Connect with your customers meaningfully if you want to keep them coming back. Brands and businesses can build their customer loyalty through social media.
Through humour, images, and videos, you can show your unique brand personality to customers to make them feel connected to your brand.
The extent to which websites and social media platforms can promote products and services is undeniable. However, using these channels correctly can also help strengthen another aspect of a business: customer loyalty.
By contrast with other approaches, social media allows for personal connections to be made between you and each of your customers – act as a hotline between each of them. A massive opportunity to build customer loyalty is being lost if you ignore social media platforms and fail to leverage them.
What is Customer Loyalty?
An analysis by Forbes found that 62% of millennials say brands are more likely to gain their loyalty if they engage with them on social media. The platforms they use to communicate with you are important to your customers.
Consumers who are loyal to a brand will repeatedly buy the product even when they have other alternatives. Brand loyalty is nurtured through marketing campaigns. When consumer trends change, brand loyalty can evaporate, but not for the product.
Interesting Ways to Use Social Media To Boost Customer Loyalty
To ensure you maintain a commendable percentage in retaining customers, some of the best practices you should follow include:
Feedback from Positive Customers
It’s important not to keep good feedback a secret from your customers. Your social media accounts can be used to post the input (with the customer’s permission, of course).
Positivity will likely attract new customers and provide your current customers with additional reasons to trust you. People tend to follow the crowd due to social proof, a psychological phenomenon. It means that people value the opinions of other customers highly in the context of shopping.
Positive reviews can be requested directly. Respond to or send a direct message to customers who leave positive comments about your business on your social media page and ask them to share their opinion in a review. After that, social media will allow you to share the review.
Share User-Generated Content
Sharing user-generated content (UGC) is another way to build brand loyalty through social proof. A shopping video, photo, or piece of content that a shopper creates about using a brand’s product is an example of UGC. Since shoppers created this content, not by the brand, it builds trust among shoppers.
Make it easier to find UGC on your page by inviting users to tag your brand and use branded hashtags (with the creator’s permission, obviously!). You’ll encourage shoppers to share UGC if you frequently share their content with your fans.
Keep Customers in the Loop
By being transparent about your business’s practices, you can encourage a positive customer-brand relationship. Since 63% of customers prefer brands that are honest and transparent, make your fans feel like a part of the organization.
You can provide a behind-the-scenes look at your company on your social media channels. Videos of your products, employee interviews, photos of your office space, and company events can be posted here.
Be Responsive
Social platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Twitter make it easy for customers to contact businesses with questions and comments. It’s important to engage with as many customers as possible, even if you can’t respond to everyone.
Why? You build brand loyalty by being responsive to customer needs. A recent survey found that 72% of millennials said that a brand that responded to them would be more loyal. Brand loyalty can be decreased as well if a brand is unresponsive: 15 per cent of Twitter users will unfollow a brand that does not engage with them.
Establish Influencer Partnership
Influencers are preferred over brands to get product information from social media users. Oftentimes, influencers are looked to for advice on products and brands. Influencers whose followers love your brand are more likely to start loving your products, too.
It is crucial to identify influencers that apply to your brand and image, such as those who are popular with your audience or specialized in your industry. Several makeup companies are interested in partnering with beauty influencers, for instance.
Brand Collabs Manager is one tool you can use to find influencers who might review your products or collaborate with your brand.
Use Dynamic Ads
It takes time for a brand to build loyalty. Having customers who are loyal to your brand results from their use of your products. By showing users items they have previously viewed or similar items, dynamic ads encourage returning users to make a purchase.
If you connect your Facebook and Instagram product catalogues, you can set up dynamic ads on those platforms. Based on a previous customer’s site behaviour, Facebook’s algorithm will choose relevant products to show the customer once the ad template is created.
According to Facebook’s data, the user is interested in handbags, which is why it displays eBay handbag options along with the current Facebook product options. Customers’ interest is rekindled by these promotions by allowing them to see products they like.
Retarget Users with Custom Audiences
By retargeting, you can keep your business at the top of users’ minds once they’ve become familiar with your brand. Ads showing up on a person’s screen only when that person has asked about your business fall under retargeting.
Through retargeting, you can create an incentive for customers who already know your brand to return to your store. With retargeting ads, you could offer an exclusive discount on a product that has recently been viewed. If the shopper has an item in their shopping cart, you may use retargeting to urge them to buy it at a lower price.
Building a customized audience for your ad campaign allows you to select exactly who will see these ads. A custom audience might be edited to target users who have interacted with your ads previously.
Conclusion
Whether you’re replying to comments in a discussion thread or offering a discount to repeat customers, social media allows you to connect with customers. These eight strategies can help your company build brand loyalty across all its social media platforms.
It is important to remember, however, that building brand loyalty takes time. To learn what your customers prefer, combine these strategies to discover the most effective ones, then refine your approach. As you experiment on your social media platforms over time, engagement will increase.
