PostFunnel, in partnership with Fiverr, is proud to present a mini-series on inspiration as a loyalty driver for marketers. We live in a time where customer loyalty isn’t easy to achieve, and that’s not going to change anytime soon. So, it would help if you transitioned your brand from a supplier to a helpful friend. We will examine different customer loyalty approaches that are much needed at times like this and will provide you with inspiration and ways to win over your customers. All with real-life examples from Fiverr, a leading online marketplace for freelance services.
The power has shifted into the hands of the consumer. After a decade in which social networks have changed the relationship between brands and consumers – from a monologue to dialogue – the 2020 customer is smarter, stronger, and pickier than ever.
And with the ways this year’s crises-chain impacted our lives, and changed customers’ expectations and behaviors, they are also more demanding than ever.
This power, combined with the widest variety of brands to choose from ever, makes brand swapping easier than ever. No strings attached, as NSYNC told us two decades ago.
Is brand loyalty a thing of the past?
Well, with all due respect to Justin Timberlake’s prophetic powers, the answer is – no. Taking a quick look at brands like Apple or Starbucks is enough to refute that claim. It may seem like a paradox, but in parallel with the process of brand productization (brands become mere products, and are therefore replaceable), some brands are enjoying higher loyalty rates than ever.
Ask the Apple fanboys who sleep outside the store three nights before the launch of a new device if they’ll ever consider purchasing a Samsung. You’ll probably get a good impression of that unprecedented loyalty.
So, it exists. It’s just much harder to achieve. The question we should all be asking ourselves now is, how can we make costumers into fans? The kind that sleep outside our store three days before we launch a new product?
The answer is long and complicated. But it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a clear list of things you have to do to win your customers’ loyalty, because there is. For instance, you need to provide a fantastic user experience; you need to generate value; you need a killer product which answers your customers’ “Jobs to Be Done.”
But this is just the minimum, the tip of the toe. Sometimes – even having all of the above isn’t enough.
A different approach to retention
Assuming your brand checks all (or at least most) of the boxes above – you laid the grounds for loyalty. Congrats! Your users are now willing actually to consider you again! You know what? Maybe their experience was so great that they even want to return!
This still isn’t enough. Because now, you need to give your customers reason to come back. To you.
Entering: the world of inspiration.
Necessity is the mother of invention, but as a business – necessity is also the mother of revenue. Because if your product or service isn’t 100% needed – you can forget about repeat customers, no matter how good your experience is.
Question is, how do you make customers feel like they need you?
You inspire them. You make them want your product enough so that they *feel* they need it. The “feeling” part is critical.
“60% of long-term customers use emotional language to describe their connection to favored brands,” according to “Exploring the value of emotion-driven engagement” research by Deloitte, from May 2019.
How do you instill such desire, through inspiration, in different segments of your customer base? You start by splitting them into 4 “states, to each its own action item. More on that in Part II next week – where we will detail the approaches for each stage and add proven examples from Fiverr’s experience.
For more from PostFunnel on Loyalty, check out The Loyalty Series