How to Encourage Customer Loyalty: 3 Easy Methods

It's tough to keep growing businesses, gaining new customers and keeping existing ones in the face of stiff competition.

Still, sometimes achieving these is just a matter of applying common-sense methods that have been used by successful businesses for generations. This often starts by thinking about tactics of other businesses that have made you loyal to their products and services. So, here are three great places to start.

1. Strategic Promotions and Consumer Habits

Promotions are an excellent way to… you guessed it… promote your business, products, and services. But not all promotions yield results. Some businesses are known to give out steep discounts, which only result in diluting respect for their brand.

A good promotion builds habits in the consumer. Take a look at the casino offers at Magical Vegas, for example. Here, users are rewarded for making not just their first, but their second and third deposits. If the casino had stopped at one, these customers would be more likely to forget about the brand. After two or three repetitions of the same behaviour, however, habits begin to form, and you’ve created a relationship with the customer that can last a lifetime.

Therefore, apply promotions such as bonuses and offers to incentivise “sticky” consumer behaviours. These will pay huge dividends in the months and years to come.

2. Combine Discounts With Stellar Products

Discounts do nothing if a product or service doesn’t distinguish itself in other ways. You’re very rarely going to be the competitor willing to cuts prices the lowest. This means that there’s always going to be somewhere your potential customers can find similar products/services for the same price as yours. If they don’t see a standout when they try your product, they’ll quickly look elsewhere.

Sun Basket, the meal kit delivery company, is one of the fastest growing in the space. Offering discounts up to 50% for first orders is commonplace for this crowded industry niche. Many industry analysts credit Sun Basket’s success with the quality of their ingredients, the taste of the resulting meals, and the excellence of their branding. All other things being equal (discounts especially), quality really is the differentiator. Quality is rewarded with repeat customers.

3. Communicate With Your Customers

Customer relationships are exactly that: relationships. They’re ongoing interactions between people, companies, and those who work within companies. Effective communication with customers is not as simple as collecting email addresses and spamming with marketing materials. Customers like it when this relationship feels like a relationship.

Even prickly Steve Jobs responded to customers from time to time, and this practice has only become more commonplace in the Elon Musk age of Twitter. At the very least, take complaints and positive feedback seriously. Acknowledge it, especially on the internet, where both sides of the discussion can be seen by all. Don’t neglect “invisible” contacts, like emails and web customer service chats. Word of mouth is still a powerful marketing tool, and news will spread for good or ill about your interactions.

Building customer loyalty takes work, but it’s not as hard as we sometimes make it. Oftentimes, building customer loyalty is as easy as applying simple methods with consistency. Loyalty is the predictable result.

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