How To Achieve Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is essential for success of any brand (product/service), without customer loyalty a brand stands no chance whatsoever to be successful, to achieve the intended goals/objectives. 

Therefore it is extremely important for Marketing Managers/Entrepreneurs to achieve customer loyalty no matter what the cost is, because if they (customers) don’t like what you offer, they won’t come for it, they won’t want to buy it for good (loyalty) or at least for a good amount of time. 

And we all know that quality or right product/service is the first step toward customer loyalty but yet most of the marketing Managers/Entrepreneurs even after having quality product/service are in no position to achieve customer loyalty and that’s the purpose of this article, to help Marketing Managers, Entrepreneurs to understand what is customer loyalty and how can it be achieved.  

Let’s start with loyalty

What is Loyalty ?

Loyalty a word that means being loyal, faithful to something (cause, person, ideal etc). In other words loyalty is a constant behavior of being loyal, faithful to something.

So we can say that customer loyalty is a constant behavior of a customer towards a particular brand (product/service).

Achieving Constant Behavior

Now this is what most businesses strive for, to achieve a constant behavior from their target customers that results in sales, revenues etc for years.

Okay Got It Next ?!

Okay, now let’s understand what results in such behavior, but first let’s understand the term behavior.

Two Things

Any type of behavior is a product or result of two things.

1.      Emotions

2.      Cognition (rationalizing, reasoning, intellectual judgments)

Just think about it, is there anything else other than the above two that result in a certain behavior, No!!, Right?!

Well absolutely there are none, so whatever behavior you have right now (for instance hating or liking my website ;p) is either because you like me (emotional which I am sure you don’t ;p) or that I present reasonable/unreasonable stuff over here.

Okay What’s Next ?!

What marketing Managers/Entrepreneurs got to do next is to achieve emotional and cognitive fit of their brand with their target customers. In other words achieving a fit between two things

1.      What target customers consider or expect emotionally and rationally when it comes to your brand (product/service)

2.      And your brand fulfilling those considerations or expectations (emotional and rational)

And this is something that is part of the marketing Manager job description, as he/she is a liaison between product/service and customer ⁽¹⁾.

How to do it ?

Now how to do it is a bit long, first you have to do market research and identify what your target market considers/expects emotionally and rationally when it comes to your product/service or similar products/services.

I have constantly mentioned (with references) about target market research in my other posts so I won’t go there, but let me give you just a brief summary of all that. Begin with traditional market research (qualitative and quantitative), as both of these methods have been proven to provide precise information, data on market structures, trends, customer behavior, attitude etc.

Use different research methods (qualitative and quantitative) in such a way that weaknesses or short comings of one research method are covered by strengths of other and vice versa.

And to refine and get even better picture it is recommended to utilize web and internet research methods, as it has been proven to help you gain insights about those areas where traditional market research (qualitative and quantitative) wasn’t able to give clear picture or useful insights.

After Research

Once you get done with target research, then the next step is to devise marketing strategy that promotes your brand (product/service) through all customer touch points according to those (target market) expectations (emotional and rational).

Once done effectively, such a strategy would persuade your target market/customers to act in a particular way (go for your product/service) whenever a particular situation or need arises.

And that means a constant behavior or constant loyalty from your target customers with your product/service.

That’s it, speak your mind, share your ideas, how can we make this approach more comprehensive and more effective, what would you like to add ?! :) Comment box is just under!

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References:

1.      Moorman, C. and Rust, R.T. (1999), “The role of marketing”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 63, pp. 180-97 (special Issue).