- Change up your business model as soon as you possibly can.
- Consider what you are doing wrong to make your offering only good for one use.
What is Customer Loyalty?
Basically, how likely someone is to come to you instead of a competitor. Companies like McDonald’s, for instance, know that a lot of their customers will go to their rivals such as KFC or Burger King. They know, though, that the speed of service and general standard of their products will see you come back the next time BK/KFC is too full.
A small business, though, cannot afford to just have people go to their rivals. Customer loyalty is making sure that your service and offerings are good enough that people will come back to you instead – even if you are really busy.
Building that kind of loyalty in people, though, is very tough but not impossible. It often takes a quite exceptional offering and a very impressive business model to do so, following with well defined digital marketing strategies. If you want to start building more loyalty in the people who you serve, though, we have some very interesting ideas for you to take a look at here.
If you want to make customer loyalty a feature of your business, then, try and implement the following.
Build a Business Story
People want to work with a business that has a heart and a soul. Prove that you are more than just a big face or another logo with a service or product to sell. Show people that you have more to offer them. Give your business a series of brand values that you will stick by. Understand who your perfect audience is, and target all of your business messages and brand ideals to that kind of person. People who feel like a company reflects who they are will be much more likely to return in future.Avoid Being Opaque
One of the main errors that companies make when trying to cultivate loyalty is a lack of transparency. If you want to make people feel good about using your business, you need to be very open about your business. If something goes wrong and you mess up? Hold your hands up and admit it. Nothing goes down worse with a client base than a company pointing the finger and blaming everyone else for their own failings. As much as people love to shop in a business that matches their values, they like to shop with businesses who take responsibility even more.Build a Human Face
Instead of being the business that offers X or solves Y, show them who you really are. Not every business is a brand of personality, but you can make your staff and yourself stand out a bit more. Add a story, make it easy to understand why you can both be- A) trusted and
- B) expected to do the job that you state.
Form a Long-term Business Community
Want your business to have return customers? Then give back to those very same customers.
From locally-driven sales and discounts to online communities set up to help those in the local area, give back a little to the people that you target.
Ask people to show your products or services in use, and ask them to show the world why you are such a good company to work with/for. The most powerful way to earn loyalty is to give back to the community and have community and user-created content showing off the results of your goodwill.
Underpromise and Overdeliver
One of the worst mistakes you can make as a business is to promise the Moon and deliver the Earth. We recommend that you start making your message more about delivering instead of promising. Instead of promising to do the best job on the planet, make sure you simply do the job – let them see the quality of your work in your actions rather than your words. People are loyal to businesses which don’t promise excellence but deliver anyway. If you promise a 10/10 job, you need to deliver an 11/10 job to exceed expectations!Get the Right People Involved
Lastly, make sure you fill up your business with staff who do a good job of representing you. Someone might not be the best at the job from day one, but if their personal approach and personality are more in tune with your business, they are a better fit for long-term loyalty. You can help to make someone better at their job. It’s much harder for an employee to turn a moody and irritable member of staff into someone personable, no matter how good they are at the job. Populate your business with people who are talented but also a good natural fit for the kind of person your target audience will like to meet. It’s much easier to improve someone’ working skills than to improve someone’ personal skills. You can help them to learn new techniques and skills like Digital Marketing which can boost them to grow and learn more. Keep that in mind, and make the impression that your staff makes on customers a positive one instead. Quality craftsmanship is one thing: being treated with respect and professionalism is another.Take Control of Your Reputation
As you can see, then, running a business today is tough work due to countless regulations and laws enforced by the governments. It isn’t impossible, though. Some simple changes based on the above should make it easier for you to cultivate the kind of loyalty that will see your business thrive for many more years to come.
If you are genuinely serious about having customers who want to see you do well, then it is upon you to make that possible. We recommend that you try and take control of your reputation as soon as you can, following the ideas above to create loyalty that’s generational.
Author Bio:
Shawn Mike provides ghostwriting and copywriting services. His educational background in the technical field and business studies helps him in tackling topics ranging from career and business productivity to web development and digital marketing. He occasionally writes blog articles for the Internet.
