When most people buy from the same store or buy the same brand over and over again, it’s less about customer loyalty than familiarity. You can spend two seconds grabbing the same peanut butter you always get or five minutes agonizing over whether you should get another brand.
When a customer forms an emotional bond with a store, brand, or product, though, that changes the game. No brand excels at this more than Apple, which boasts over 90 percent customer loyalty with the iPhone.
That raises the question, “Why is customer loyalty important?” Keep reading a find out why some businesses work so hard to boost customer loyalty.
Why is Customer Loyalty Important?
There are several practical concerns that highly the importance of customer loyalty. Let’s say that you’ve been in business for a few years and want to do some forecasting.
You can do some general forecasting based on aggregate numbers. You can do much more specific forecasting if you enjoy high customer loyalty. If half of your customers are the same as they were last year and the year before, you can expect that your revenue from those customers will remain largely unchanged.
Strong customer loyalty also means you can revisit your marketing spend. Current customers don’t need a lot of marketing from you. If you’re not looking for an influx of new customers, you can trim or redirect that marketing budget.
Benefits of Customer Loyalty
There are many benefits of customer loyalty. You see much higher customer retention with strong customer loyalty, for one.
Those customers often act as your word-of-mouth advocates with friends and family, which can help push sales and customer acquisition. You see a lot more repeat business from loyal customers. You also enjoy more chances for upselling and cross-selling products among the core loyalists, so to speak.
Maintaining Customer Loyalty
You probably realize by now why maintaining customer loyalty important. If that loyalty slips away, so do all of the benefits that you get from that loyalty. So, how do you maintain it?
You can cater to those customers a little with mail pieces that offer personalized printing and special customer loyalty discounts or deals.
You must also maintain whatever created that customer loyalty in the first place. If you built that loyalty on product excellence, you can’t let your standards slip. That means you can’t replace quality parts with cheaper ones as a cost-cutting measure.
Customer Loyalty and You
Why is customer loyalty important? The reasons go on and on.
Loyal customers buy your products. They promote your products to friends and family. Then, they come back and do it all over again with your new products.
A large base of loyal customers lets you make more accurate forecasts and trim marketing costs. The trick is that you can’t let go of whatever built that loyalty. If you’re not sure what prompts that loyalty, find out and commit to that.
Looking for more business management tips? Check out the articles in our Lifestyle section.