A Guide to Building Brand Loyalty Online

For any business with the intention of enjoying long-term success, brand loyalty is of paramount concern. And while it used to depend on face-to-face interaction and physical signage, tackling the challenge of securing brand loyalty is now determined by how well you’re able to reach, persuade, and satisfy customers online.

Online Brand Loyalty Matters

Among marketing managers, businesses, and even business owners, there’s a common misconception regarding brand loyalty. Often times, people wrongly confuse it with customer loyalty or assume they’re the same thing. However, it’s important to differentiate between the two concepts. According to BeyondPhilosophy.com, “Customer loyalty is the result of consistently positive emotional experience, physical attribute-based satisfaction, and perceived value of an experience, which includes the product or services.” On the other hand, brand loyalty simply refers to the actual products and services.

In the world of social media and online advertising, this is good news for marketers and business owners interested in driving brand loyalty among consumers. Even though you may not be able to match the price point or marketing budget of large e-commerce sites like Amazon or eBay, you do have access to tools that allow you to build brand loyalty and overcome these deficiencies. 

5 Tips for Building Brand Loyalty

Here are five quick and easy brand loyalty-building tips:

• Focus on social. In 2015 and beyond, social media will be the single most valuable asset brands have for reaching and engaging customers. If you truly want to enhance brand loyalty, you must commit to building an active and flourishing social media presence.

• Reward customers and run promotions. You should reward customers for interacting with your brand, following you on social networking platforms, visiting your site, or making purchases. Many companies find success through promotions like free bonuses with online orders. The items don’t need to be large or expensive, even a small token of appreciation will make the customer feel valued. This blog post from PensXpress states, “It is important for every business to do promotion of their product and services as per the requirements. To survive in the competitive market it is necessary to come up with new ideas and strategies.” Make sure you are coming up with fresh ideas and rewarding your customers to ensure they feel appreciated.

• Invest in consistent content. If there’s something you certainly want to spend on this year, it’s content. You need high-quality content to satisfy both the search engines and your target market. You don’t have to go overboard, but aim for producing fresh, original content multiple times per week.

• Be easy to reach. Just because you’re selling your goods or services online, doesn’t mean people don’t want direct contact with you. Make your brand reachable by including multiple contact options for customers. This should include a phone number, customer service email address, and possibly an instant message or live chat option. 

• Offer quick, free shipping. New online shoppers hate the fact that they have to pay extra for shipping and wait for it to arrive when they could go to the local Walmart and buy it on the shelf. However, you can combat this hesitation by offering quick, free shipping.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of Brand Loyalty

The problem for many businesses is that they wrongly assume brand loyalty is some classroom concept that doesn’t exist in the real world—but how wrong they are. Brand loyalty is the single biggest driving factor for repeat purchases in crowded industries. Think about it for a moment. When you go to buy a soft drink in the supermarket, you have well over a dozen choices. Despite the store brand costing 30 percent less and probably tasting nearly identical, you likely go with Coke or Pepsi 9 out of 10 times. Why? The answer is brand loyalty.

Don’t underestimate the power of brand loyalty for your business. While you may not be Coke or Pepsi, you still have a chance to build a solid customer base that believes in your brand and prefers your products over the alternatives. Next time you doubt your marketing and advertising efforts or find it difficult to continue dedicating a large portion of your budget to these areas, remember the above five tips and keep going. Particularly, it’s important to continue focusing on building online brand loyalty in an Internet-driven marketplace where e-commerce websites, social networking platforms, and powerful search engines are leading the way.