Digital marketing has evolved a lot this past couple of years. Today, the main focus of great digital marketing campaigns is building a relationship with your audience – your potential customers. All elements of the campaign, from the social media strategies to local SEO, are geared towards that main objective.
Turning viewers into loyal customers is not as difficult as you think. Using the best digital marketing instruments and the strategies we are going to talk about in this article, you too can grow your online audience and acquire loyal customers for your business.
Connect with the Customers the Way They Want
The first thing to remember when you’re trying to use digital marketing as one of the ways to boost customer loyalty is something called the Platinum Rule. This is one of the oldest rules in marketing and it simply tells businesses to interact with stakeholders – in this case the customers – the way they want to interact with you.
If the customers engage you on social media, reply to them through social media. If they send you emails, answer their questions via email. Don’t forget to deliver the best customer experience at all times too, regardless of the channels you use.
Some platforms are inherently limited; Twitter, for example, only gives you 280 characters to work with. You can redirect customers to a more flexible, more personal ways of communicating when you need to; simply do so in a positive way and you can still maintain that positive customer experience.
Stay True to Your Promises
Customers are smart; they know how to seek information and they understand what they expect from you as a business. The last thing you want is to overpromise, only to under-deliver on your promises later. What you want to do is exactly the opposite.
Phil Hussey, the co-founder of 89degrees.com and an experienced marketer, mentioned the importance of over-delivering in one of our conversations. Customers appreciate the extra things you do to please them.
“We all love to be treated in a special way,” according to Hussey. “The small but meaningful extra treatment or service we give our customers are among the many things that make them loyal.”
Always stay true to your promises; that’s the baseline that must never be crossed. Fine-tune your digital marketing campaigns so that only promises you can keep are delivered to the audience.
Stay Relevant and Personalized
The biggest challenge in maintaining customer loyalty comes when the business grows at a faster pace. It is usually more difficult to treat customers in the same personalized way as before when you have thousands to attend to. Fortunately, there are strategies you can incorporate to tackle this challenge.
Instead of using a generic email marketing template, use strings and queries for a more personalized feel. Instead of using a robot response on social media, hire effective social media officers and develop ways to respond to your audience properly. On top of that, always converse with the audience in a contextual and relevant way.
Many of these strategies are simple and easy to implement, but they are effective in building a stronger relationship with a digital audience. That relationship will lead to more loyal customers that truly appreciate the little things you do for them.
