5 Steps to Cultivate Brand Loyalty

In a time where increasing prices and expensive bills mean many families are struggling to put food on the table, previously loved brands are now being sidelined in favour of cheaper alternatives.

Customers are seeking out cheaper products and with supermarkets driving down prices of brands in order to tackle the cost of living crisis, the obvious solution to gain customer loyalty would be to follow suit. In fact, if a supermarket has anything to do with it, you may well be pressured to drop your prices. But whatever you are selling, driving down prices only leads one way and if we aren’t careful, consistently reduced prices can damage the perceived value of our brand having a detrimental effect long into the future. Not to mention the fact that lower prices only ensure customer loyalty while the prices are low.

So how can we gain customer loyalty without a race to the bottom? For this, we need to cultivate and harness the power of brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty is more important now than ever before.

Where customer loyalty is mostly dependent on low prices, true brand loyalty is the result of a deep emotional connection, where the consumer feels bound to the brand, regardless of cost.

Below we discuss five steps we can take to cultivate brand loyalty and foster the emotional connection that consumers have with our brand, ensuring that our brand comes out of the cost of living crisis stronger than ever.

1. Tell a Unique Brand Story

A unique brand story will set your brand apart from competitors. In communicating a distinct and memorable brand story through your distinctive brand assets, such as the logo, the typography, colour palette, illustration or a combination of those things, you are giving your brand the opportunity to resonate with consumers on an emotional level.

This emotional resonance will enable your brand to be remembered by consumers. When used consistently and with consistent quality products or customer service and a positive brand experience, your brand can start to take up residence in the heart of consumers.

2. Consistent Branding

In using consistent distinctive brand assets in marketing materials and throughout the customer’s brand experience, we can build trust through a strong recognition of the brand. Repetition enhances memory recall, and consistency creates strong repetition. However, we must ensure our assets are unique to our brand to enable this to be most effective. In continuing to build on and tell that unique brand story across all communications, we will ensure emotional resonance at every opportunity. Over time, trust will be built and with trust, the emotional connection between the brand and the consumer will deepen.

3. Consistent and Positive Brand Experience

Along with using distinctive brand assets, it is also imperative that the quality of the product and the quality of the consumer experience remains consistent. It is important that it is consistently good, of course, but also that is in line with consumer expectations and the target price point. This is important to build trust and manage customers expectations in the long term, whilst not arousing suspicion that it may be “too good to be true”. Any time when the brand experience is inconsistent through mis-matched quality product or customer service, will compromise the trust built and compromise the bond between the brand and the consumer.

4. Reward Brand Loyalty

Once they have it, brands can deepen the emotional connection between a consumer and a brand through rewarding brand loyalty. Often this is done through some form of temporary monetary discount, or exclusive deal, for example, a loyalty card where a sixth coffee earns you a seventh free of charge. The temporary reduction of cost does not damage the value of the brand in the same way consistently lowering prices in order to keep up with competitors would do. The positive reinforcement of the consumer’s behaviour adds to the consumer’s positive experience of the brand encouraging a deeper bond.

5. Build a Community

Another way to reward consumer brand loyalty in order to deepen the emotional connection with the brand is to welcome loyal customers into your community. Whilst this may not suit every brand and business, human behaviour is such that we love to feel part of something and by inviting consumers into a club, or community with your brand, product or service at the centre of it, consumers can feel further connected to the brand encouraging brand loyalty. Anything from exclusive memberships, to letting your most loyal consumers have early access to deals or launches, rewarding brand loyalty breeds brand loyalty and a deep emotional connection and encourages a feeling of belonging beyond the product or service.