Archive for the ‘advertising’ tag
Brand Loyalty: How Fast Will Your Customers Jump Ship?
Brand loyalty is the “holy grail” to many companies. What is better than a consumer who likes your product and your service enough to be a repeat buyer, over and over again? And isn’t that really one of the goals of your business’ advertising? To keep your consumers loyal to you?
Each day companies pour more and more money into keeping their customers as happy as possible. Making sure they do not slip up, even slightly, in the process.
But, are those customers who jumped ship so quickly, after a “mistake”, really brand loyal? A recent study suggests not.
New York University psychologists Heather Barry and Tom Tyler (you can read about their study here at We’re Only Human, a blog by Wray Herbert) performed a study with college students and their loyalty to their school based on policies they read that were both fair and unfair to students.
The study concludes that even though the students may have disagreed with the school’s policies, they were still loyal to the school overall, and were even more likely to be cooperative and helpful.
What does this say for your customers? Well, the ones that are truly “brand loyal” will not jump ship as quickly as you may think. Not only will they not jump ship, they will try to communicate to you on why they are upset, and may give you some answers on how you can help fix this consumer-company relationship.
What does this mean for your business? Social Media is more important than ever. (Well really any way that consumers can communicate is more important than ever). Consumers may not give you a call or email you on why they think your company is causing problems, but they might just blog about it. There may be a few tweets. They may even join a group about you on Facebook.
The point is, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. What you should be afraid of, once you make a mistake (which you will, trust me), is not attempting to listen to what your customers think about your mistake.
The Brand Loyalists love who you are and what you do. And when times turn sour they will be one of the groups of people giving you advice on how to improve. Listen to them.