5 tips that’ll turn your consumers into lifelong advocates!

How to build customer loyalty and repeat purchase??

Last year a friend helped me swap my office bag for a backpack from a direct-to-consumer luggage brand.

What she recommended is now a brand that I absolutely love. Why? Because the bag has simple, clean lines, it stays upright, it doesn't look overstuffed..no matter what, it has the right space for me, the color is unique, it is made of vegan leather, it is designed and produced close to where I live and most importantly - their consumer service team rocks! I had a minor snafu with the bag and the way they managed it all the way through was outstanding.?

Will I be a lifelong advocate of their products?

Yes!

Do I work for this brand??

No.?

On second thoughts though, perhaps I do “work” for this brand; because I always have great things to say about them (and I am not even on their payroll ??)

This is brand loyalty at its best. I feel so fortunate to have experienced this first hand.

Consumers that walk the extra mile for your brand are your biggest assets.?

Repeat consumers buy from brands more often and have a much higher average order value than first time consumers. The facts are smashing - studies reveal that existing consumers are 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, on average, compared to new consumers.

?Besides, it’s so much easier to keep your existing consumers, compared to the effort required to acquire new ones. According to research , retaining consumers is cheaper than acquiring new ones, and improving retention by just 5% can drive profits up over 25%. Consumer acquisition costs are only going to keep increasing. Yet, funny enough only a few brands prioritize consumer retention.?

Like most things in life, we need to balance our efforts. The balance, however, should be driven by the ROI one gets from consumer acquisition and consumer retention. Research and my experience show that the ROI from retaining consumers beats the ROI from consumer acquisition hand’s down. Here is a set of stats regarding consumer retention and its value. One of them is: it is 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire new consumers than it is to keep a current one (White House Office of Consumer Affairs).

In my opinion, consumer retention will be the biggest ROI driver for brands in 2023. This means, this is the time to ramp up your brand loyalty game.?

Brand loyalty is delicate. It takes months or even years to build. One bad experience, and boom the consumer might not come back for long. Before you know it, your favorite consumers are slamming the door on you.??

So how can you tip the scales in your favor? How do you build loyalty that goes beyond getting points for spending money on a product? How do you build loyalty that rewards consumers not only for buying your product/service but also for thinking of your brand, for talking about your brand, for engaging with your brand?

Here are 5 tips that’ll turn your consumers into lifelong advocates.

1. Brand loyalty is dead. Long live brand loyalty.

We are living in the age of consumerism. 15% consumers say they’re now less loyal to brands they regularly bought from before the pandemic. There are plenty of brands to choose from and consumers need a compelling reason to stick to the same brand again and again.?

For that kind of loyalty, brands need to go beyond transactional loyalty and reward behavioral loyalty as well. It’s interesting to note that emotionally loyal consumers will visit their favorite brand 32% more often and spend 46% more money than those with less emotional ties.?

?Brands that go out of the way to create emotional connections with consumers will create organic brand advocacy and keep them coming back for more.?

2. Build trust. Personalize.

Consumers have started to turn a blind eye to traditional spray-and-pray campaigns that don’t speak to them individually. It’s no secret that hyper-personalisation is the key to making consumers fall in love with your brand…and that’s easier said than done.

Meaningful personalisation requires brands to go beyond just knowing a consumer's name, their birthday, their partner’s birthday and so on. Meaningful personalisation requires brands to understand the consumer’s context at that point in time and what the consumer is feeling and thinking.

Meaningful personalisation is not possible without using behavioral data. For that, you must collect data from consumers while ensuring you maintain their privacy. And that requires building trust. As per PwC’s research, here are four steps to gaining consumers’ trust & keeping it that way. Consumers will tell you they assign significant value to their privacy. However, there is a significant gap between the value consumers say they place on privacy and how they actually behave (which has been called the privacy paradox by some experts on consumer behavior).

A vast majority of consumers - 82% - say they would share some type of personal data for a better customer experience, according to PwC research . The benefits consumers seek include a highly personalized, omnichannel, authentic, engaging consumer experience delivered in real time.

3.?Listen to the unsaid?

Does a hair care brand know which other products sit on their consumer’s bathroom shelf and why consumers pick up one or the other? What would trigger consumers to create a reel which includes their favorite brand and share on Instagram?

To find out, the hair care brand must really understand consumers - like what frustrates consumers regarding hair, what fears they have around how they feel and look, what drives them to do something about grooming, what influences people, when was the last time they felt delighted before, during and after using a product/service?

Being able to answer these questions is an art and a science. While traditional research may unravel what consumers own and what they do, ethnographic studies really probe into underlying consumer behavior and help us understand why consumers do what they do. It is the difference between reading a guide on how to skateboard versus actually getting on a board and experiencing it yourself (and trust me, I know what that means - both the joy and the pain :) but that’s a topic for another post).

Brands around the world are tapping into the power of becoming a “fly on the wall” in consumers’ lives. This way, brands get a 360 degree objective view into consumers’ everyday habits and behavior. Not only are these brands uncovering the unarticulated but also converting that knowledge into actionable insights that inspire innovation and new products and services.??

Once you determine - through ethnography - what would be game-changing for consumers, you can tailor your consumer engagement strategy to get that steadfast brand loyalty all brands covet. You can leverage these insights to design loyalty programs that go beyond the obvious; programs that capture not just the pocket but also the hearts and the minds of consumers; thereby building long term loyalty.

4.?You give, you get

Brand loyalty is a two-way street. If you treat your consumers as consumers, that’s all they’ll ever be. When you look past your consumers as being just sources of revenue, and start seeing them as a network of mutually beneficial relationships, that’s when things will take a turn for the better.?

What brands really need to do is create reciprocity. The “rule of reciprocation”, states that humans naturally feel compelled to repay accordingly when given something. When you give more, you get more from consumers. This applies not only to when you want consumers to share their personal data but also for all other interactions a brand has with consumers. The key is to give.

There are subtly nuanced dos and don'ts every brand should crack to keep consumers grinning from ear to ear. Meeting these unwritten consumer expectations is the tipping point to delivering great CX and keeping them coming back for more.?

5. Make rewards meaningful & memorable

Now you’ve got the cat in the bag. Consumers love your brand and want to tell their friends and family all about it. How can you convert these consumers into promising brand advocates and increase word of mouth referrals??

Provide rewards that consumers would find meaningful & memorable?

There are plenty of loyalty programs out there designed for this sole purpose. But many promising brand advocates are slipping away because they feel that earning rewards is a challenge. An Epsilon study reveals that 76% Indian consumers feel like loyalty programs have long registration processes, complex rules and technical glitches.

What consumers really want are simple loyalty programs with flexible rewards. Sephora’s Beauty Insider program is a stellar example. Sephora’s loyal members make up to a massive 80% of Sephora’s annual sales. Here’s how they do it.?

The program deploys a traditional point system where consumers earn rewards for every purchase. But what makes it cool is that consumers can choose how they want to use their reward points. Apart from redeeming points for new purchases, consumers can also use their points on things like free shipping or meet and greet events.

When you reward consumers the right way, they can make the best advocates for your brand.?

Reeling in new consumers is pivotal to future growth. But acquisition should not come at the cost of existing consumers. Keeping your current consumers happy and focusing on increasing repeat purchases will work wonders for your top line and bottom line.?

Think engagement, not points.?

Think behavioral loyalty, not just transactional loyalty.

Think loyalty, not just a loyalty program/platform.

Think retention, not only acquisition.

Looking to “hit refresh” on your consumer retention strategy? Get it touch, let’s talk growth!