For an entrepreneurial activity - whether carried out on the web or in physical stores - two things are fundamental: product quality and customer loyalty.
Above all, the latter is an important resource, a real long-term objective that must be taken care of in the minimum terms to obtain lasting benefits and a significant boost in image return, which goes hand in hand with turnover.
In the world of digital and always online, Social media play the leading role in customer loyalty, because they allow you to have a potentially endless audience and, at the same time, allow people to easily learn about your business essentially for free: a winning combination.
For this reason it is good to design and put into practice the best loyalty strategies possible, making the best use of your social channels, convincing buyers to return periodically to your business, guaranteeing a constant inflow of money.
According to sector studies, in fact, the so-called repeaters – repeaters, those who purchase on a regular basis from your store – is responsible for 65% of sales in the average financial year, with a rate of 70% compared to an occasional customer.
It is therefore good to know some simple rules for build customer loyalty using social media, while avoiding some frequent mistakes and improving communication and flow through small tricks that are very easy to put into practice.
Marketing in this case talks about customer engagement, that is, that mechanism that literally captures the buyer in your shopping network and keeps him inside. This process is triggered by a good dose of involvement and participation on your social media channels.
To pursue this objective it is essential to work on customer care, establishing a real digital desk capable of giving attention and listening to all customer questions and observations.
To do this, it may be a good idea to invest in a specialized employee - and if possible also trained - who will also be responsible for stimulating their active participation.
To give quick and precise answers to customers it is a good idea to reply quickly to incoming messages on the social media page, with precise and exhaustive solutions, also making itself available for face-to-face meetings in the event of particularly complex situations. Furthermore, leave your users free to publish opinions - even negative ones - via the appropriate form reviews present on all social media.
These practices greatly increase loyalty and enable word of mouth, making you gain notoriety in a short time. To increase engagement, stimulate your followers on social media by setting up surveys to ask and collect opinions and preferences on certain topics.
If, for example, you organize events, it is a good idea to listen to the proposals of your followers, satisfying them where possible. Another idea could be to create Hype on your future products for sale, all actions capable of increasing the presence of people on your channels by increasing active involvement which is measured through shares, interactions between users, mentions on other social media and comments. In short, for build loyalty through social media these are the fixed points from which you must start to expand your communication in quantity and quality.
How to build customer loyalty: personalization, places and activities
Consider that each user, customer or consumer is not the same as another.
Surely, based on your sales target you will already have a specific audience from the start in the case of highly sectoral products or services such as in the case of construction services or the sale of professional industrial or IT machines, or a generic one, as in the classic case of food or clothing .
To increase loyalty you must first know your customers, since the activity of your reference social media will be based precisely on this from the choice of the network to use.
In both cases, your followers may turn to competitors to satisfy their requests. This is where the customization. This consists of listening to your community and its needs to improve pain points. Authoritative sources on the subject, in fact, state that a number equal to 80% of consumers considers the user experience is even more important than the product itself. Practically the quintessence of loyalty.
Small measures to increase customers and loyalty
Although it is common practice to use all possible social media, in the initial stages it is best to focus on the one closest to your audience. For example, Facebook, brought the average age of users to 40 years.
It follows that you will have to focus the loyalty process on this social media if your customers are in this age target: it doesn't make much sense to sponsor a business that organizes events on the beach, for example. For these activity, instagram and its average age equal to 25 years old, is the best social media.
Furthermore, through the massive use of hashtags and the stories and sharing system, it leads users to share your images, attracting the public. Furthermore, on Instagram the contents often become high-level viral, being quickly shared between people and leading them to often return to your page to look for similar ones: this is the quintessence of loyalty. It's on the same level tiktok.
Small mention on Twitter, used by young women and men between 18 and 35 years old. This social media is the best place for those who work in the social sector or in specific and specialized fields. In fact, through the system of retweets and trends, it allows rapid diffusion among users with the same ideas, who have a tendency to return often and share ideas under the pages that they find similar to their tastes. A kind of loyalty among those who have similar habits.
Use the right posts (relational, intellectual, practical and emotional)
All social media allow you to create and share so-called posts, i.e. specific cartoons, photos or writings, which can then be shared by users based on their ideas and preferences.
For build customer loyalty in this way, create posters or images in line with the product you sell or promote: in the case of a bookshop, post intellectuals with quotes from famous poets or writers are well appreciated. Experiment with the various posts to test your audience, focusing on the ones that receive the most appreciation.
Promote loyalty programs
Point collections, cashback on purchases, discount codes for those who regularly visit your pages, etc. When you offer a reward for purchases, the customer is immediately loyal since, hoping to win or having already won, he will come back to you to participate or collect the prize, still spending more than he won.
Naturally, keep errors to a minimum: with social media, going from a loyal audience to an angry one is very easy, thanks to the rapid diffusion of ideas. Avoid posts that are politically aligned or that conflict with the predominant social ideology if that is not the main activity of your company.
Furthermore, use hashtags well, always choosing from the most trending and shared ones because they are recognized first by users. If you have multiple pages of the same business on multiple different social media, be careful to differentiate the posts between the two platforms, trying to bounce your users always and only on your pages.
In conclusion, these are some techniques on how to use social media to build loyalty your customers and public.
Of course, you can never transcend the goodness of the product offered or sold, however these techniques help more often than not hide the actual flaws of your business, while improving your sales.
