Chapter 14

Winning Brand Loyalty

In This Chapter

Reaching beyond expectations to create brand loyalists

Igniting customer passion for your brand

Generating buzz and viral marketing for your brand

Creating a brand name, a brand identity, and a brand promise are the beginning steps in the branding process. They’re like the ante you pay to play in the high-stakes branding arena. They’re the down payment required to rise above the noisy floor of me-too offerings and to win a chance at a preferred place in customers’ hearts and minds, where great brands live and thrive.

But you can’t just register a terrific brand name, design an award-winning logo, craft a great brand promise, and then sit back and wait for the magic to happen. Sorry, but even the greatest brand framework, of and by itself, isn’t enough to build a great brand success story. Even high market awareness and strong sales aren’t enough.

The highest level of brand success requires one more essential ingredient: loyal customers with brand passion so powerful that their association with the brand becomes a reflection of how they see themselves — or how they wish to be seen by others. This loyal connection, called brand association, is the pinnacle of branding success and the focus of this chapter.

Developing Loyalty through Customer Relationships

Great brands generate sky-high customer enthusiasm that results in nothing short of brand passion.

For good examples of the power of customer enthusiasm, consider the brands whose logos you see displayed on car windshields or whose labels are worn on the outside of clothes as badges of association and pride of ownership. They’re the brands that win allegiance and reap the incalculable value of customer affection, word-of-mouth, online sharing, and loyalty.

Passionate employees and passionate customers (in that order) power great brands. You can’t put the cart before the horse. You can’t create passionate customers without first creating passionate employees and the kind of brand experience they’re proud to deliver. For help turning your employees into a team of brand champions, flip back to Chapter 13.

When your organization’s ready to deliver awe-inspiring service that fulfills your brand promise at every customer encounter point, you’re on your way to developing not just customers but customer relationships and brand passion.

Why customer relationships matter

It costs a lot to attract a first-time customer. If that person buys once and heads out the door never to be seen again, the one-time purchase represents the only revenue you’ll realize from your customer-attraction investment.

On the other hand, if the customer buys again and again, your marketing investment gets amortized and the profitability you enjoy from your initial investment grows higher and higher. Researchers have even quantified the value you reap, finding that by winning repeat business from just 5 percent more customers, a business can improve profitability by 75 to 100 percent.

Unquestionably, profitability is a major reason that customer relationships matter. Additionally, customers who develop a relationship with your business contribute so much more:

• Loyal customers account for higher purchase volume and lower costs than other customers because they’re easier to reach and require lower sales and service assistance.
• Loyal customers involve fewer problems because you know their credit status, purchase preferences, and buying patterns.
• Loyal customers are a good source of positive reviews, favorable word-of-mouth, and qualified referrals. They’re most apt to spread their brand affection to others.
• Loyal customers help develop loyal staff — and loyal staff help develop loyal customers — because lasting, positive relationships enhance your brand and your business environment for employees and customers alike.
• Loyal customers who are treated well and who receive consistently good brand experiences are most apt to make repeat purchases, even when promotions and discounts aren’t involved. What’s more, loyal customers who are treated like insiders and who gain a feeling of brand ownership turn into passionate customers.
• Passionate customers who are treated well and who receive consistently good brand experiences become brand ambassadors.
• Brand ambassadors spread good words on the brand’s behalf, increasing marketplace awareness, positive perceptions, and brand value. Even more valuable, they become so engaged and so associated with the brand and what it stands for that it becomes an expression of how they see themselves.

  A BusinessWeek/Interbrand report concluded that “a sense of ownership in near-fanatical customers” was a key contributor to the success of the most valuable global brands. See the sidebar “Sharing ownership of your brand with your most loyal customers” for a description of the invaluable associations between brands and those who love them most.

Sparking customer relationships

The first step in developing brand allegiance is sparking a customer relationship. Most customers fit into one of two categories:

• Transaction customers help build your bottom line. They approach your business seeking a good deal, and their expectations usually are based on price coupled with outstanding features or convenience. Transaction customers’ primary interest is in the deal rather than the relationship. Although they may be happy enough with your business to pass along positive word-of-mouth comments and even to make repeat purchases, in most cases they’ll leave you in a heartbeat if a deeper discount or better-sounding deal comes along.

  Most transaction customers remain in that category. But sometimes, if you ignite their interest, enthusiasm, and trust, they surprise you (and themselves) by becoming entranced by your brand experience and moving into the relationship customer category. The moral of the story: Never assume a price-shopper is there only for the deal. Deliver your brand story and experience, and you may convert the one-time interaction into a valuable lasting relationship.

• Relationship customers help build your brand. They value loyalty, commitment, and trust even more than they value good deals. They prefer to do business with those whose reputations they know and trust and whose promises they believe in.

  When relationship customers choose a brand, they’re inclined to stick with it if — and this is a big if and the whole point of this chapter — you give them the kind of brand experience that turns them into spread-the-word ambassadors for your brand.

All customers are important because all customers represent revenue and the potential for good or bad word-of-mouth. But relationship customers deliver a more powerful benefit. Through their commitment to your brand, loyal, long-term customers become brand ambassadors and even brand zealots who create awareness and develop positive perceptions for your brand in the minds of others, which is where brands live and thrive.

Igniting Customer Passion

Customers don’t fall in love with a brand overnight. They need a little wooing. In the matchmaking process, your brand needs to help customers through these stages:

• Meeting a brand that interests them: They need to hear a name, see a logo, and encounter a brand message that somehow makes them think, “Hey, this could be for me.”
• Being presented with a brand promise that compels them to get further involved: Your brand promise is the pledge upon which you stake your brand reputation. It’s the essence of your brand. It’s the reason people choose you, your business, or your offerings over all others and, when it’s consistently upheld, it’s the reason they fall in love and stay faithful to your brand — forever after. Chapter 6 helps you develop a promise that follows this template:
  • [Name of your business, product, or service] is the [your distinction and the generic term for your type of offering] to provide [your unique features or benefits] to [your customer profile] who choose our offering in order to feel [your customers’ emotional outcome].
• Having a brand experience that heightens their interest while confirming their initially formed positive impressions: The brand experience (the sole focus of Chapter 13) is where trust happens — or doesn’t. Trust is one of the most-frequently used words in this book for the simple, never-contested fact that brands are built on trust. They’re built by making, keeping, and continuously living up to the promise customers believe about who you are, what you stand for, and what unique and meaningful benefits you deliver — without fail.
• Being overwhelmed by the pride they feel in simply saying that the brand is “theirs.” To adopt and stay loyal to a brand, customers need to believe that everything about the brand is so right and that everything about the brand’s products, service, promise, people, and clientele is so consistently ideal that the brand association is somehow capable of enriching their lives on a personal level.

Nurturing Brand Loyalists

Online or in-person, customers really don’t ask for that much. Here’s what they want:

• They want to be served quickly, whether on the phone, at a physical location, or online.
• They want their requests or problems addressed efficiently and effectively.
• They want to deal with experienced, friendly people who they feel relate to and understand their needs.
• They want clear communication from knowledgeable people.
• They want solutions that make them feel heard, understood, important, and valued.

Here’s what they don’t want: They don’t want to wait. In person, they consider two-minute waits total service failures, and online they’re gone in a matter of seconds if a website doesn’t load and hook their interest at lightning-speed. (Turn to Chapter 10 for website-building advice.)

Meet these pretty basic standards, and chances are good that you’ll win business. If you want to develop valuable, profitable, brand-building loyalty, though, you need to go farther. You need to deepen and reward customer relationships through ongoing interaction, engagement, recognition, and loyalty incentives that glue them to your brand because they’re stuck on the way it continuously exceeds their already high expectations.

Increasing accessibility and interaction

Customers grow and stay loyal to brands that reach out to them with valuable, interesting, entertaining, rewarding messages that invite and foster two-way communication and ongoing relationships. Social media — the focus of Chapter 11 — makes this now-requisite interaction possible, affordable, and scalable to an ever-growing clientele. Here’s why:

• Social media is the great marketing equalizer. It gives the smallest brand the same free or nearly free communication opportunity as the biggest brand. But it also offers a huge equalizing benefit to big brands, because it allows them to establish the kind of ongoing conversational customer rapport that previously happened only over-the-counter or at the cash register of small, friendly, locally owned businesses.
• Social media is the great brand truth-teller. It presents brands as most people see them. Activated by social media, customers become brand mouthpieces, spreading praise or pans and affecting brand perceptions for better or worse. In today’s customer-empowered marketplace, satisfaction and loyalty levels hinge on brand awareness of and responsiveness to their wants, needs, comments, concerns, and especially complaints.

The only way to successfully develop brand loyalty via social media is to begin with a true interest in developing customer relationships, to make your brand accessible for two-way communication with customers, and then to communicate directly with messages that are relevant, useful, interactive, and most of all authentic. For help, scan this list of tips:

• Establish a social media voice people like and want to hang out with. Present brand posts by individuals, or at least present them in a voice that sounds like it comes from a person — not a faceless corporation — that people find authentic and likable.
• Listen more than you talk. This guideline applies to all communication channels but gets ignored most frequently where it matters most: on social media networks.
• Be conversational. Instead of spewing sales messages through posts, robo-direct mails or other means that border on spam, share meaningful, useful, relevant messages that ask questions, invite input, prompt sharing, or, at the very least, strike the recipient as truly interesting.
• Give credit. Quote other sources or people, share content posted by others, pass along good ideas you’ve heard from others, and always give credit and thanks for the content you curate and pass along.
• Watch comments more closely than metrics. Put differently, value interaction more highly than engagement. The number of followers, shares, leads generated or other quantifiable statistics are important, but a conversation with a customer, sparked by a comment and kindled by a response, is where loyalty catches fire.

For a case study demonstrating the success of developing customer loyalty, see the sidebar “How SOL REPUBLIC enlists and rewards loyal SOLdiers of Sound.”

Generating buzz that spreads virally

We’re not talking about stinging insects or infectious diseases here. Instead, viral buzz comes from developing passionate customers through messages that make noise, get people talking, magnetize interest, and spread on their own because of the nature of their content.

In the first edition of Branding For Dummies, we called buzz marketing high-powered word-of-mouth that aims to get people to tell other people who then tell other people about your brand and its products and service, spreading the message like a virus that transmits on its own far and wide. Digital communications have skyrocketed viral marketing up the list of branding priorities because brand-builders want the high levels of awareness, interest, and passion it generates so effectively. But with the enthusiasm comes confusion about the terms involved. These definitions help:

• Word-of-mouth is age-old. It’s the result of one person telling another person an opinion or a recap of an experience about your brand, business, or product. In person, the word may get passed along dozens or hundreds of times. Online, it can reach thousands — at least. You can encourage customers to pass along good comments, but you’re a passive player in the game and have to take whatever word-of-mouth you get.
• Buzz marketing involves planned efforts to place, post, or air communications aimed at generating high levels of interest, conversation, and excitement. When someone sees an ad, video, post, or other brand communication and feels compelled to talk about it or spread the word, that’s buzz marketing in action.
• Viral marketing takes buzz marketing a step further. Viral marketing turns customers into your brand-marketing channel. It involves attention-seizing, brand-enhancing messages that break rules, make waves, and so highly engage customers that they follow your call to action and use easy-to-use sharing prompts that drive social-media exposure, more views, more sharing, and, best, more sales.

Takeaways from best-of-viral case studies

Creating a video or post a graphic that goes viral and gets shared and viewed millions of times is one thing. It’s another, far preferable, thing to reach those in your target audience with a communication capable of getting them to not only enjoy or benefit from your message but also to take the action the piece intends to prompt and transmit it to others.

When aiming to generate customer-to-customer viral marketing for your brand, keep these proven tips in mind:

• Be cool and ride a trend. Strike a chord by tying your message into conversations that are trending on social media or strongly on the radar screens of customers. Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” videos garnered 15 million YouTube views in part by blending an iPad in a video that tied into the fascination with destruction and the popularity of the then-new tablet device.
• Be provocative. As the saying goes, give ’em something to talk about. In your communication, do or say something unexpected, stunning, or, as the maker of the virally developed MillionDollarHomePage.com put it, announce “something crazy enough to work.” An example: The bacon coffin, by the makers of Baconnaise and Bacon Salt, was announced on April Fool’s Day (talk about tapping into social interest) and was so amusing to those who “love bacon to death” that the news clip announcing its availability took on a life of its own.
• Give something away. Or if you don’t give it away, include an offer that’s such a good deal it’s too good to overlook. Hotmail is an example of a virally transmitted free deal. It broke rules by offering the first free email service. What’s more, every free message sent included the invitation, “Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com,” ensuring that early adopters virally spread the word.
• Prompt interaction. Invite input, responses to poll questions, photos of fans wearing logo apparel, suggestions for next-generation offerings, participation in contests — always posting responses to showcase customer passion and inspire viral sharing of the brand message.
• Make sharing super simple. Comments, contests, and click-to-share invitations drive media exposure. Offers that gain value through sharing (Groupon deals are a good example) help early adopters bring their friends into your customer circle. Always the goal is the same: Make sharing effortless, or at least as easy as a single click.

Loyalty program do’s and don’ts

Loyalty programs reward repeat purchasers with discounts, rewards, or added value offers.

Chances are good you’re a member of an airline frequent flyer rewards program and that you carry at least one loyalty reward card for a local business in your billfold. Most loyalty programs take one of these forms:

• Buy-ahead discounts that a customer pays for upfront, receiving an immediate bonus at the time of purchase and the promise of ongoing discounts thereafter. The business benefits from upfront revenue and by locking in customer commitment, but because a purchase is involved the customer tends to view the program more as a financial benefit than a customer reward that fosters brand love and loyalty.
• Purchase-level gifts, rebates, or discounts reward customers with when they pass spending levels. The business benefits from increased purchases, but because the programs usually come with fine print about what kinds of purchases apply and over what time period, the programs lack the kind of simplicity that generates widespread appeal. They also attract attention from those who are most cost- and deal-sensitive unless the rewards are carefully crafted to appeal to the most loyal, passionate brand fans.
• Upgrades and special treatments are the loyalty-development sweet spot. Surprise rewards that seem individualized and spontaneous deepen brand passion like no other form of loyalty program. When you occasionally say, essentially, “this one’s on us,” or “this is just to say thanks,” about the only caution to consider is that customers will anticipate and expect acknowledgement again in the future. But if that happens, 1) they’re returning to your business, which is the point of a loyalty program, and 2) you get the chance to dream up an even more inspired demonstration of appreciation to win an even higher degree of enthusiasm for your brand.

Be sure any loyalty program you host gives customers valued rewards that show your appreciation and exceed their expectations. Avoid any program that resembles a purchase-inspiring promotion with strings attached ($10 off your next purchase of any regularly priced product of $25 or more through the end of the month) or that looks more like a benefit to your business than a gift to your customer.

Recipe for a cult brand

Cult brands happen when customers take brand passion to the nth degree. They happen when customers adopt the brand as theirs instead of yours. When you hear people say my iPod, my Google news page, my IKEA, or my Netflix queue, they’ve assumed ownership of the brand and its product or service.

For as long as brands have existed, there have been cult brands. But in the past, most cult brands were small, underdog, or offbeat brands that attracted I’d-rather-fight-than-switch customers who stood by their brands with pride even when hardly anyone else even knew the brand name.

Today, even the biggest brands inspire cult followings by using all or most of the following strategies:

• Start with a unique brand identity and promise that customers truly want to be part of. Then spotlight and stay true to your brand differences and distinctions.
• Offer products that customers not only can customize but that you prefer them to customize in order to adapt the products to their unique consumer preferences, no matter how far-out and unusual.
• Create a brand experience that’s like no other and that never, ever, falls short of the customer’s expectation.
• Emphasize viral marketing, buzz marketing, and good old-fashioned word of mouth over traditional advertising. (See the preceding section for more on viral and buzz marketing.)
• Create fans among your employees and customers, and support development of brand fan clubs, websites, forums, blogs, events, and any other channel that allows those who know and love your brand to share their opinions.
• Create or at least support the formation of a community of brand fans who personify your brand by displaying it on personalized items, talking about it, and sharing their enthusiasm with others.

Cult brand followers are passionate consumers. They’re the kind of brand zealots Winston Churchill could have been talking about when he said, “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

Keeping Your Best Customers

Even customers who trust and value their relationships with your brand will defect if their expectations aren’t met. In fact, even those whose expectations are met will defect if they sense a quality gap (an experience that falls short of expectations) or if another brand wows them with an over-the-top brand experience that makes yours pale in comparison. That’s why it’s important to conduct a brand audit, following the steps and using the form in Chapter 13, on a regular basis to keep all customer impression points aligned and positive.

Protecting your customer base from defection takes work — and a strong brand. When customers believe in your brand promise, and when they consistently receive a clear brand message and a great brand experience, they’re more likely to cut you some slack and remain true to your brand should one encounter fall short once in a rare blue moon.

To measure how well you’re doing at delivering an exemplary brand experience, measure your customer satisfaction levels on a frequent basis. Figure 14-1 includes a chart to guide your assessment. Fill it out several times, once following your gut instinct, and again based on input you collect from those who work with customers and manage customer relation departments or functions. Periodically, you should also conduct customer satisfaction research, following the research advice in Chapter 4.