Get ready to socialize! Facebook and Instagram aren’t just great for staying in touch with family and friends, they’re ideal for keeping in contact with customers and creating new ones. Whether you work on your own campaign or with an agency, it’s good policy to be aware of how you come across. With the right mix of action and activity, you can give your brand a boost. Here are four ways you can leverage social media to build brand loyalty.
What Is Brand Loyalty?
Before proceeding, it’s a good idea to understand what exactly brand loyalty means. Basically, brand loyalty boils down to consumers choosing to buy one brand’s products over all others. Brand loyalty goes beyond mere preference, however. Customers with brand loyalty are your best defenders and influencers. They place a high value on your brand, are willing to purchase other items from you, even at a higher price, and are likelier to open your emails and click on your advertisements. Clearly, brand loyalty is awesome, but how can you develop it in your customers through social media?
1. Build Brand Awareness through Interaction
Social media is all about forming connections. That’s why advertising on Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms is perfect for fostering customer relationships and building brand loyalty. It may start slowly–it takes a little time to let people know you’re online and to build a faithful following–so don’t get discouraged. Start your account, then make regular visits to the comment section. Thank customers for compliments, learn from negative comments, and turn the latter into learning experiences for everyone. Return the compliments too! Follow back and let them know you care about them. A product on a shelf can’t start a conversation, but a social media account can give it personality and a voice. Doing these things boosts your brand awareness while inspiring loyalty for life.
2. Encourage User Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is a great way to get customers to participate in marketing your brand at little to no cost for you. Examples of UGC include videos created by customers talking about and promoting your products, then giving you permission to use those videos in your advertising. Pro Tip: make it simple for people to tag your brand in their posts by encouraging hashtags and creating giveaways. This builds brand loyalty by motivating customers to engage with your brand and promote it themselves. Actively using hashtags also makes it easier for you to gather UGC wherever it appears online. UGC not only promotes brand loyalty but also validates your brand. A business will always speak highly of itself, but UGC gives real customers the opportunity to confirm your claims and provide positive reviews. Knowing that someone outside of the business had a positive experience with your product or service more quickly converts a cold audience into new customers.
3. Make People Feel Like Part of Your Team
Social media isn’t just another way to chat with customers. It demonstrates how you do business. Your social media site displays your interactions. If people see you helping customers, odds are they’ll become customers themselves. It provides a way to contribute and feel like part of the “family.” Build brand loyalty by making followers feel like insiders. Keep them updated about company news and events. Give them peeks behind the scenes, introducing them to your staff, showing how things work at your company, unboxing and demonstration videos, and the like. Transparency is a huge selling point!
4. Pick the Right Platforms
So, you’re ready to go social, but, with so many platforms, which should you try first? Facebook and Instagram are good places to start. People visit these sites to be entertained, but they’re also following and interacting with their favorite brands as well. As a result, Facebook and Instagram shifted their focus to improve and highlight their shopping potential. Posting regularly and running ads increases conversions and provides insights on your customers. These platforms also display data such as follows, likes, comments, video views, and reach. They shine a light on the demographics of the people interacting with your page and ads. Understanding these things lets you develop more tailored messaging and improve your customer experience. Social is a great place to start, but remember it’s just one part of the marketing funnel. Interweave your email campaign with your social one to send people to your pages and make it easier to join your mailing list. Google ads and paid social also work hand-in-hand to increase your site traffic and generate conversions. A repetitive presence is key to converting a cold audience into a brand loyal one!
Follow the four ways you can leverage social media to build brand loyalty above to make your social media pages entertaining, engaging, and likelier to convert clients into allies! If you want to learn more about paid social media marketing services including Facebook and Instagram advertising services contact Logical Position for a consultation.
