Returning customers are at the heart of most businesses, as new customers can be hard to acquire, and it’s much more efficient to encourage people who have already made a purchase with you to purchase again. Plus, people who feel loyal to your business are much more likely to spread the positive word, whether by word of mouth or through online reviews, which then helps with the growth of your business. Whether your business is long-standing or it’s a new side hustle, while new customers are also key to growth, a priority should be encouraging customer loyalty to create stability for your business.
Have A Clear Story and Values
Firstly, for people to want to be loyal to your brand, then they need to have a story to believe in and support, along with a strong set of values that they will align with. The best way to do this is to start with your why. Why does your brand exist? Usually, this will be a combination of something personal to you along with a gap in the market where you saw a solution to a problem.
There are likely other companies out there that are similar to you, and whilst your product may stand out for a certain reason if a competitor is cheaper, then this might not be enough for them to stay loyal to you. Yet when they’re very aware of who you are as a brand and what you stand for, naturally they will gravitate towards your business. So, incorporate your brand story on your website and through your social media, and it can really help to strengthen your return customers.
Have A Loyalty Programme
Having a customer loyalty programme in place can have so many benefits for your business, usually at quite a small cost considering what it can offer. When you offer good benefits through a loyalty programme, people will simply shop more, whether it’s more often or increasing their average order value because of different discounts. Rewarding your customers keeps them coming back time after time, increasing their customer lifetime value too.
Loyalty programmes also help you access more information about your customers, so you can look at their spending habits and create more personalised customer experiences. Not to mention, this gives you another competitive advantage over other businesses to keep them coming back to you rather than others. Overall, offering loyalty programmes is a great way to motivate certain behaviours from customers and to keep you at the forefront of their minds when they need or want the product you sell.
Provide Excellent Customer Service
One of the biggest factors that will keep customers coming back is if you provide excellent customer service. Customers want to know that if they have any issues at all, they will get help and it will be resolved. So, you should offer great customer service at every stage. From having a chatbot on the website for immediate answers as well as a team of actual people who respond quickly, pre-purchase customer service is key.
Then, you should have a team who are available and will do whatever they can to help resolve customer problems. When a customer has a good experience with the customer service team after having an issue (perhaps they ordered the wrong size or it’s faulty), even though they had a problem, this can be enough to encourage them to come back and purchase you again. You should also create a setup that is well suited to lots of different customers, so for example, having the chatbot for people who want immediate answers, a real customer service team for people who want to speak to real people and then also being available through social media too, as some people prefer that method.
Strengthen Your Branding
Another absolute essential when it comes to encouraging customer loyalty is to strengthen your branding and ensure that it is consistent across all of your platforms. Good branding that is consistent across your website design, social media channels, packaging and any other marketing activity is absolutely key, as it portrays a feeling of higher quality to the customer. When your branding is great, everything looks fantastic, your values as a company are obvious and everything is consistent, then you can also charge more as customers believe in your product. Packaging, particularly, is huge when it comes to trust and what you can charge.
We’d recommend working with an experienced branding and UX agency on this, as they will be able to create not only a really strong brand for you, but also help you to maintain consistency across platforms. If a branding agency isn’t within your budget, make sure you follow a template to put together brand guidelines, as this will help everyone within your company fully understand each element of the brand and how it should be incorporated.
