Tag Archives: loyalty

How Do Companies Create Loyalty?

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The secret to a suc­cess­ful busi­ness is owed to the loy­alty com­manded from your cus­tomer base by show­ing an interest. If we cre­ate more of a social move­ment, where people love us, then this is worth it’s weight in gold.

I have found that the more you look to build a rela­tion­ship and show an interest in oth­ers, as opposed to a gen­eric LinkedIn ‘join my net­work via a tem­plated text intro­duc­tion’ then you make that leap from the rest of the crowd.

Loy­alty comes about by mak­ing a con­nec­tion with oth­ers and con­trib­ut­ing to your mar­ket­place. This week alone I received four news­let­ters (why did I sign up for them in the first place, they were all pap) that were keen to tell me how their product was the best in the mar­ket. It had noth­ing to do with the fact that they cared more, did more, served bet­ter than the oth­ers and could give me a bet­ter way of work­ing. It’s the same for all of us, the sooner you start improv­ing your cus­tom­ers’ lives, the quicker they recog­nise the value you provide when com­pared to the competition.

An example from my past fort­night, has been the quest for a new builder to quote for my new loft con­ver­sion. The roll-​call began with sup­ply­ing archi­tects plans and meas­ure­ments to quote and only one sup­plier stood miles out from the rest (seven in total). Why, because they were bothered. Ok, the cost was slightly more than the oth­ers, but with the samples they brought with them, to the phone call to double check the quote had been received, they almost became an advisor as opposed to a supplier.

Loy­alty is driven from look­ing at how many ways you can add the dimen­sion of value, not by you but in the eyes of the prospect/​customer. Human nature means we all want to feel spe­cial and val­ued by oth­ers. If we can give bet­ter res­ults for oth­ers, then your repu­ta­tion will become wide­spread within your marketplace.

What’s The Difference Between Repeat Business & Customer Loyalty?

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Build­ing a com­munity of cus­tom­ers who con­tinu­ally stand by you is stronger than a rela­tion­ship built merely on repeat business.

Lets look a bit deeper, repeat busi­ness is when people do busi­ness con­tinu­ally with you over a period of time. Loyal cus­tom­ers are those who stand beside you and enjoy work­ing with you, no mat­ter the bet­ter offers that are out there to entice them.

Repeat busi­ness is eas­ily won, loy­alty is not a short term res­ult but an ongo­ing com­mit­ment to build a rela­tion­ship by a clear shift in per­cep­tion where you move from a ser­vice pro­vider (with a host of com­pet­it­ors) to one who is seen as mak­ing their lives better.

Build­ing cus­tomer loy­alty is all about being seen as being able to solve prob­lems and provide a bene­fit to another per­son or busi­ness. People stick by people who are able to provide advice and clear judg­ment, as opposed to ‘job done, invoice out.’

A good example of the two sides between repeat busi­ness and cus­tomer loy­alty has been my exper­i­ence with Black­berry. Over the past six years, I depended on my Black­berry and didn’t really pay much atten­tion to the added bene­fits. The apps were a bit clunky, noth­ing was really tweaked to make the user exper­i­ence more inter­act­ive, I just paid my line rental every month and because my con­tacts were on the phone it was just easier to upgrade to a new Black­berry when the time came round.

Last week I moved to iPhone (so now along­side the Mac and iPad have the hat-​trick), it’s where a life­style is drawn to. It’s clear that the Apple aim is to empower the indi­vidual and this is where we move from repeat busi­ness to loy­alty. When the focus moves to the indi­vidual, this is the key in switch­ing to loyalty.

If we can cham­pion the brands that we rep­res­ent and move to a way of work­ing that is focused on ‘how can I help you’ and oth­ers believ­ing in what we rep­res­ent then the path changes from repeat cus­tom­ers to an army of loyal advocates.

The Cinema ‘Stretch & Arm Over’ Technique For Great Customer Service

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It’s time to put a reas­sur­ing arm around your cus­tom­ers and let them know that they are loved. The age old cinema tech­nique of ‘stretch and arm over’ is here to apply for cus­tomer service.

Much of the time, the focus is on look­ing for new cus­tom­ers to build our busi­nesses, but why don’t we ever take note of the age old fact that it is six to seven times more costly to acquire a new cus­tomer than retain an exist­ing one?

It does make sense, in terms of the costs to pro­mote your product, selling your product to new leads, set­ting up new accounts and invest­ment of time to build a rap­port. Whereas, if a focus is to move exist­ing cus­tom­ers to hav­ing a great exper­i­ence with you, then you build a loyal fol­low­ing who will stay with you.

Accord­ing to Har­ris Inter­act­ive, Cus­tomer Exper­i­ence Impact Report, even in a neg­at­ive eco­nomy, cus­tomer exper­i­ence is a high pri­or­ity for con­sumers, with 60% often or always pay­ing more for a bet­ter experience.

That’s an import­ant fig­ure to take note of where the flip­side is that we loose cus­tom­ers because of a lack luster ser­vice. Isn’t it time to make a stand and work harder to keep cur­rent cus­tom­ers happy (and become advoc­ates of your brand).

By build­ing bet­ter exper­i­ences, your cus­tom­ers become a mem­ber of your com­munity and it’s import­ant for them to feel val­ued and part of some­thing. Busi­ness is built on rela­tion­ships and the simple act of people inter­act­ing with and enga­ging with oth­ers. Here are five ways that can be use­ful to simply giv­ing a damn about your customers:

1) Giv­ing

Cre­ate news­let­ters that aren’t solely avail­able elec­tron­ic­ally. To the loyal cus­tom­ers, invest­ing in a great look­ing prin­ted mater­ial, elev­ates from treat­ing your com­munity as a mass to indi­vidu­al­ized. Back this up with a let­ter from your­self to your indi­vidual and you’re treat­ing as individuals.

2) Com­mu­nic­at­ing

Com­mu­nic­a­tion that is ongo­ing. To elev­ate from purely trans­ac­tional to string rela­tion­ships, put down the phones and email and con­nect face-​to-​face and cre­ated edu­cated customers.

3) Lov­ing

Make them feel spe­cial. Here at The ID Group, we sent to our cus­tom­ers earlier this year Easter cards (we didn’t want to blend in with every­one else via Christ­mas cards) and in every card was a scratch­card and our best wishes. Cost effect­ive and a way of keep­ing in touch (if we didn’t, our com­pet­it­ors would).

4) Over Delivering

Over­deliver, even if there is no imme­di­ate profit from it. It’s simple, if you do great things, it makes people want to share it.

5) Flex­ib­il­ity

Being flex­ible is key. There are times when things can go wrong (hands up here!), we can’t stop the mis­takes that are made, it’s how we rem­edy them that is import­ant. Most of the time someone wants to be listened too and understood.

Every indi­vidual of the busi­ness has the respons­ib­il­ity to deliver, care and to try. Valu­ing those around us and keep­ing cus­tom­ers as part of a com­munity, helps to cre­ate a cul­ture where they feel that are part of some­thing that they can relate to and enjoy.

Fostering Creative Marketing Ideas – Three Simple Tactics!

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Trust me it’s impossible for a new busi­ness to cre­ate and main­tain its brand suc­cess­fully in today’s highly com­pet­it­ive mar­kets. Many blue chip com­pan­ies in order to throw new entrants out of the mar­ket tem­por­ar­ily join hands and form alli­ances with their com­pet­it­ors, apply smart tech­niques and force new entrants to leave the industry. This is because it reduces their com­pet­i­tion from the mar­ket and helps them to earn higher profits.

With the advent of tech­no­logy, busi­ness mar­kets glob­ally have revo­lu­tion­ized. Gone are the times when simple mar­ket­ing tech­niques (like dis­trib­ut­ing busi­ness cards) were enough to gen­er­ate a loyal cus­tomer base. Entre­pren­eurs and whole­sale traders who are not smart in devis­ing effect­ive mar­ket­ing mod­els for their busi­ness are sooner or later bound to fail in their busi­ness ventures.

Mar­ket­ing is a diverse field that takes into account innu­mer­able tech­niques. It depends on the entre­pren­eur which mar­ket­ing tac­tics he chooses to imple­ment accord­ing to his budget and time. Moreover, the mar­ket­ing func­tion is quite dynamic, since it changes fre­quently with the shifts in demand, the advent of tech­no­logy and change in cus­tomer pref­er­ences. This dynam­ism makes it hard for busi­nesses to decide where they should focus and exert their mar­ket­ing time and efforts. From the never end­ing list of mar­ket­ing tac­tics, I believe these three are the most cre­at­ive tactics.

Always Reward Refer­rals – Instead of dis­trib­ut­ing busi­ness cards, which are prone to being mis­placed, it’s bet­ter to ask your reg­u­lar cus­tom­ers to refer your busi­ness to their friends, fam­ily and col­leagues. You can let your cus­tom­ers know that for every single cus­tomer referred by them, they can receive a dis­count on their next pur­chase. This tac­tic involves includ­ing cus­tom­ers in your mar­ket­ing team and reward­ing them for express­ing their genu­ine opin­ion about your busi­ness. Remem­ber that you are ask­ing for reward­ing refer­rals only from your loyal cus­tom­ers who hold pos­it­ive views about your business.

Involve in Video Mar­ket­ing – This is no secret that people want to see more and read less. This reason along with the SEO friendly nature of the videos makes them one of the most prom­in­ent and work­able mar­ket­ing tools of the time. When you hear about video mar­ket­ing, what comes to your mind? You­Tube, right? Though You­Tube is the most fam­ous video mar­ket­ing plat­form but there are other sites which also work well, if you give them an hon­est try. Entre­pren­eurs can also shoot qual­ity and inform­at­ive videos about their busi­ness and post them on their social media pages to engage more cus­tom­ers in their business.

Host or Spon­sor an Event – The best mar­ket­ing prac­tice is the one that assists your busi­ness to get recog­nized by a lot of people at once. Noth­ing works bet­ter than host­ing or spon­sor­ing an event in this regard. Though build­ing net­works by attend­ing sem­inars and meet­ings also work but they can never beat the response you gen­er­ate from host­ing an event. The full atten­tion of audi­ence is always at the host and every­one comes to ‘thank’ him. If you are a wise per­son and host event at your busi­ness work­place, every­one gets to know where your busi­ness is loc­ated, what it sells and how it can help them.

Note: Fos­ter­ing cre­at­ive mar­ket­ing strategies in a busi­ness is the key to excel in today’s mar­ket­place. Using the above men­tioned old mar­ket­ing tech­niques with cre­ativ­ity can help you earn high profits and increase viab­il­ity of your busi­ness venture.

Julie Robert is a B2B whole­sale trade and B2B mar­ket­ing expert. She writes fre­quently on the top­ics related to UK Whole­salers and trade suppliers.

‘He’s Behind You’ — Respect Your Competition

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We know they’re around, we know they’re present, we know they could be sniff­ing around our cus­tomer base, which is why we always have to respect our competition.

No one wants to sit quietly and see you build your mar­ket share and develop your rap­port within the mar­ket place, we all want some of it. We all want a share of time (and money) and mar­ket­ing has to extend bey­ond the com­pan­ies we work with. Here are some responses to expect from your com­pet­i­tion and the signs:

  • Copy­ing Your Offering

The suc­cess of one product invari­ably means a response of a sim­ilar offer­ing. The most high pro­file example this week has been the US pat­ent trial, where Apple has accused Sam­sung of steal­ing iPhone fea­tures, namely scrolling and multi-​torch. On a more famil­iar com­par­ison, we only need to look at Net­flix tak­ing mar­ket­share away from Love­Film and Blockbuster.

Your Solu­tion = don’t copy, innov­ate and never rest on your laurels

  • Your Are Invisible

Oper­at­ing in a vacuum and pre­tend­ing you never exist is a dan­ger­ous game. There are always altern­at­ives out there.

The Twit­ter land­scape is full of dir­ect mes­sages that are purely brand related and how choos­ing a par­tic­u­lar product/​service is the best option. Repeated ‘sales mes­sages’ pro­duce poten­tial cus­tom­ers who are less will­ing to trust.

A sens­ible route is to acknow­ledge your mar­ket­place. A recent example has seen the Co-​operative bank acknow­ledge this by prom­ising to provide ‘customer-​led, eth­ic­ally driven’ bank­ing and pledge to shake up the sec­tor (we’ll wait and see) by acquir­ing 632 branches from Lloyds Bank­ing Group.

Your Solu­tion = cham­pion authen­ti­city and build trust in your marketplace

  • Going Head To Head

When product offer­ings are sim­ilar, the most obvi­ous choice is to state that your product is the best and engage via the com­mu­nic­a­tions mix. A cur­rent example is Adi­das pin­ning its adspend on a 17 day cover-​wrap for free news­pa­per Metro in the battle for Olympic loy­alty from Nike. Nike on the other hand have released it’s Olympic ad cam­paign ‘Great­ness isn’t reserved for the chosen few in one spe­cial city.’

Your Solu­tion = inspire loy­alty, lead, don’t sit quietly

  • Deliv­er­ing A Bet­ter Product Than You

This is the most effect­ive response by provid­ing a ser­vice that has higher per­ceived value than you can provide. The end res­ult is more cus­tom­ers, big­ger mar­ket share and cus­tomer loy­alty. It could be based on speed, it could be price, so keep­ing to busi­ness as usual could be the most dam­aging option to go for.

Your Solu­tion = don’t fol­low, look to lead, keep think­ing, keep cre­at­ing