Brand loyalty is what makes the effort of building and moderating an online or brand community so important. Member-to-member interaction, social proof, and the quality content provided within the groups inspire them to stay around and seek more.
These relationships also fuel them to share your communities or become brand advocates. Thus, saving you even more money while also increasing your potential to reach more people.
In other words, brand loyalty is essential to not only solidify current success but future success too. To grow a profitable and sustainable business, building a branded community is essential.
The following are five important ways communities increase brand loyalty:
Business-To-Member Communication
Communicating with your customers directly is an amazing invention of modern times. In the old days, you had to advertise on TV, radio, or various print means and wait to see what happened. So, it could be hard to tell if it worked for the reasons you think it did.
Now you can simply tell your members directly about your offers without the go-between. You can see when they view a message or respond to it and even see them talking to their friends in the group. But most of all, getting to send them a message right now that they’re going to get directly from you is an amazing thing and will keep you at the top of their mind.
Valuable and Engaging Content
It’s very important to understand that publishing anything just to put it in your community is not the goal. You want the content you publish and share with them to be valuable and engaging. You want them to look forward to seeing the latest content you share every day.
You want them to wait for it, excited for it to appear. However, that will only happen if you take the time to create desirable content based on what you know about them and how it relates to their need to use your solutions and products.
Member-To-Member Communication
This is one of the most important parts of building a community that will change everything for your business. Once your members start talking to each other about their lives, and your products and services, and how they help or don’t help, you’re going to end up getting the most invaluable information ever that will help you improve your products and make them think you’re a mind reader.
Special Offers or Member Discounts
If you promote outside your membership group or community, a terrific way to make the members feel special is to offer them some form of reward or a loyalty program. So many big businesses don’t understand how much it harms their relationship with their customer when they offer the new deals only to their new customers. Offer your members things you don’t offer anyone else because they are important.
Superior Customer Experience and Service
When you engage and spend time with your community every day, you provide customer care directly. As a result, they will perceive their customer service as better because they feel heard.
The more you nurture your customers and seek a relationship with them, the more likely they will become loyal customers or followers of your brand. Loyal customers advocate for your business and ensure the success of your brand now and in the future. Work always to keep your community engaged, be involved in the process, ask for feedback and reward them for improving your brand loyalty.
Six Ways to Use Communities to Promote Your Products