Ways to Improve Brand Loyalty and How Consumer Financing Helps

Acquiring new customers is one aspect of eCommerce, but retaining your existing customers is as, if not more, important to the long-term success of one’s online store. Customer lifetime value refers to the total amount in revenue that a customer generates for one’s business throughout their purchase history with said business. The higher the customer lifetime value, the greater your revenue generation as a single individual has contributed far more than the average shopper. Furthermore, it is less costly to market to existing customers than it is to attract new ones. In this article, we discuss how consumer financing and additional marketing strategies can improve brand loyalty and, as a result, increase customer lifetime values.

1. Optimize Your Customer Service

Customer service is the core foundation of strong brand loyalty and online shoppers support businesses that go above and beyond to facilitate their shopping needs. To improve your customer service, you need to allocate time and resources that you can free up through the integration of consumer financing from ChargeAfter. This checkout plugin provides customers with instant financing to make orders and automates the entire lending procedure. By saving time on the checkout process, marketing teams can focus their attention on customer service. To optimize your customer service, you should automate as much remedial activity as possible. This includes emails marketing, social media chatbots, and other communications. Through automation, customers can receive answers within seconds. This is, however, not to say that you should not have a dedicated and available call center to answer more complex questions. You must retain personal communication alongside automation to maximize your customer service potential. 

2. Showcase Social Proof

A negative review is the difference between a sale on your website or a competitor’s platform. Online shoppers rely on reviews and social proof with every single purchase. It does not matter whether or not they are making a considered purchase or are shopping for groceries, consumers want to purchase from company’s that provide them with the best benefits. Positive reviews allow businesses to show off these benefits and retain customers who may have considered shopping elsewhere. The benefits of positive reviews also lie in the fact that brand loyal customers have great sway over new customers. They become advocates for your brand and products, encouraging greater brand loyalty in the process. Social proof becomes a key cyclical brand loyalty strategy that businesses can invest in through the implementation of a review strategy.

3. Encourage Customer Feeback

Online shoppers respond extremely well to brands that take the time to listen to their concerns and those that make an effort to resolve issues. Customers want to know that brands are listening to them, lead by real people who care for their consumer needs, and action the strategies that the communities call for. The need for customer feedback is essential if you wish to grow a brand loyal community, and eCommerce companies should not overlook the power of customer communities. You may set up a feedback collection method through your website or social media pages, post polls for real-time tracking, or enter conversations of groups and forums to discuss your services and areas of improvement. Honest marketing is the best medicine for online stores and will help leverage profitable brand loyalists. 

In order to improve brand loyalty and ensure long-term sustainability, online store owners must optimize their customer service features, highlight and market social proof such as reviews, and invite customer feedback for operation optimization. These three steps should give you an advantage over the competition and position you as a community-focused brand.