What Marketers Need to Know About Brand Loyalty
What keeps customers loyal to brands? Marketers tear their hair out at the question. They pull up strategies and tactics like a magician pulling a bunny out of a hat, hoping to find the magic trick to finally snare unwavering customer loyalty.
Consumers are fickle, and in the ever-shifting landscape of social media, they are becoming more so. Attention spans are shortening. Information is more widely available. And consumers demand more transparency from brands now more than ever. As society becomes more questioning of corporations, brand loyalty loses its prevalence in the consumer base.
According to this article by Harvard Business Review, brands have been chasing loyalty based on some faulty information about how consumers perceive brands. Brands put a lot of focus on relationships between them and the consumer, thinking that higher engagement means higher loyalty.
But the truth is consumers don’t care that much about establishing relationships with a brand. According to the HBR study, consumers agree that relationships are meant to be between people, not between people and corporations.
So, what does inspire loyalty to a brand? The study says it’s all about shared values. Brands that demonstrate that they value the same things as their audience produce better quality, loyal customers.
The concept of ‘shared values’ can be broad, so let me narrow it down. The type of values a brand aligns with will be highly dependent on what type of business they are. For example, a coffee company is better positioned to relay their support for fair trade to their audience than a car repair shop.
While not all coffee shop customers can be guaranteed to be adamantly opinionated on fair trade, knowing that a coffee shop has ethical values can be the deciding factor in choosing that shop over a competitor coffee shop who doesn’t.
The point is that when a brand shows that they are more than just a company, they humanize themselves. They show that they have values that align with the values of good people. They become more likable. This is what inspires loyalty.
But how does a brand show their audience that they share the same values? It’s simple: they tell them through the digital content they produce. In the digital age, great online content marketing has become essential marketing for all businesses. Writing blogs, producing videos, and posting on social media are all vital in creating a dynamic web presence that showcases a brands voice and values.
As a footnote, there is a single vital make-or-break component to establishing brand loyalty through shared values: authenticity.
If a brand isn’t authentically passionate about their values, it will show. And it will hurt. In the digital age, it has never been easier for audiences to hold brands accountable. Brands that are genuine, honest, and transparent will be much more likely to produce loyal customers than brands that aren’t.
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