How to gain customer loyalty. [8 easy ways + case study]

Customers rarely would walk up to you to make a deal because they like your face. Knowing how to attract loyal customers is important. Gaining Customer loyalty can be quick and easy if you become deliberate about it.  The following are 7 vital steps to attract loyal customers.

1. Awareness:

customer loyalty starts by gaining the customer first to purchase your products or services but no one buys a product they don’t know of its existence. Whether you’re offering services or products, bring it to the notice of your target markets. Do you ever wonder why companies sponsor events just to have their logo associated with that event with no call to action?

Awareness! That’s what you call ads with no call to action.

This is one reason you should have a launch with each new product/service. You can check out how to have a great product launch. With every new release of Apple iOS phones, they create massive awareness, build expectations that the market already becomes hungry for the product before its release date. This is the power of awareness. One way is to do a great launch

2. Interest:

In the game to gain customer loyalty, awareness isn’t enough. In fact, the goal of awareness isn’t just to announce your coming but also to stir up interest in what you’re offering. If you don’t capture interest, then they consider you a disturbance whenever your ads pop out.

One way to gain customer loyalty is to wow the market, know what value means to them, and build your product around it while exceeding their expectations. More than Apple, Samsung and notable brands thinking their customer are always right, it’s actually their customers who think they (the companies) are always right. Why? They raise the standard before the customers realize it. They lead the market.

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Why you’re still thinking of and being wowed by the recent release, they’ve added more wowing features and launch the next mind-blowing innovation, when you lead the customers, they will follow, this is the genesis of gaining customer loyalty. This keeps the market anticipating and guessing the next big release. People want their expectations to be exceeded. Simply wow them and of course live up to it. This is why gaining trust in business should be important to you. If you do this well, you can get people so hungry that they can pay in advance before the release date.

In 2017 when TStv created awareness in Nigeria, What glued people’s attention to them was their “too good to be true” offers and features that were incomparable to that of their competitors like DStv, CTL, and GoTv to the point that the government gave them 3yrs tax break. These features became the talk of the day so much that everyone anticipated their launch, They did not only gain customer loyalty, they also gain the loyalty of the government. However, other factors brought them down which included the inability to get view permission to some in-demand channels.

3. Understanding:

Do the intending users understand the product? How it will be of benefit to them must be clear to them. Communicate the value strong enough that intending users begin to think in terms of the cost of not having the product in a way that it out-weights the cost of having the product. Understanding is key to gaining customer loyalty

4. Engagement:

Engage these potential clients whom you’ve ceased their interest. Become the talk of the day on social media even if you don’t make it to the news headlines. Fashion designers give out their designs to celebrity to wear to major events. It’s all in these steps, awareness is created, it ceases interest, they understand the value, engagement on various platforms start out and not long they would want to try it out. Gaining customer loyalty goes beyond one-time purchase into multiple purchases until they become an advocate for your product. Engage the public so much that even people who have not used your products can be infected to advocate and evangelize your product.

5. Trial:

This is how the cycle of customer loyalty forms. E.g, A laundryman who volunteers to keep your wardrobe clean does this for 3weeks or more for free. Then adds a commensurate charge to his service. It’s harder for you to fall back to doing your laundry yourself than paying him. The goal is to lure people into getting addicted or create a habit around the value of the services/products you offer not on the service/product itself. At this point, they are not only aware or interested, they understand the value, tasted it, and already addicted to the value.

However, Trial won’t always ensure sales. It works mainly for products paid for on a subscription basis. The other types of payment methods, you can focus on giving added value services like buy one and get some other products free. Then go ahead to sales than opting for trial.

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6. Purchase:

What people get free, they don’t really account for the value. But once they start paying for it, they really want to ensure they get the best of value out of it. Someone who doesn’t pay for water. For example, wouldn’t be conscious of the usage but once payment is attached will forgo some usage of the same water. Starts to restrict the dog from going to dirty places so as to minimize unnecessary regular bath to save cost. If each time a customer thinks of saving cost and your service or product is forgone then your value isn’t strong enough to keep such customer. The point is this, let the value be so strong to keep them addicted. Customer loyalty is almost impossible without a strong value proposition.

7. Repeated purchase.

Loyal customers are ones that keep coming back to patronize your products and services. However, this is not the ultimate goal until you get them to the point where they become your product advocates. They become the free marketers that you don’t pay. This is where 80% of the goodwill comes from.
No marketer is as good as a satisfied customer. This is the point you can boldly say you have gained customer loyalty.