyond their client’ basic needs. The brand’s expertise and passion for using the latest innovative solutions help their clients to align business processes, reducing operational costs, increasing productivity, preparing them for growth. Consistently enabling them with a technological edge against their competitors, clients feel that Fixics is sincere and is always on the lookout for their best interests.
By showing your beliefs through the passion in your work, you’ll consistently overdeliver customer expectations and gain their trust. If things unexpectedly go wrong, it’s important to address them immediately. This is where consistency shines because if you always provide amazing services, customers will empathise when incidents happen and still be loyal to your brand.
#4 They LISTEN to Customer Feedback
Taking customer feedback into consideration and being a great listener is also an essential part of Fixics’ ability to retain strong brand loyalty over the years. It’s a win-win situation because you get the opportunity to satisfy your customers while identifying areas of your business that need improvement. Examining and acting on customer feedback is the underlying reason for Fixics’ strong brand following and 100% customer satisfaction.
If feedback is good, what exactly made it exceptional to them? This helps you to identify what customers really like about your brand so you can focus and do more of it. If it’s not-so-great, then you’ll also want to know why, so you can improve on them. Question what went wrong – is it a recurring problem with other customers as well? Don’t just listen but let them know that you’re going to do something about it.
#5 Efficient and Reliable Back-End Operation
As we’ve mentioned in the second method, Fixics’ customer support model streamlines their projects by assigning the most relevant and experienced project manager based on project deliverables. This results in an efficient and reliable system that facilitates the timely delivery of their projects and with impeccable service standards.
This method is a viable option for small businesses due to the tendency of a less rigid corporate structure. This allows work process to be easily amended and streamlined. Don’t forget that the goal is to make things better for your customers to make your brand dependable and thus, generate brand loyalty.
#6 Aligning Services to Brand Image
As Fixics continues to grow, their portfolio of services also expands to cater to the needs of their customers. As such, to align their new services to customers, the company did a rebrand to ensure their brand image reflected their new direction. This helps their customers to better associate and identify what Fixics believes in and what they offer.
A rebrand is a great way to maintain brand loyalty especially when your company adds new services or changes its business direction. This ensures that your core customers continue to trust and resonate with your brand.
More Ways to Increase Brand Loyalty
We hope you’ve gained some valuable insights from Fixics, showing you practical ways to increase brand loyalty, and more importantly, that they work! Additionally, here are other practical ways you can increase brand loyalty.
#7 Be a Stickler for Quality
Overdelivering on quality is another way to increase brand loyalty. Although, everyone expects a certain level of quality from a brand, no one ever complains about exceeded expectations. Therefore, never sacrifice quality. In fact, if you are known to produce outstanding quality, customers will make repeat purchases and advocate your brand via word-of-mouth.
This comes back to being an authentic brand – living out your brand’s values tends to deliver on quality too. Quality does not only apply to products but on services as well. Think of it as providing nothing short of the best in your works.
#8 Anticipate the Needs of Customers
Knowing what your customers want ahead of time will allow your business to deliver beyond their expectations. Also, it doesn’t have to be a complicated solution. Even a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page on your website can increase brand loyalty because customers can already get their questions answered without having to go through the trouble of contacting you.
#9 Follow Up on Customers Regularly
Always make time to check in on your customers even if it’s pre or post sale. Make it known that you’re always there without interfering in their daily work. Doing this keeps their satisfaction levels in check and keeps your brand at the tip of their tongue. You’re essentially conditioning your customers to remember you.
However, the purpose of checking in is toclarify and help, not to sell or up-sell, bringing us to the next tip on increasing brand loyalty.
#10 Don’t SPAM
There’s a fine line between being helpful to your customers and pestering them. Brand loyalty is built by being helpful and attentive to your customers’ needs. Never spam your audience with emails (this applies to calling them too).
Email is still the most effective means to engage and build loyalty with customers. However, consumers are increasingly selective in their consumption of new media. This makes it difficult to find the right amount of engagement to build loyalty. Engage too frequently and you become intrusive while too little may cause your brand to be lost in the sea of competitors.
We recommend only engaging them when you have helpful or value-added content to share. The more selective customers are, the more receptive they’ll be towards your brand when you’re sharing valuable content. If you are contacting them about an offer, make sure it’s one that will benefit them and might regret not knowing.
Respect your customers’ time and attention and you’re bound to develop strong brand loyalty.
#11 Use your Moral Compass to Drive Brand loyalty
If your brand strongly believes in a charitable pursuit, to the extent that your business model revolves around supporting a philanthropic cause, find a medium that will inform others of your charitable works.
This is a really good way for businesses to instantly attract and identify with customers who believe in the same morals as you. At the same time, they’re likely to convert into brand advocates because of that strong moral connection.
Closing
Thoughts for SMEs
Brand loyalty gives businesses an edge in increasing bottom line while decreasing marketing spend. Also, your loyal customers contribute 80% of your revenue, making them a priority over acquiring new customers. Besides that, brand loyal customers will also recommend your brand to others – generating more awareness and new customers for you to grow your business.
Speak to us now to enhance any of the 11 ways which we have discussed. We’re always here to listen and co-ideate the best method for your current standing.
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