Want brand success? Make them love you

Posted on 5th Dec 2011 by Scott Goodson in Tips and Tricks

Forbes recently revealed its Brand Keys Loyalty Leaders 2011, something that independently measures brand loyalty to see which products consumers seem to love the most.

Top of the list was Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Samsung followed by Zappos, Hyundai and Kindle – brands that we’re all familiar with and many of us use on a daily basis. Interestingly, technology brands accounted for 20 per cent of the top 50 while beauty made up over a third of the list.

So how did they do it? How have these brands won us over? Why have we fallen in love with them? Especially during an economic downturn when we’re spending less and saving more?

Well, everyone knows that brand loyalty is emotional. It’s about making human connections with your customers, creating an almost evangelical love affair. People who love brands tend to love them for life, and they’ll never go elsewhere.

If you’re keen to win some of that crucial love yourself, here are our top tips on how to build brand loyalty and make people love you.

Getting Personal

Any clever marketing professional will tell you – the days of the one-way advertising message is over. Today, it’s about ‘brand experience’ and adding that personal touch to everything you do. It’s about making people feel special and as though they have an emotional connection with you.

It goes without saying, if you want to build brand loyalty you have to get personal. And you can do that by having an appropriate online presence. Everything from your Twitter profile and what you tweet about to the way you communicate with your customers via the web, it’s all about building relationships.

You can’t create human connections if you’re not being ‘human’, so ditch the corporate, robotic profile and instead embrace the notion of ‘being real’. Go on, you won’t regret it.

Building Trust

Once you’ve grabbed people’s attention and got them interested, you have to build trust. All good relationships are built on trust and the rules are no different with brand loyalty. This means you have to add value and earn people’s respect. But if you mess up? You say sorry and you mean it.

Just remember, it’s no good creating relationships that are based on shallow experiences. You have to be someone people can identify with on every single level. Because believe me, people will see through any deception or fake offering.

Get Interactive

The digital revolution means that we’re able to communicate directly with our customers, more than ever before. Thanks to social media, we can talk in real-time via things like Twitter and Facebook and, more importantly, we can add personality to brands.

If you want to build brand loyalty, get people interacting with you via your social media accounts. Join inspiring online communities like Uprising where you can engage with others. Run campaigns that are fun and encourage your marketing message to go viral across the web.

A great example is the ‘Against Dumb’ campaign my agency StrawberryFrog created for Smart USA. We encouraged people to send in pictures of their ‘dumb purchases’ through a ‘Great Dumb Trade-In’ and then invited the community to vote on the best, trading in their own ‘dumb purchase’ for a brand new Smart Car.

Reward Loyal Customers

Now that your customers love you, it’s time to keep their loyalty safe by rewarding them. Because if your customers are loyal to your brand, then it’s only fair you offer some loyalty back.

Let’s face it! Any strong relationship is built on that give-and-take process, so make sure you reward your own loyal customers.

This doesn’t just mean introducing a loyalty scheme, providing discounts to customers who spend the most with you. In today’s digital world it means showing customers that you value their loyalty and love. Because if you don’t, they’ll simply go elsewhere.

Go The Extra Mile

Finally, if you want people to really love your brand – go that extra mile and truly care about your products and services. Show passion in everything you do, communicate and put out there.

Care about customer service and improving your offering all the time. Listen to what your customers are saying and thank them for their valued input. Bottom line… if you care about your brand… if you really love it and it’s your entire world - others will feel the same way too.