5 Customer Loyalty Strategies For Modern Businesses in the 21st Century

Customer loyalty is one of the most important development goals that every business should be working on. It carries more value than customer acquisition but costs less no matter what method is used for achieving such. But with the several methods that exist which different blogs and websites recommend, how can you pick the ones that are really effective?

Customers tend to purchase your product or use the service that you’re offering for several reasons. One factor can be the cheaper pricing that you offer or the rewards that you give to those who make repeat purchases. Other reasons may include the better quality of your product or service or simply the care that they feel whenever they come in contact with your customer service team.

No matter what their reasons are, your ultimate goal should be making loyal customers, those who will stay with you even to the very end, those who will be willing to help in promoting your brand and even rise in defense of it in times of trouble. How can you ensure customer loyalty for your business and what are the strategies that you can employ to achieve it? We’re going to tackle that in this article so read on to learn the details.

Loyal Customers Are Productive Customers

Customers who turned into loyal ones have continually shown to provide great advantage for every business. Studies show that novice customers who have been referred by your most loyal ones will tend to do purchase again and have higher chance of turning into loyal customers themselves.

Now imagine that enormous advantage which you get from one customer multiplied into hundreds or even thousands of loyal customers who are ready to produce those same results? That’s big growth and sure development right within your reach. But what are the most effective customer loyalty strategies for the modern business of the 21st century, we have handpicked 5 of the best ones and listed them below for you to enjoy and learn from.

1. Store Redeemable Rewards

Gone are the days of discounts and vouchers that are only valid for one single shop. Successful brands stay successful and gain more loyal customers by offering rewards that can be redeemed from stores other than the issuer of the reward. Companies like the big telecommunication businesses offer rewards for every customer purchase of their prepaid load products or patronizing any postpaid offer. These rewards accumulate and become usable and redeemable as vouchers that can be used to purchase food items from fast food chains or discount vouchers from the most popular brands.

Having this kind of rewards program will not only encourage more purchase but also ensure customers stay with your brand and continue doing business with you possibly until the end if not forever. You can start offering this rewards strategy in your business. It may not be as big as what the giant businesses have to offer their customers but at least get something started. Everything starts small anyway and what matters most is you’re getting something started today.

2. Referral Commissions

Referral commissions have long been an effective customer loyalty strategy and it continues to be an efficient tool even through the 21st century. You surely have seen this before and certainly know how it works. Set fair commission rates and offer raises as your loyal customers grow from lower tier referral rate up to the higher ranks until they eventually become full-fledged brand loyalists. Offering commissions create the impression that your business is ready to share success with partners who share the load of doing promotional and advertising efforts.

What’s great about this is that your agents are not actors alone but real people who have first-hand experience of using your brand and knows how well it works. This means that whatever they speak is something that conveys authority and authenticity. But referral commissions don’t work for every type of business so be sure to study if this strategy will work for your brand or you need the other strategies in this list instead.

3. Brand or Product Ambassadorship

Referral strategies work on a smaller scale but it you need to reach a greater number of prospective customers and make sure your message is head across different channels where these prospective customers may be spending most of their time in they you need to enlist the help of ambassadors. These are influencers who are in-line with your product’s industry or overall use and have existing channels with thousands of followers that could possibly be interested with your product.

Influencers vary from content creators to bloggers, vloggers, youtubers, professionals, hobbyists, enthusiasts and geeks who have established following in different social media and content streaming platforms. Tapping with their talent means reaching a targeted audience who will easily become loyal to your brand so definitely explore this strategy especially in our modern time where everything is made available over the Internet.

4. Sponsorship Offers

Once loyal customers become your partners in promotion and advertising your brand, you can encourage loyalty among them even more by offering some of the products that they promote for free and even offer discounts for any purchase that their friends or relatives do from your shop. Sponsorship is one effective way of ensuring that your ambassadors and brand influencers remain loyal to your business and its loyalty-inducing effects will increase if you couple it with commissions and other enticing rewards like free access to proprietary materials, free trainings, webinars, and many others.

5. Priority Customer Support and Assistance

Loyal customers have become who they are today because they were able to deal with product or business-related issues without leaving any damage or affecting your overall business reputation. Some have even ignored such issues because they know that they normally happen and their passion for your brand weighs heavier than all those issues combined.

To encourage brand loyalty and make your top customers happy all the time, you can start offering priority customer service for every single one of them. This not only shows how thankful you are for their loyalty to your brand but also makes your top customers love you even more just by the feeling of special care that you show by employing such strategy.

An Often Ignored Business Growth Strategy

Most business owners think that customer acquisition is the only efficient way in growing a business but the truth is it’s not. Aside from being too expensive, the old way of “Spray and Pray” public advertising no longer works in our modern and more personalized way of life. People now have the power to choose what they want to watch and even customize products to their own liking so as a business, you also need to adapt to such changes to ensure your brand stays relevant today and in the years to come.

Building up on the strategies that we’ve listed above is a good start and as you go, find some opportunities for innovation which will make you stand out from the competition. Customer loyalty is definitely an effective tool for bringing your business towards the modern era so work on it before it’s too late. Remember, customers also undergo a set lifecycle. Your mission is to add that “Customer Loyalty” level as the final stage and once you do, your business will be on its sure way to growth and overall success.

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