Business is simple. Companies connect with customers, and customers connect with brands. The brand is everything in today's digital world; and brand loyalty is a recurring business.
Brand alignment used to be quite simple in the past. Before the dot com era, brand loyalty was a one-way communication channel and functioned primarily to give information to customers about the brand. Now with the emergence of social media, customers are deeply engaged with products and services across the entire digital space. Customers have begun to feel the brand need and are demanding greater interaction with it. They've come to expect brands to engage and respond to them at all times and from everywhere. But what does brand loyalty mean for businesses today? Quite a lot, actually.
Digital is an experiential medium. It's no longer enough that a strong marketing initiative will turn consumers into customers. To earn brand loyalty today, businesses must not only stand for something but also do something. And if they want to stay relevant in the digital era, they have no choice but to adapt. Not just through social media but across the entire digital channel. One of the significant drivers to earn brand loyalty is brand engagement - using digital media to connect with people, hear what they want, what they think, how a product or service worked or how it didn't. The second significant driver is customer service. Many businesses use digital channels as customer retention tools to connect with customers, solve their problems and answer questions instantly. The third significant driver is reward programs. Offering deals and special offers are not only smart tactics to reward the customer, but it enhances your business' reputation and credibility.
The best companies today understand that brand engagement and positive experiences creates brand loyalty. These businesses understand that it takes more than just a "like" or a "follow" to drive awareness or attention, but through a series of experiences over time. As Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, has been known to say: "Your brand is formed primarily, not by what your company says about itself, but what the company does." Brand loyalty not only matters - it drives results to the bottom line.
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