As the economy begins a slow recovery process, businesses are being challenged to rebuild and return stronger. However, with 9.3m jobs furloughed under the Job Retention scheme (between April and June), consumer confidence is understandably low.
According to the Deloitte consumer confidence index, all scores (bar personal finances) for Q2 remained ten to 20 percentage points below the levels registered this time last year. So, how do businesses boost sales and stimulate growth during a time in which consumers are reluctant to spend?
With consumers feeling pessimistic and the immediate future being uncertain, it is important for businesses to reaffirm relationships and build trust.
Loyal customers convert and spend more money
In fact, according to Accenture, 57% of consumers spend more on brands to which they are loyal. In addition, these customers go on to become brand advocates, talking to friends and colleagues, which drives further referral traffic and word-of-mouth marketing.
The power of High Performing Content
When High Performing Content is created, businesses unlock a multitude of benefits connected to both growth and conversion. The Content Marketing Institute’s B2B Content Marketing 2020 report revealed that 63% of marketers reported successfully using content marketing to build loyalty with existing customers.
For businesses to move forward, connecting with their existing customer base is crucial. It’s no secret that customer retention costs less than customer acquisition, so focusing on existing relationships must be a priority – especially when budgets are being scrutinised.
How does your current content strategy lend itself to increasing brand loyalty? And furthermore, what considerations should be taken into account when utilising content in this way?
How does content build loyalty?
An integral part of enforcing loyalty with your customers is building trust. This requires striking an emotional connection and delivering relevant content at the right stage in the customer journey. For example, expertise and advice at the point of research and a sales message at the point of sale.
This is also known as Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel and Bottom of Funnel content.
Knowing your customer’s need state’ – their state of mind at the point they connect with your products – provides a linchpin for them to start and continue their journey with the brand. Content is a long-term tool, which provides accumulative benefits and a halo effect in terms of sales. When it comes to content, it’s the customer’s lifetime value that a business should be assessing, not just real-time conversion.
Is your current content building trust with your target market? Here are some key considerations to take into account:
Ensuring content is credible and genuine
Content marketing is all about information and expertise, not heavy sales messages. Providing educational content to your customers makes your brand trustworthy. Credibility also relies on consistency – ensuring content is high quality and regular will make it more reliable and relevant.
Identifying a need and adding value – this ties in with customer’s need state. Content must fulfil a need for it to add value. After all, content itself should be viewed as a service and a service is only valuable where there is demand.
While content must provide value to the customer, it should also serve the brand. This means ensuring that it links back to the core values and objectives of the business and the products or services for which it’s most famous.
Building a community and creating conversation
Does your content encourage two-way interaction and is there a place for customers to share their thoughts and endorsements?
Content should be consumer-centric, driven by the customer. Providing your customers with a voice will help to create conversation and encourage repeat visits to your platforms.
Where a channel naturally lends itself to consumer interaction, for example with social media, the more likes, comments and shares will also have a knock-on effect, positively impacting the reach of that content.
Choosing your marketing channels
Where you place content will very much depend on who you are trying to connect with. For example. if you are looking at social media and your core customer is 50+ then Facebook, which has an older demographic, would be better suited. With Instagram, on the other hand, the largest demographic is between 18 and 29-year-olds.
Measuring your content’s success
One of the most important considerations is measuring success. What constitutes successful content and how is this being measured? The businesses objectives will have a part to play here, as a KPI for one company may not be a true measure for another. For example, if there is a particular product targeted for growth, then the KPI might be increased web traffic to a specific web page rather than overall web traffic.
The measure will impact not just the type of content produced but the channels through which it is seeded out. Agreeing the methods of measurement in advance, will help determine how effective your content is.
Here are four other measurements that should be assessed to understand the link between content and loyalty:
- Dwell time – the time spent reading content created, or a product page is an indicator of how engaged that customer is. It also provides a good benchmark to compare individual pieces of content and the relevance of specific topics
- Customer retention – this refers to the number of customers who carry out repeat purchases. Your existing customers are your most valuable. Web traffic experts Crazy Egg reported that this category is 50% more likely to try new products and spend 31% more, on average, compared to new customers
- Customer participation – multiple interactions with the brand such as repeat visits to the website and frequency of interactions with social media posts, are a good indicator of engagement and brand loyalty
- Conversion rate – an increase in conversion is the ultimate end goal. However, brand trust and loyalty take time to build and businesses should be prepared for content to have a ripple effect, resulting in increased sales further down the line.
Brand loyalty is all about having an emotional connection with the brand – how it makes you feel. If you are a financial services provider, a customer might feel informed, empowered and secure. If you are a car manufacturer, these feelings might be ones of safety, aspiration and adventure.
In the current climate, where uncertainty is unavoidable, consumers are craving stability. Providing regular, easy-to-access, reliable information will deliver reassurance to your customers and help reaffirm their trust in the brand.
If you would like any support with your content, or guidance on how you can make it work harder
for your brand, the team at GoldSand Digital are on hand to help. Get in touch by giving us a call on 020 7287 9233 or email info@goldsanddigital.com