Loyalty is a valuable concept in business. It can be defined as an individual's commitment to a particular company or organization. Many companies use loyalty as a marketing tool to drive sales or attract new customers.

Still not convinced?

• 82% of companies believe that customer retention is cheaper than acquisition
• 77 percent of consumers admit to holding relationships with specific brands for over ten years
• 75 percent of loyal customers recommend a company to friends and family

It's no secret that customers are essential to the survival of a business. For this reason, companies invest in customer and brand loyalty by creating valuable products and services and improving customer service.

Learn how customer and brand loyalty differ to know what you should nurture in our article.

Brand Loyalty vs. Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty and brand loyalty are essential for building a long-lasting bond with consumers. The main difference between brand loyalty and customer loyalty is that brand loyalty deals more with the tendency of customers to continue buying products or services from a brand that they already know and trust.

On the other hand, customer loyalty refers to the tendency of customers to continue buying products or services from a brand that they have no personal connection with. Here's a more detailed explanation:

Customer Loyalty Definition

Customer loyalty measures customers' willingness to continue doing business with your company. It also estimates how satisfied your customers are with your product or services and how likely they are to recommend your business to others.

Take an example:

A recent survey by PCMag showed that over 91% of iPhone users intend to keep using iPhones.

Customer loyalty stretches beyond keeping your customers satisfied with your products and services. Customer loyalty goes a step in turning your customer into a brand advocate. But that's not all. Here are other benefits of customer loyalty:

• Better customer retention
• More customer referrals (Customers spread the word about your company)
• Sincere reviews of your products or services

What Is Brand Loyalty?

Why are people loyal to brands? First of all, building brand loyalty is not just about having a great product or service; it also involves building trust with your customers. It means that you need to ensure that your customers feel like they can trust you with their information and money.

Brand loyalty is about sticking to a single company rather than switching to another. In practice, brand loyalty occurs when a customer chooses to continue to buy from your company instead of your competitor.

Unlike customer loyalty, brand loyalty has more to do with how consumers perceive your brand than your product prices. Consumers consider several factors before choosing to remain loyal to your brand.

For instance, customers will stick around if your brand is trustworthy and if you offer better services and quality of products than other companies.

Here are a few exceptional brand loyalty examples to inspire your brand and customer loyalty efforts:

Apple Inc.

Apple is an American multinational technology firm specializing in consumer electronics, software, and online services. The company remains one of the tech giants and most trusted publicly-traded companies globally.

How they did it: First of all, many people own an iPhone, iMac, iPod, and other Apple-branded products. The secret to the company's success (despite its ridiculously high prices) remains quality and creative marketing.

Nike Inc.

Nike, Inc. is an American multinational corporation specializing in sports gear. Today, the company enjoys a global net income of $5.7 billion.

How they did it: The sports brand created a bond with customers by engaging them in co-designing clothes, customizing shoes, etc. Because customers have the freedom to tailor clothes or shoes to their taste, they're likely to return.

The Coca-Cola Company

The Coca-Cola Company is an American beverage company founded in 1892. Today the company has over 200 countries consuming its products.

It's no surprise that Coca-Cola ingredients differ in countries. Despite the growing concern about sugar consumption and health, the company remained dominant in the industry.

How they did it: The iconic brand leveraged connecting Coke to the good old days, engaging in community service, and modifying Coke diets to fit consumer needs. This alone gives customers a better feel when consuming the products.

Maintaining Customer Loyalty and Brand Loyalty

Loyalty is all about building a solid relationship with your customers, and that starts with understanding your target market. Once you have this information, it's easy to build a loyal customer base by targeting your audience with whatever products and services they need and strengthening the relationships with excellent customer service based on trust.

So, what are some tips for building loyalty in your business?

Tips on Customer Loyalty

• Offer Incentives

Customer loyalty in marketing demands that a brand shifts its focus to delivering top-notch value to its customers. It could be in the form of discounts, customized offers, and maintaining lower prices.

Using a low or no-cost incentive in your marketing campaigns grabs customers' attention and locks them on to your products and services.

• Partner With Another Company

Valuable partnerships with other businesses can be a valuable asset for your business. For example, if you provide tailoring services, partner with a local fabric store and have them place your company's banner in a visible location within their premises for their customers to see.

In return, you could buy your fabrics from your partner or display their banner in your store.

• Focus More on Customer Engagement

Social media is your best friend when it comes to customer engagement. What's better than talking to your customers where they hang out the most? With different social media channels, you can engage with your customers, hear their opinions about your products and services, and even create a small community for communication.

Customer engagement helps build and maintain strong bonds with your customers. It keeps you closer to your customers and enables you to develop products and services that serve them better.

Tips To Maintain Brand Loyalty

Watching your competitor's every move is not enough to keep your customers close. To build brand loyalty, you must always think about keeping your customers happy and making them feel like they are part of your family.

Here are a few tips to kickstart your journey:

• Provide Remarkable Customer Service for Brand Loyalty

Poor customer service is one of the biggest reasons customers switch to a new brand. For this reason, you should focus on providing stellar customer service regardless of the nature of your products or services.

Listen to customer complaints on your website and social media and respond by improving your product or service. To enhance the customer experience online, you can leverage digital tools such as Visual Interactive Voice Response (VIVR) and chatbots to reduce the workload of the customer support team.

• Be Consistent In Offering Top Quality Products and Services

All-round consistency is an essential element in boosting brand loyalty. Top-quality products and services are a good gesture that your brand values its customers and that there's no better place to be than with you.

It is what makes customers loyal to a brand by helping them create a particular perception of your brand.

Universal Tips on How to Boost Customer Loyalty and Brand Loyalty

When building a relationship with your customers, it is important to understand what they want, but it will also be necessary to know how they want it. You can never assume that what works for one customer will work for another.

That said, here are a few ways to boost customer loyalty and brand loyalty:

Work on Responsiveness

No one loves to wait on hold when they need urgent answers or solutions to their problems. So if you want loyal customers, ensure you provide them with the swift and steady attention they need.

Work on improving your response time to avoid keeping customers on hold when they call to make complaints, order a product, enquire about your service, etc. Leverage whatever channels you can to communicate with customers and provide timely support.

Communicate Effectively With Automation Software

To enhance customer loyalty in marketing, you have to communicate with your customers across multiple channels. Since you won't be able to ensure such reach manually, we recommend using automation software like Inkit. Inkit reach enablement platform provides functionality to deliver automated offline mail communications and generate custom documents for online interactions. Start using it for free to optimize customers' communications and win their loyalty.

Make Every Process Frictionless

Most customers won't settle for less if other companies in the market can satisfy their needs. Consumers in a fast-changing world need everything done in no time, from service delivery to customer service and payments.

Making everything easily accessible - from services or products to customer support - can boost your customers' loyalty.

Use Influencers to Promote your Brand

The power of social media influencer marketing should not be underrated when planning to boost brand loyalty. People are more likely to trust a company when it is recommended to solve a problem than if they had to discover it themselves. So having someone with many social media followers who recommends or talks about your brand will fetch your brand more attention.

You can consider using celebrities, your customers, or both. But celebrities are not always the best bet because they are high-priced.

Build an Online Community

The internet and social media have become an asset we can't do without in modern business. Social media can serve as an extension of your online community – a perfect place to turn a stranger into a loyal customer.

Because today, most consumers prefer to buy online, creating an online community for your brand is no longer a choice - it's a necessity.

All in all, customer and brand loyalty are two sides of the same coin. Customers often make their decision on the product based on their perception of your brand and what other customers say about it. If you want your clients to be happy with your products and services, you should keep them satisfied by all means.

Conclusion

Building your customer and brand loyalty relies on your ability to ensure your customers come back to buy from you. It may cost a lot of time and resources to keep your customers close. However, the results are worth the investment.

Besides, you can optimize customer communications with reach enablement software to run them automatically. Automation will free your marketing and sales teams from routine tasks.