Hi. My name's Harry Gardiner, and welcome
to my latest video, building brand loyalty.
Now having a loyal following of customers
is incredibly important for business success.
To start off with that, you're going to need
to build and cultivate a community of fans
and followers. This video will hopefully explain
how you can do that in a few ways and how
you can encourage that community to keep following
you and earn their trust.
Let's start off with telling a story. If you
tell a story with your brand, you can keep
your brand message consistent and make the
business as a whole relatable. Take Netflix
for example. Reed Hastings, CEO and co-founder,
once said that the reason he came up with
Netflix is because he had a DVD with a late
fee that he didn't want to pay. Now he invented
an entire business off that one idea, supposedly.
Within that one sentence he's made a multibillion
company very relatable to the average user.
You, too, can make your content relatable
and story driven to help encourage users to
follow along with it.
This will obviously get them connecting further
as well. You can use a variety of different
tools, such as social media, to connect with
your audience and to get one on one with them.
Obviously, if you are using social media,
remember to reply to the good and the bad
comments on social media. Don't just favour
the good ones. Anyone who is a negative is
just a positive in waiting really.
But social media isn't the only way to connect
with your audience. There's plenty of other
ways, including online surveys, offline polls
and focus groups, and customer analysis to
understand what your audience actually want
from your brand and connect with them better.
Once you do understand what they want, you
can start personalising content. Look through
purchase history, look through customer analytics,
and look through how people are treating your
brand to personalise content right there.
I know some brands who do personalisation
really well, include Boots who obviously send
you out personalised rewards from what you've
used on your Boots card. Obviously, O2 on
Twitter and JUST EAT on Twitter as well are
really great with personalising special presents
towards users who shout about the brand.
So don't be afraid to get really personal
with the content. You can either personalise
it on a grander scale and segment your audience
and personalise it to different segments,
or you can go real micro personalisation and
personalise pieces of content or rewards to
one particular person. If you make one person
feel special and they start shouting about
the brand, that's a loyal customer for life
right there.
Once you've got loyal customers, make sure
you stay true to what you've said and the
promises you've made. Don't ever make promises
your brands can't keep. If you do falter on
this, or if you do come across problems or
mistakes, don't just defer back to the standard
terms and conditions robotic brand. Try and
overcompensate and over deliver for the people
who've been let down. You've got to remember
that if you've made a promise, your audience
will expect it of you. So if you can't deliver
on that, do something better. See what you
can do and try and turn all those negative
reactions into a positive situation.
One way to do this is to reward your customers
and to keep people loyal is to consistently
reward those who've been there with you from
the beginning. If you've had people who started
off with your brand and started shouting about
your brand, don't forget about them once you
get bigger. Make sure you consistently reward
them with exclusive discounts and loyalty
schemes so you're not just offering the people
who newly join you but also those who've been
with you for ages.
Finally, testimonials are a great way to gain
brand loyalty from new customers and a great
way to have your old followers show you exactly
what it is they like about your brand. A great
way of getting testimonials is obviously just
to ask for them on site or to use post-purchase
surveys or even email marketing. Another great
way is just to go on social and maybe ask
people what they love about your brand, what
it is that inspires them about your brand,
or even just ask them to shout about how great
something is. There's no harm in asking your
audience to say what they like about your
brand, and obviously that's a great way to
understand it better as well.
These have been a few couple of whistle stop
tour around building brand loyalty, a few
couple of tips for you to understand better.
If you have any more questions or if you'd
like to discuss this further, feel free to
hit me up on Twitter @Koozai_Harry or check
out the blog around this site and the other
videos for more information.
