By Asad Ali
Brand loyalty is a force that can tip the scales of a business even when the odds aren’t in its favor. It creates a foolproof mechanism that keeps a business from failing economically and helps its periodic growth until it gets back on track. In the realm on online business, loyalty plays a major role in deciding which brand can stay in the competition. A business that sells on a regular basis but does not focus on improving its relations with the clients is prone to disaster if its hits a rough patch. But another business that has it going but suddenly enters a rainy day will not wither and die like the first one. Why? Because it invested time and resources in making an army of brand loyal customers.
Brand loyalty translates to a customer’s allegiance to a single brand for a product or a particular type of products against all other competitors. But, that’s not the best part. These brand loyal customers also happen to make outspoken representatives of your brand who can do your marketing free of cost almost involuntarily. In this article we have shortlisted six practices that can help you bring customers to the fold of loyalty and promote your products actively.
1. Press on Your Rivalries
Exhibiting a sporty rivalry is healthy among competitors, but that doesn’t mean you have to make lifelong enemies out of them. When two brands compete on selling a product with nearly the same features and specification, attention keeps drawing itself towards the battle. This helps your products achieve better exposure among customers from both sides of the brands and maintains a strong and even position with your rival. Brand loyal customers are often bent on mentioning product comparisons on blogs and forums. Competition instigates customers who are involved in defending one of the two rivals to show evidence and write about the superiority over one another, bringing them into the limelight.
2. Pick a Different Angle
What makes your customers tick when it comes to selling products online is the visible disparity between your product and the one a competitor is offering. The key to this disparity is what you show on your website more than what your product has to reveal. If you are selling a laptop on your ecommerce website, customer can see the design and features you have mentioned in your text, but might never see the inside components that help in the unique performance you have promised to your clients. Once you are able to show your product from a distinct angle, customers and your visitors won’t stop telling about it to others who might as well purchase them.
3. Loyalty is Your Goal
Brand evangelism is the last and final stage of brand loyalty. It transcends the customers into a state of unflinching loyalty that prevails in the customer’s lifestyle forever. Creating brand evangelism is not easy as it involves patience, immaculate service, spotless track record and top tier quality. Once all these milestones have been achieved, the customer will join the fold and promote, advertise and even sell your products without you having to spend a penny from your pocket. Brand evangelism is cost effective and can last for as long as a lifetime is executed correctly. However, it takes time to build an army of brand evangelists, an investment not everyone is savvy with.
4. Use Technology to your Advantage
As much as you love getting attention from the customers, your customers expect nearly the same from your side. Selling products in the online platform demands that every customer must receive the treatment they are paying for. Now, you might be thinking how possibly a single website can tend to the needs of thousands of customers that are visiting and buying from your store? The answer is simple. Technology. Internet has evolved light-years to what we say a decade ago with lighting fast internet speeds to smart phones ready to go wherever you take them. This has allowed merchants to incorporate tools and software that can give premium attention to every customers interacting with the website. Smart algorithms that can keep the user engaged in a chat, while premade reply options can instantly respond to queries, saving conversions and allowing doling more attention towards you.
5. Give Out Individual Attention
While tools and applications can keep most customers engaged, they cannot produce the dedicated attention that other customers need. This is why a support team must be at your disposal 24/7 to assign anyone of them to a customer that needs individual attention to purchase your products. Often there are queries that cannot be answered through FAQs or automated response emails. Such circumstances call for a dedicated resource to advocate on your behalf and solve any query or issue the customer might have. This not only gives them the undivided attention other brands often neglect, but also stimulates a valued feel within the customer. If you yearn to have stand-out customers, you must give them stand-out experience as well.
6. Get Feedback
Among the most underrated and underused practices to get noticed in the online platform is acquiring feedback. Knowing what your customers want from you can shape your entire marketing strategy single handedly. Ignoring this aspect can not only deprive you from the valuable information your customers can share, but also reflect badly on your company’s image between customers and the ecommerce community. You can encourage participation by inviting customers to fill in custom fields and leave comments on your blogs and articles. You can also add comments and reviews section on product pages as well to know what customers think about certain products. This inspires loyalty and helps your company to adapt with changing trends faster.
Final Thoughts
Although these six practices are not 100% foolproof and can vary from merchant to merchant, they have most certainly been tried and tested on many websites that are now on top of search engine results with revenues that have sky rocketed since their implementation. We highly recommend you incorporate these six practices to get the enthusiasm flowing in your customer base and hire a full-service web development company to rebrand your eCommerce website. This will improve your conversions and keep you prepared if sales go south anytime in your online store.
