Brand & Customer Loyalty: Context Is King [Study]

Loy­al­ty can be huge­ly valu­able asset to a brand. The abil­i­ty to inspire long-term engage­ment and pur­chas­es from cus­tomers is just as impor­tant as the aware­ness gen­er­a­tion and nur­tur­ing stages of the pur­chase fun­nel. In many ways it com­pletes the process:...

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

Loy­al­ty can be huge­ly valu­able asset to a brand. The abil­i­ty to inspire long-term engage­ment and pur­chas­es from cus­tomers is just as impor­tant as the aware­ness gen­er­a­tion and nur­tur­ing stages of the pur­chase fun­nel. In many ways it com­pletes the process: loy­al­ty inspires brand advo­cates to re-engage and act as a cham­pi­on for a brand, which can be a pow­er­ful source of influ­ence. How can brands win that kind of loy­al­ty?


StrongView have released their 2014 Brand Loy­al­ty Sur­vey. The ques­tions explored the moti­va­tions and demo­graph­ics of those loy­al to brands. Some of the results may sur­prise you.

The sur­vey asked more than 2,200 online U.S. adults across major indus­tries about their feel­ings on brands and the way they inter­act­ed with them between March and April of this year.

Brand loy­al­ty among con­sumers could not be pre­dict­ed by age or income — with those extreme­ly loy­al to par­tic­u­lar brands being from a range of back­grounds, accord­ing to the find­ings.

Instead, the main dri­ver for brand loy­al­ty seemed to revolve around the per­cep­tion of how much val­ue brands were able to pro­vide.

7 Key Takeaways from StrongView’s 2014 Brand Loyalty Survey

brand-loyalty

  1. Just over one-fourth of con­sumers stood out as brand enthu­si­asts:
    • 41 per­cent had annu­al house­hold incomes less than $50,000.
    • 67 per­cent of loy­al cus­tomers made $75,000 or less annu­al­ly.
    • Of upper income earn­ers, only 5 per­cent of con­sumers with $150,000 in annu­al salary were loy­al to a brand, com­pared to 29 per­cent of shop­pers with an annu­al salary between $25,000 and $50,000.
  2. Loy­al­ty was spread even­ly across all age brack­ets, mea­sur­ing from 17 to 19 per­cent of adult online shop­pers between the ages of 18 and 54.
  3. Brand enthu­si­asts were near­ly 4x more like­ly to spend sig­nif­i­cant­ly more with brands in the future.
  4. That fig­ure rose to 8x more for brand enthu­si­asts with 10+ brand inter­ac­tions.
  5. Near­ly twice the num­ber of brand enthu­si­asts report­ing that loy­al­ty played a part in their last pur­chase, com­pared to non-enthu­si­asts sur­veyed.
  6. Email con­tin­ued to be the most effec­tive method for dri­ving action with all cus­tomers:
    • 51 per­cent of brand enthu­si­asts report­ed that their last pur­chase for a brand was prompt­ed by email com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
    • 45 per­cent of non-enthu­si­asts report­ed that their last pur­chase for a brand was prompt­ed by email com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
  7. Cus­tomers report­ed they were more like­ly on a scale from 1 to 10 to buy when they received a mar­ket­ing mes­sage that:
    • Matched the customer’s expec­ta­tions of the brand – 8.7.
    • Matched past inter­ac­tions with the brand – 8.6.
    • Was rel­e­vant to the customer’s needs – 8.6.
    • Was received at the right time – 8.4.
    • Was help­ful or use­ful in aid­ing the customer’s deci­sion to buy – 8.4.

Why Brand Loyalty Matters

In a press release from StrongView, Shawn Myers,VP of Mar­ket­ing for StrongView, explained how the brand loy­al­ty dynam­ic can be so valu­able to a brand:

These days, cus­tomers and brands are engaged in two-way con­ver­sa­tions that go far beyond mar­keters sim­ply push­ing out prod­uct or ser­vice offers. These dynam­ic inter­ac­tions require a greater under­stand­ing of a customer’s cur­rent con­text and needs with­in the engage­ment life­cy­cle. Mar­keters have known for a long time that retain­ing a loy­al cus­tomer is much cheap­er than cap­tur­ing a new one, but now we know that keep­ing them loy­al comes down to engag­ing them with con­tex­tu­al­ly rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion, which ulti­mate­ly leads to addi­tion­al rev­enue.”

Conclusion

The study shows that sus­tained cus­tomer loy­al­ty is best achieved by pro­vid­ing true val­ue for con­sumers, rather than by pro­mot­ing goods and ser­vices via adver­tis­ing.

Brand enthu­si­asts sur­veyed by StrongView con­firmed that these days, brands can add val­ue to their cam­paigns with con­tex­tu­al mar­ket­ing, with enthu­si­asts report­ing they were more like­ly to buy after receiv­ing time­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tions that are “rel­e­vant, help­ful and con­sis­tent with their expec­ta­tions.”

Above all, the study shows how real­ly con­nect­ing with con­sumers, and under­stand­ing the way they behave can inspire con­sumers to become loy­al to your busi­ness. By doing good work to con­nect with con­sumers on the cus­tomer jour­ney, brands can reach valu­able touch points, facil­i­tate engage­ment, and dri­ve sales.

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

Discover why brands and agencies choose Linkdex

  • Get started fast with easy onboarding & training
  • Import and connect data from other platforms
  • Scale with your business, websites and markets
  • Up-skill teams with training & accreditation
  • Build workflows with tasks, reporting and alerts

Get a free induction and experience of Linkdex.

Just fill out this form, and one of our team members will get in touch to arrange your own, personalised demo.