Brand Loyalty

Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty is hard to achieve in this age of selling with coupons and constant sales. Add the Internet, and that makes it even harder to maintain and increase brand loyalty because it's so easy and fast for customers to compare prices, suppliers and products. Enough complaining: This is the new normal. Learn how to measure and improve brand loyalty even in these modern times.

From our experience: Instead of striving for brand loyalty, aim for brand advocacy. Brand advocates are people who refer and recommend your brand to others. The Internet makes it easy for them to do that. Viral marketing is word-of-mouth online. It's free! And while you can't control it, you can certainly nurture it. We've created an area on MarketingZone where the community can share ideas for how to generate Viral Marketing among all kinds of different target audiences (like pet owners, moms with young kids, empty nesters...). Go, share and learn from others.

Brand loyalty

Let's be a lot more specific about what you mean by brand loyalty.

1. The customer will only buy your brand?

They will go out of their way?

Go without if it's not available?

Wait until it is?

2. Loyal to the "branded house" meaning they buy all relevant products/services from the company?

Some customers may be loyal to one product or service or brand.

Are you doing an effective enough job at educating and recommending all the relevant products/services a customer could need?

Learn more about Cross Selling.

3. Is this real or forced loyalty?

For many products and services, someone else decides what to buy or what companies or products are on the short list.

This is true for consumers. A mom tells her kids, "You can buy this cereal or that cereal." (And not the sugar-coated dessert-for-breakfast cereal the kid really wants.)

This is true for business customers. The IT department says, "We've standardized on Microsoft."

The real test for loyalty is if the person using the product/service or brand had the option to buy any brand they wanted.

Know this: Brand loyalty can be purchased. If you have a United Airlines credit card are you loyal to United because of their great service or because of the free miles you can earn? Do you buy your supplies at Staples all the time because you like it best there or because you have a rewards card?

4. Does the customer behavior make them look loyal?

Think of your cell phone, bank and business software. Are you really loyal to those companies or is it just too much of a hassle to switch?

A lot of companies have an inflated view of customer loyalty when they assume customers who keep buying are loyal.

Marketers call this "high-switching cost" and many companies aim to make it very easy for first-time customers to try with a free offer and then people stay because they've invested time. Some email marketing services do this. They lure you in with a free trial and then after you've invested hours loading in all your customer information into their database for you, you are much less likely to want to consider going through that again to try another supplier.

What drives customer loyalty?

Great insight from Tom Searcy from Hunt Big Sales on what drives customer loyalty.

"Here's how customers consider your value, from lowest to highest:

If you know your product, you are a human catalog
If you know your services, you are a technician
If you can match your products and services to the customer's needs, you are a sales person
If you know a customer's problems and business, you are a consultant
If you know a customer's industry, market challenges and competitors, you are an expert"

Next page - how to measure brand loyalty

and how to build brand loyalty

Comment on This Article

Find Marketing Experts To Hire

Researching marketing products or services to buy?

Top Marketing Suppliers
- Reviews are written and continuously updated by editors.
- We don't accept advertising and we don't participate in affiliate deals so our subscribers can rely on us for credible, honest reviews.

Costs for Marketing

TIP: Let us do the work to research suppliers and costs. Premium Member Benefits

No part of this work, including design, content, and underlying technology on all pages, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, screen capture, and recording or by an information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations referenced with full attribution. Pages may be printed for the sole use of the person printing them. MarketingZone content is available via content license. Address inquiries to licensing@marketingzone.com.

MarketingZone™ is a trademark of MarketingZone, Inc.