There is an inherent flaw in the way businesses measure loyalty. Typically, customers are said to be loyal if they keep returning to buy your product or service. However, this does not always imply loyalty.
A good number of customers stick to a provider out of inertia or pure laziness. So while they may continue to deal with you, an alluring offer from a competitor or other external factors can potentially push them away to a competitor.
For a customer to be loyal, it is important to build a relationship that is beyond transactional and is rather emotional in nature. Here are a few online strategies to build such a relationship with your buyer.
Share customer stories
The company blog is a great platform to engage in insightful discussions with your customers. To begin with, make sure you respond to each and every comment on your blog posts. This makes your audience feel valued and has a direct impact on their engagement.
But here’s the thing - do not stop with just thanking readers for their comments and answering their questions. Use the blog platform to nurture meaningful discussions.
For example, if you have an article about PPC advertising and a reader thanks you for the helpful piece, do not stop with just thanking them for their comment. Ask them about what strategies work for their business or if they have tried your strategies.
This builds a conversation that can create an emotional connection between the buyer and your business.
Create a customer network
Regardless of your industry, a big chunk of customers pick a provider based on referrals provided by people in their network. In other words, customers tend to transact in clusters. As a business, it is important to stop looking at your customer as an individual entity. Instead, treat them as part of the larger network. This establishes an ecosystem that the customer is happy to be a part of, and thus increases their emotional connection with your brand.
Beyond this, consider investing more time into building social communities for customers as well. This allows customers to talk to one another from within your platform. If you are on third-party social networks like Instagram, make sure that you engage with each of your new followers like welcoming them through a direct message and make them feel part of your network. All this helps you build a cohesive network of customers who have a higher emotional connect with the brand.
Create a ‘point of touch’ workflow with the customer
Building an emotional connect with the customer needs a lot of nurturing and persistence. One way to establish this is by setting up a workflow for periodically touching base with them. This needs to be right from the point where the prospective customer is still in your sales pipeline until after they have converted.
The CRM software should come with an omnichannel outreach infrastructure so that you may stay in touch with your prospects and customers over the phone, email and text. This workflow can help with maximizing engagement and, in turn, the emotional appeal of the brand.
Building an emotionally driven customer base is not an easy task and achieving this takes a lot of effort. But the exercise is rewarding and helps you build an army of customers who are loyal to your brand and act as ambassadors of your product.