One goal for many business owners is to create a brand customers enjoy interacting with and consistently come back to. In large part, success with this goal is about building trust over time and sharing value through quality of service and the types of personalized experiences offered. With its intangible nature, it can be difficult to measure brand loyalty as a benchmark of success. However, 43% of customers spend a greater amount of money on brands that they consider themselves loyal to. It’s a metric that is too important to ignore.
That’s why, today, we will be exploring how to gauge your customers’ brand loyalty and sharing tips to secure this.
How to Measure Your Customers’ Brand Loyalty
Surveys
The best way to know if customers are loyal to you is to simply ask them directly. Surveys present an excellent opportunity to ask patrons what they like about your brand, why they keep coming back, and what you can improve upon. The potential insights you can walk away with are a gold mine of opportunity.
A few example questions: would you recommend us to a friend or family member?; Do you consider our brand to be high quality or low quality?; Is this your first experience with us?
Getting Customers to Take Surveys
It’s easy to say that surveys are a great way to measure brand loyalty, but how do you get customers to take them? Quite often, offering them some form of reward, such as a coupon, is the most successful method.
Take your target audience into consideration. Would they prefer a paper survey that they take in-store, or an online survey that they take at their leisure? This factor may affect design and layout, which will also influence whether your patrons want to take the survey.
The main takeaway is to keep surveys short (typically no more than 10 questions) and easy to comprehend. Start with a list of targeted questions you want to ask, and narrow them down to the essentials. Remember: even though they may be compensated for filling out a survey, customers can walk away from a survey that is too long or too personal with a negative reaction.
Keep Track of Repeat Customers
How often are your customers coming back for your services? It’s easier (and cheaper) to retain customers than to reach out for new ones, so keep track of who is coming back and how often. Many POS (point of sale) systems now have functionality built in to provide easy tracking of customer loyalty over time. Seeing how often your customers come back, and for what promotions, will help give you an insight into your brand loyalty measure. Recurring/repeat customers are always a good sign.
Tips to Improve Brand Loyalty
Give Customers High-Quality Content
Is your content on social media, the company website, or email mailing list adding value for your customer? Are they interested in what you are doing online and within your store? Is every product you put out (both physical and digital) professional, in accordance with what your brand dictates, and done so with your target audience in mind? Make sure you are delivering on what customers want to see. Take chances to educate them on new developments in your industry.
Be Consistent
As a customer, it can be difficult remaining loyal to a brand if you are unsure what to expect. While many people understand that their business needs to be participating in social media, few realize the importance of consistency. Staying consistent provides a way for customers to be more familiar with your company, as they feel like they get to know it over time. In order to maintain consistency, every extension of your brand (store, social media platforms, website, etc.) should line up with the tone and style of your brand. Inconsistency can seem unprofessional and confusing to target audiences. No one wants to be the company that “tries too hard” or seems to be all over the map with their posts.
Take Customer Feedback Into Consideration
Know what patrons are saying about your brand, then adjust to fit their expectations. This also works in the opposite direction. Take what your customers are saying they like about your brand, then emphasize these aspects. Customers appreciate it when businesses take their feedback into consideration, so this can be a strong tactic for building rapport. A company that actively listens and is responsive gives the appearance of being nimble and willing to go the extra mile.
The bottom line is that measuring and building brand loyalty is all about listening to what customers are saying. They are the key to creating shared meaning and an overall enjoyable experience for other customers, as well as the internal workings of the business itself.