Connect with us

MARKETING

How to Build Customer Loyalty in 8 Steps

Published

on

How to Build Customer Loyalty in 8 Steps

Customer loyalty is an important factor in any business’s growth. It involves keeping customer engagement high, creating a positive customer experience, and encouraging customer retention. Loyal customers will help to create word-of-mouth exposure, increase customer referrals, and promote repeat spending.

Building customer loyalty should be a key goal for any business that wants to maximize its success for long-term growth. Achieving customer loyalty can be done through small steps such as offering rewards or discounts for loyal customers, providing excellent customer service, and personalizing customer interactions.

Eight steps to building a customer loyalty program

Hire good employees

Building a customer loyalty program can be an effective way to grow your business, but only with the right employees who understand customer service. When it comes to hiring staff to boost customer loyalty, it’s important to look for employees with strong customer service skills, like active listening and problem-solving capabilities. These individuals should also be able to recognize customer needs as quickly as possible and look for creative solutions that help build customer trust.

Furthermore, you should make sure your customer loyalty team members have excellent people skills and know how to maintain a pleasant and inviting atmosphere by having upbeat attitudes and showing genuine enthusiasm while engaging customers. By doing so, you will ensure you have the right talent in place to make your customer loyalty program both successful and rewarding. If your company chooses a hybrid workspace, it can bring challenges as well, so check whether your employees have all resources to increase customer loyalty.  

Identify loyal customers

Identifying loyal customers to build a successful customer loyalty program starts with customer data analytics, as customer data can provide insight into customer behavior, preferences and shopping habits. Through customer data analytics, businesses can create marketing campaigns that target the most frequent and highest-spending customers, offering them special rewards or discounts for their loyalty. This way, not only can you get higher conversion rates, but you also increase sales too.

Advertisement

Additionally, businesses should strive for customer satisfaction in order to identify who their most loyal customers are; customer feedback surveys on products and services, allowing customers to provide honest answers anonymously, can be an effective tool in learning which customers will remain loyal even through difficult times or changes.

Research customer needs and wants

Building customer loyalty through successful customer loyalty programs is key to developing any modern business. To do so, thorough research into customer needs and wants must be conducted. In addition to this, you can formulate a lead generation strategy that will help you create campaigns that target customers’ needs.

Companies should consider surveys, customer feedback, and customer service records when determining how to improve customer loyalty. Additionally, interviews with customers and focus groups can provide invaluable insight into not only customer behavior but what customers want from their customer experience. Building customer loyalty requires an understanding of individual customer needs, wants, and values; research provides the basis for this development.  

Find ways to incentivize customer behavior

A customer loyalty program is only as successful as the customer engagement and activity that it inspires, so providing incentives to customers who regularly interact with or purchase from your business is essential. Doing so can be as simple as offering discounts or special offers on products related to those they have already purchased or sending out bonus points for referrals.

Keeping customer activity fresh and creative by introducing new incentives can often help ensure customer loyalty over time. Incentivizing customer behavior will make them feel valued while also sparking excitement and enthusiasm each time they engage with your brand. When your online school offers courses on how to become an air hostess, connect with your students, and encourage them to share their success stories and give rewards.

Provide specific rewards for customer loyalty

Organizations that wish to create a customer loyalty program should recognize the importance of providing specific rewards for customer loyalty. In order to incentivize and reward customer loyalty, companies should consider implementing programs that provide considerable discounts on goods or services, exclusive access to products before they go public, or other tangible benefits. Consumers will be more likely to engage in loyalty programs with clear, achievable outcomes that preserve their customer status and offer unique opportunities they would not normally experience elsewhere. Reward customers who are using your digital learning platforms by offering discounts for a premium plan for your educational solution.

Advertisement

Train Employees Constantly

Companies can start by recruiting a customer loyalty team collected of customer-service-oriented individuals who have in-depth training in customer management philosophies and techniques.

The team should regularly conduct refresher courses for other employees to make sure everyone understands the goals of the customer loyalty program and how those goals should be met. Additionally, employees should receive training on customer service protocols, such as how to handle customer feedback quickly and courteously, using their knowledge of customer loyalty principles to address customer complaints with tact and empathy. When promoting your healthcare chatbot, ensure that your employees are equipped to market it in a perfect way.

Be responsive

Responding promptly and appropriately to customer inquiries, feedback, and questions paves the way for customers to trust the brand and its customer loyalty program. Companies should make sure customer service representatives are equipped with the right tools to quickly provide customer support, as well as create personalized experiences that encourage customers to come back often. Building customer loyalty is an essential step to grow your audienceans the basis for a business’s long-term success, and staying on top of customer responsiveness can help make it happen.

Brand Your Loyalty Program

Establishing customer loyalty is essential for any business. One method to accomplish this is to build a loyalty program that rewards customers and encourages them to keep returning. Branding your loyalty program is key to gaining customer trust and creating long-term customer relationships. Using customer feedback, ask yourself questions such as how could you make it smoother for customers to benefit from the program while holding customer data securely?

Put thought into the design features such as graphics, customer incentives, and customer communication channels so customer loyalty will build over time. With thoughtful planning and attention to customer service standards, your customer loyalty program will lead to success.

Conclusion

Customer loyalty is crucial for the success of any business, but fostering it can be a challenge. Organizations should, where possible, reward customer loyalty in order to reap the rewards long-term. Ultimately customer loyalty is essential to retain customers and grow the customer base. It’s not only important for customer satisfaction, but it also helps increase customer retention, which enables businesses to drive revenue growth and build sustained customer satisfaction.

Advertisement

Dedicating time and effort to genuinely connect with your customers on this level will go a long way in increasing customer loyalty over time. By having a well-thought-out strategy and dedication, businesses can ensure they build lasting relationships with their core customer base, which will keep them coming back more often and ultimately boost business profits in the future.

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS