Why Customer Loyalty is More Important than Ever

For many industries, customer acquisition costs are rising. The expansion of internet use over the last decade that brought a wealth of e-commerce opportunities has slowed, and the trend for strategies that bring in quick and cheap new customers to replace those that churn is ending.

A new era of customer-centricity is dawning and in it, brands will compete by offering services and products that revolve around their customers – those that personalize their offering will thrive while those that offer a one-size-fits-all approach will struggle to keep up.

It’s already true that loyalty pays. Indeed, repeat customers are 67% more likely to spend more and an increase in retention by just 5% can equate to a 25% increase in profit. There are numerous ways to foster customer loyalty, but ultimately, the most sure-fire way to do this is to put your customers at the heart of everything you do.

And we mean everything.

The customer journey does not begin and end with a transaction. This is just one step in a process that, for some customers, can include many, many steps. The whole journey includes the discovery of your brand, the experience of making a purchase or signing up (whether that be in-person or online), whether they enjoy their purchase or require support or even a refund, and how they can go about giving feedback.

How customer-centricity can build loyalty

Every brand interaction has the potential to be an important moment in one of your customer’s journeys, and it’s these moments that help consumers decide if they’ll make repeat purchases with brands. The evidence is everywhere: 93% of customers will make a repeat purchase with a brand that offers excellent customer service and 60% of consumers are likely to be less loyal to a brand if they experience poor app or website performance.

By optimizing every potential brand interaction with your customer experience in mind, you’ll naturally foster the loyalty of your customers. The scope of what a customer-centric approach can achieve has increased markedly in recent years. Nowadays, marketers can track a range of different data points to build increasingly granular segments. This allows for more relevant marketing content to reach customers at the most opportune time – while also relying on automation and AI to deliver highly personalized customer journeys.

It’s now possible for two different customers to have very different experiences with the same brand, each tailored to fit their needs, interests, and buying habits. But doing this requires an in-depth knowledge of your customers, which is certain to put a greater emphasis on market research in the next few years.

To truly shape your brand offering around your customers, you’ll need more than just a broad understanding of your customers’ demographic characteristics. The goal is to figure out where your brand fits into your customers’ lives and what purpose your product or service fulfills? Once you understand this, then you can work to improve your offering in the future.

But what’s the best method for finding out more about your customers? There’s a range of options available, each providing different types of insights into different parts of your customer journey.

How brand tracking can help you understand your customers

Delving into your own data or the data available to you from the partners and platforms that you work with (e.g. social media, mobile attribution) will give you a technical understanding of your customer journey and allow you to assess which touchpoints are currently working and which ones are causing problems.

By analyzing this data, you can spot habits and trends that will inform you on the best ways to add value to your offerings too. For example, an online retailer might want to make it easy to make repeat purchases of the same item or bundle items that are often bought together in order to streamline and shorten the customer journey.

However, looking at data like this isn’t the only important step – if you want to shape your brand around your customers, you’ll first need to understand how they perceive your brand and the best tool for doing this is brand tracking.

Latana’s brand tracking software enables you to see how your brand is perceived by both the general population and your target audiences. The insights you can gain from brand tracking can include what positive or negative associations your brand has, whether consumers have a preference for your brand or another, or simply how aware they are of your offering.

Perhaps you’ve looked at your data and you’ve made changes to your brand messaging – with brand tracking you can see whether the change has impacted how consumers perceive your brand. Brand tracking makes these kinds of insights possible and, in turn, can impact your customer loyalty.

Brands that regularly check in with their customers and their wider target audience will always be the first to detect changes in consumer behavior and be best placed to adapt their services – ensuring that they stay ahead of the competition.

Indeed, as marketers’ ability to segment their audiences becomes ever more granular and as technology allows for more sophisticated personalization, the real arms race between brands will revolve around just how customer-centric their services can be.

But those that get this right will certainly do so by ensuring that they’re listening to their customers, figuring out how their brand fits into their lives, how it is perceived, and with which consumers there is the greatest opportunity for growth.