The type of brand loyalty that leads customers to rush to the stores on day one for a new product is hard to come by. It’s also extremely profitable. Stanley experienced a 751% year-over-year increase (no, that’s not a typo!) in its tumbler sales in 2022. Talk about results that justify a marketing budget.

Stanley’s breakout story isn’t a trajectory most retailers can hope to mimic. But it is a success story we can all learn from. The secret sauce isn’t a colorful 40-oz tumbler — it’s in the brand equity that Stanley built among its loyal customers. 

This guide will help you understand what brand equity means, how you can build it, and how to handle brand challenges that many retailers face. 

Chapters:

1. What is brand equity?
2. What goes into brand equity?
3. The importance of brand equity
4. How to create brand equity through the consumer experience
5. How to measure brand equity
6. Solving brand equity challenges
7. Every company has a brand equity journey

What is brand equity?

Brand equity is the value attached to a certain brand name. It’s a combination of brand awareness and brand reputation, and maintaining both is essential for companies of all sizes.  

In practice, brand equity measures customer loyalty. It helps you understand how much more your consumers are willing to pay for your products, how likely they are to choose you over a competitor, and whether they’ll consider trying completely new products or services from you. 

Sound simple? It is. The hard part is building it. 

What goes into brand equity?

As a whole, brand equity is intangible. It’s based on consumers’ perceptions and emotions, which means it can be hard to measure. However, there’s a few elements that strong brand equity is built from.

The first is brand awareness. Awareness, in this case, doesn’t mean whether people have heard of your company. It means what they know about your products, the things you stand for, and the benefits you offer your customers. The value of your brand depends on consumers’ understanding of your purpose.

The second is brand perception. This might seem similar to brand awareness, but perception is born in your customers’ minds. It’s what your brand represents to them. For instance, Stanley sees its core values as “invention, innovation and inspiration” and its purpose as “build[ing] a more sustainable, less disposable life and world.” However, to its current fans, Stanley Tumblers are about staying hydrated (if you #WaterTok, you know) while making a fashion statement. They perceive Stanley as a status symbol, whether the brand is meant to be one or not.

Third, we have brand associations. These are the concepts and feelings consumers attach to your brand. Think of your car. You likely equate it with the freedom to go where you want. Depending on the type of car you have, you may also consider it a leader in safety features or a way to save money and the planet by reducing your gasoline use. If you’re like most consumers, you ascribe those specific feelings to the car brand. (This can work the other way, too, if you really hate your car.) Those would be your associations. 

Fourth comes perceptive quality. As the name suggests, this is a measure of how consumers feel about the standard of goods or services they’ll receive from a brand. Perceptive quality doesn’t need to be based on personal experience. Consumers may make quality assumptions based on price point or the selection of stores that carry a brand or product. They may also form their opinions from word-of-mouth or marketing campaigns. 

Fifth is brand experience. This is the part where customers interact with your products or services — and yes, it really is fifth on the list! However, brand experience is still an important part because it’s where their impressions of your brand can be proven true or false. 

The sixth is brand loyalty. This is your customers’ decision to keep interacting with your brand. For some, brand loyalty means continually rebuying consumable products. Brands that make durable goods may instead measure loyalty through customers’ engagement with social media or newsletter content. The most loyal customers will try other products from your brand and recommend you to friends and family. 

Together, these six components add up to a perception and experience of brand value among your customers. 

The importance of brand equity

It’s hard to overstate the value of brand equity because there are so many ways you’ll see positive ROI if yours is strong. 

On the customer level, you’ll find it easier to attract new buyers because they’ll know your products or services are of high quality. A company with high brand equity also finds retention easier since equity includes trust — and trust is a factor in over 90% of consumers’ buying choices. 

When it comes to profitability, brand equity allows you to charge more than competitors without losing your customers. It helps you increase your sales volume as brand advocates share their love for your products with friends.

Plus, brands with a high level of trust can be more efficient with their marketing spend. Customers who already know and trust your brand don’t need nearly as much enticement to buy. Between a decrease in spending and an increase in prices, your company will see higher profit margins overall.

Brand equity matters because it increases your market share over competitors. It makes it easier to expand into new products or verticals because you have a base of buyers who are willing to try out a new product. And, for publicly traded companies, brand equity increases your stock price.

Brand equity is sort of like money: The more you have, the better off your company is. You might even argue it’s a type of currency in its own right — the currency of trust.

How to create brand equity through the consumer experience

Look up “how to create brand equity,” and you’ll get a laundry list of action items — be consistent in your branding! Run the right kind of marketing campaigns! Make good products! But brand equity can’t be built in a vacuum. It’s a relationship between you and your consumer base. It’s, therefore, best to start from the consumer perspective.

Consumers go through a journey with each brand that either ends in them valuing the product or deciding they want to try something new. Here are the five steps you must lead your buyers through to develop brand equity. 

1. Awareness

Brand awareness is the top element of brand equity, and it’s also the first step in each consumer’s journey. They have to know who you are, what you do, and what you stand for. 

Advertising is typically the best way to introduce yourself to new customers. But awareness marketing can’t just include the name of your brand and a picture of your product or a description of your services. If you’re unknown to a consumer, they need a reason to care about you. 

A strong brand story can help you break through the noise with your awareness campaign. The best awareness campaigns cater to the values or interests of your target demographic. For instance, if your buyers care about supporting small businesses, your ads might emphasize that your products started from a home recipe. If they’re nature lovers, talk about your company’s sustainability efforts while showing how your product will help them enjoy the great outdoors. 

Awareness campaigns are often easier to disseminate through mass or social media. PPC ads keyed on your brand name won’t be reaching new potential buyers. You’ll need to identify the spaces where your target audiences hang out and then go to them there. Maybe that means buying ads in publications centered around a certain topic.

Or maybe it means encouraging your existing fans to share user-generated content (UGC), such as reviews and media your customers create about or featuring your brand. UGC can be reshared by your brand, but it also spreads organically through the networks and communities you want to reach. 

2. Recognition

Once customers know who you are, you want them to start seeing your product around. The familiarity will help build trust and cement you in their mind as an option.

Building recognition requires you to focus on brand consistency. Consumers expect a certain uniformity in aesthetics — that’s your logo, fonts, colors, and other design elements — to help them quickly identify brands. Depending on how your product is presented, you might consider appealing to other senses. You know exactly what that Slack “new message” sound is, thanks to consistent branding. 

Consumers are also more likely to recognize your brand or product when they routinely encounter it in the same context. You can use that context to start building associations. For instance, a product that’s consistently shelved with premium goods will come across as a quality item. One that’s mentioned in buzzy publications will seem on-trend to consumers. 

The techniques you use for recognition are similar to those you use to build awareness. But you shouldn’t think of the two as interchangeable. Your goal in the awareness step was to get your name and story out there. When you’re building recognition, you have the chance to go deeper into your story and cement your values, mission, and desired preconceptions in your audience’s mind. 

3. Trial

After a consumer gets to know your brand, those who find it intriguing will move to step three: trialing your product or services.

You typically have one chance to impress a new consumer (unless you’ve done an extremely good job in steps one and two!), so delivering on your promises in short order is of the utmost importance. 

First, the recognizability must be there. If buyers have only ever seen your product in photos and videos, the item they receive has to match. (If they’re picking it up on a store shelf, you can assume you’ve succeeded on this point.)

Second, your product must be of the expected quality. It doesn’t need to be the best on the market, but it should meet or exceed the standards for the price point and perform as you’ve stated it will. 

Third, users must find your product memorable. Whether that’s because it introduces a new and fun way to address an old problem or just because it looks different than competitors, there has to be something about it that sticks in their heads.

Keep in mind that the physical product is only part of the equation here. If the trial stage is about your company delivering on its promises, it’s your job to craft guarantees your product can easily meet. Set your company up for success by guiding your buyers’ expectations through advertising, product copy, or post-purchase communications. You may want to test this messaging with focus groups or survey customers to learn where you’re hitting the mark and where you can be more accurate or specific. 

4. Preference 

The number of customers who choose your product over others is an indicator of brand equity. You can earn your customers’ preference by providing an excellent brand experience.

Make sure your buyers are getting the most out of your product with tutorials, user guides, or inspiration. More complex or technical products are more likely to call for the first two; we trust you can figure out if a user guide would be helpful to your audience. 

For items that don’t need a how-to, you might instead show suggested uses. This is another place where UGC works well. For instance, apparel sellers might share ‘fit inspiration to help buyers style their new clothes. Or, help customers think outside the box by offering some “hacks” that repurpose your product for unexpected uses. There’s a whole community centered around stretching the use cases for Ikea furniture; if your devoted users have similarly clever tips, don’t be afraid to share.

Keep in mind that your customers’ experiences go beyond their interactions with your product. Every interaction with your company matters — whether that’s the emails they open (useless or worth reading?), their visits to your website (is there an annoying modal in the way?), or communications with customer service (nobody likes those AI chatbots. Nobody.).

Make sure you’ve optimized the digital experience so interacting with your company is simple. You should also use proactive customer service to make your users feel like they’re real VIPs. 

5. Loyalty

You’ve succeeded in building brand equity with a consumer when they convert from a sometimes-buyer to a loyal customer. Loyalty may seem like the natural outcome of the previous steps of the journey, and you certainly can’t earn it without focusing on them as well. However, you can also nudge customers into becoming more loyal. 

Keep customers around by following through on the experience-building work you did previously. A buyer’s seventh purchase should be just as valuable and enjoyable as the first. Therefore, your efforts to engage customers with your product and brand can’t stop after that first W. Treat each new purchase as an opportunity to engage them more with your brand story and values, and make your product even more central to their life.

Beyond that, you can build brand loyalty in two ways. The first is by building a community around your brand. If you don’t have your own platform to bring people together, create a hashtag for users to share related content on their socials. This is where resharing UGC can be a big boon; customers love to see their content endorsed by an official brand account. 

If a community isn’t a viable option, try a loyalty rewards program. There’s multiple ways to structure a loyalty program. You can offer discounts, exclusive or early access to new products, or perks like free shipping or birthday rewards. Just getting people to enroll in a loyalty program makes them 30% more likely to increase their spending with you. If you can talk them into paying for it, they’re 60% more likely to drop more on your products. 

Loyalty matters because it’s cyclical. Once someone starts thinking of themself as a loyal customer, they’ll start acting more loyal, reinforcing their perception. The more value they get from your brand, the more value they’ll perceive it as having.  

How to measure brand equity

There’s not a brand equity meter you can access to measure how much consumers value your company and its products. You can, however, gather internal benchmarks for related metrics within a few categories:

• Financial “big picture” numbers like market share and company value
• Financial “small picture” figures like price growth and sensitivity, revenue potential, and purchasing frequency
• Sentiment measurements from web analytics, online engagement statistics, reviews, focus groups, and surveys
• Customer metrics like loyalty program participation, purchase frequency, and retention

The valuation and strength of your brand depend on your brand equity. Watch for fluctuations in any of the metrics your company uses to track these two KPIs, along with those listed above. 

You’ll have to rely on your judgment to determine whether a change in one number reflects a change in brand equity or whether it’s a response to other factors. If you see growth or declines across the board, though, you’re likely seeing the impact of your brand equity efforts. 

Solving brand equity challenges

Brand equity, like the stock market, can go up and down. All companies face challenges (whether from internal or external factors) that decrease the perceived value of their brands. If you’re not already performing regular brand reputation maintenance, it’s time to draw up a program. Then, get ahead of these hardships with our playbooks for some common obstacles. 

Crowdsourced brand information

Brands largely controlled their image when mass media was dominant; now, consumers can get their information anywhere. Customers who detail negative brand experiences online can drive away potential buyers and pollute your brand’s image.

Negative reviews from customers who just enjoy yelling about things are part of life — every Swiftie knows that the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate. You should start worrying when those bad reviews start to outnumber the good ones or customers share stories outrageous enough to go viral. 

Prepare yourself by learning how to respond to bad reviews (tl;dr: quickly, briefly, and with empathy) so you can step in when a customer is unhappy. You’ll hopefully improve their experience and show shoppers your company cares about making things right. 

Failure to deliver on promises

Customers expect good value in return for their money. What defines “value” will vary based on the individual and type of product, but they’ll know when a product isn’t up to snuff. For instance, if a phone’s battery keeps catching fire until that phone gets banned from commercial flights, you’re probably not meeting expectations.

Most products don’t have this big of an expectations-reality mismatch, but you may face a disconnect between the product your company announced and the product it was able to create. When you learn customers aren’t having the experience you thought they would, it’s time to shift your messaging. 

There may not be a lot you can do to reach those who have already bought the hyped-up version of a product except offer refunds. But you should adjust your future marketing pitch so your next crop of buyers knows what they’re getting. 

Breaches of customer trust

People make mistakes, including people who are on the job. When those mistakes affect your customers, you may see a large decrease in brand equity.

A 2023 survey by PwC found that protecting consumer data is essential to earning trust — so hacks or other data breaches will harm your customer relationships big time. AI use is also shaping up as a trust-breaking practice for some companies.

38% of customers stop purchasing from a brand altogether after that brand damages their trust. The others will need some reassurance that your company understands the problem, takes it seriously, and is coming up with a plan to prevent further issues. Your exact approach will vary based on the incident that sparked the outrage, but as in the other cases, communicating with empathy and a genuine desire to make things right can help salvage your image.  

Every company has a brand equity journey

It takes time for customers to see your brand as a valuable part of their lives. It will take time to build that perception of value, too. You’ll likely see ups and downs during the process, and you may learn about some problems you didn’t even know existed. 

Don’t let these roadblocks deter you, and don’t feel down if you don’t get results overnight. Think about the brands you trust completely — how many months or years did it take for them to win you over? You’ll be starting at the same place with your customers, so have patience. Things will start to change as you follow the steps laid out in this article. 

One last tip: Keep yourself motivated by breaking your grand plan into small, concrete steps. The first thing you can do now — today! — is to take control of your brand communications. It’s an easy starting place, and it will set the foundation for more important work you’ll have to do later. Read our complete guide to ensuring brand consistency across channels to get started.

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What is brand trust?

Brand trust is the amount of loyalty and support customers have for your brand and how strongly they believe you can fulfil your brand promises. It’s based on customer experiences with your brand as well as company messaging and reputation.

Brands and retailers who can’t establish trust with consumers, or even worse, who lose established trust, will struggle to win business. We’re in an age when consumer opinions are shared on a massive scale and directly influence brand perception. 

In a Bazaarvoice study, 54% of consumers said that if a brand hasn’t broken trust, they’d still buy from them again — even after a negative experience. 

5 ways to build brand trust

It’s simple. When your customers trust you, they’ll be loyal to you almost no matter what. Here’s how to build consumer trust in your brand. 

1. Work with a trustworthy UGC provider 

One way to increase brand trust in e-commerce is by getting your consumers to advocate for your brand for you. Shoppers trust user-generated content (UGC) in the form of reviews more than they trust family and friend recommendations. Instead of trying to control what people are saying, brands and retailers should embrace this conversation and amplify it.

However, to maintain brand trust, reviews must be authentic. According to our survey of 10,000 global shoppers, if shoppers suspect a product has fake reviews:

• 81% will avoid using that brand again
• 48% leave a negative review
• 25% wouldn’t purchase from the website
• 16% will post negatively about the brand on social media

That’s why a good UGC program requires strong content moderation. A trustworthy UGC provider that values authenticity can help your brand sort through reviews and eliminate fake ones that hurt your credibility and destroy consumer trust.

For example, Bazaarvoice evaluates UGC through a process of machine learning and human moderation to ensure it isn’t fraudulent and that it represents a customer’s genuine opinion about their experience with the product(s).

27% of consumers think brands with fake content should be fined up to 30% of their revenue — and governments are taking note. The FTC recently fined one company over $4 million for suppressing authentic content, so not only will fake content harm your reputation but it will harm your wallet too.

2. Publicize company values

According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, consumers today grant brand trust based on two attributes: competence and ethical behavior. Like doing the right thing and working to improve society.

Consumers want to see what your brand believes in and how you follow through on those beliefs. And with the various significant events taking place across the globe, they especially want to know how your brand responds to your community in times of crisis. This is particularly true when it comes to Gen Z, who value brand trust, transparency, and authenticity above all else.

Creating content about your values for your website is a good start, but make sure this messaging is also visible on your social channels. About 35% of consumers look to a brand’s social media to seek out content about company response and values. 

You also need to be mindful of who your brand partners with. Any influencers or partners you collaborate with should share your brand values and have a solid reputation. They’ll connect with consumers in ways that are relevant and sensitive to their needs and help authentically communicate your brand’s values. 

3. Focus on great customer service 

90% of consumers say a brand’s level of customer service is an important factor in their choice to become a customer. A proactive customer service strategy should include responding to customer feedback and reviews, both negative and positive.

Around 60% of consumers say that negative reviews are just as important as positive reviews in their decision to purchase. And the way you respond to these negative reviews can speak volumes about your brand’s values and may even convert more browsers into buyers. A consumer’s willingness to purchase a product with a negative review doubles when seeing a brand’s response, as opposed to seeing the negative review by itself. And, up to 70% of dissatisfied customers will do business with a company again if their complaint is resolved.

When you see a negative review, take the time to craft a quick, but personal, response. Consumers want to talk to a real person, not a review response bot. Show them that you sympathize with their issue and that you’re learning from criticism. Mention that their feedback will be used for future improvements. This will only boost your brand trust.

In your online response, ask the customer to contact you offline. And be clear about why. Are you trying to understand the problem because your team is working on product improvements? Are you looking for details on the issue so you can prevent it from happening again? Was there a defect, and you need their contact information to send the new product?

Don’t forget to give the customer a way to contact your brand, whether that’s via a preferred phone number or email address. 

4. Create high-quality products

Reviews are excellent sources of information to analyze how consumers feel about your products’ quality. When you pay attention to common customer pain points, you have the opportunity to fix issues before your products earn a negative reputation and win back customers before you lose them entirely.

Look for key topics in your negative reviews. Do customers complain about particular product features? Long shipping times or damaged delivery? Is there something missing that they wanted from the product? Was the product description inaccurate?

Share this customer sentiment with your product quality or manufacturing team (or with vendors if you’re a retailer) to make improvements that keep your products competitive and meet consumer expectations. 

5. Price your products fairly 

According to Prisnyc, a competitor price tracking and monitoring company, about 60% of consumers consider pricing as the very first criteria of their buying decision, and 86% say it’s important to compare prices from different sellers when shopping. 

When’s the last time you compared your product price to the competition? If it’s been a while, it’s time to re-evaluate. How do your prices differ from competitors? 

Consumers value transparency. If your product is significantly more expensive than the competition and there’s a reason for it (like you use a higher quality material), don’t be afraid to call that out on your product pages. 

Build brand trust with the voice of the customer

To protect consumer trust, your brand must prioritize honesty and transparency in everything you do, from reviews to customer service to product pricing. One of the best ways to gain insights into how customers feel about your brand and communicate trust is through ratings and reviews. 

Leverage the authentic voice of your customers to build brand trust and sell your products. Taking the time to invest in your ratings and reviews program will help you build the foundation for long-lasting relationships and brand trust with your customers, leading to more sales — after all, customers who interact with UGC are 2x as likely to convert.

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What is brand reputation management?

Brand reputation management refers to keeping tabs on how consumers perceive your brand and reacting in a strategic way to maintain, improve, and protect that image. Much of your brand reputation hinges on what consumers say about you on social media and in reviews, and how you communicate with these shoppers. 

Focusing on your brand reputation management is crucial for growth. A positive reputation fosters brand loyalty, inspires shopper confidence, boosts sales, and puts you above your competition. Whereas negative sentiments may cause sales to drop and scare off customers. But hey, it’s not all bad. 

Paying close attention to the chatter about your brand — both positive and negative — presents an opportunity to learn about your customers to help you better meet their needs in the future.

Brand reputation management strategies

Brand reputation management isn’t a one-time deal. It’s a continuous process of keeping up with consumer perception and taking time to resolve any issues that arise.

Here’s the 10 most effective brand management reputation strategies to guide your brand.

1. Encourage ratings and reviews

Shoppers love sharing their opinions of brands, and review spaces give them a forum to offer that feedback. Reviews are a valuable part of the shopping experience. According to our research, 88% of consumers always or mostly read reviews before buying anything and 78% say reviews have the biggest influence on their purchases.

Keeping a fresh crop of reviews flowing in is vital. Consumers tend to spend more on products and services when they encounter positive reviews, and 25% of shoppers think reviews remain relevant after 12 months but most prefer reviews written in in the past three months. After turning to ratings and reviews for their site, retail brand Brother, for example, saw customers spend 3x longer on its website, and they were 2x more likely to click a call-to-action when they engaged with reviews.

The tools can help brands collect reviews and other user-generated content (UGC) like photos and videos.  

If you don’t have many reviews for a certain product, first focus your attention on increasing your review volume. Just a handful of reviews can noticeably increase sales and customer sentiment. There’s several methods for getting more reviews, including sending review request emails and product sampling.

2. Respond to all reviews (even the negative ones)

When customers trust a brand, they’ll return time after time, Cydni Lauper style. Engaging directly with shoppers helps build trust, and one of the best ways to do that is to respond to their feedback — both negative and positive. 

Respond to positive reviews with a thank you and comment on a specific element from their review to personalize the response. Or take the opportunity to emphasize your brand pillars, like your brand’s commitment to customer service. Positive reviews are excellent content, too, so promote them on your product pages and social media channels.

Over 60% of shoppers say negative reviews are just as important as positive ones. (Many people get suspicious when there’s too many positive reviews.) So, you need to respond to this negative feedback as well.

Be understanding and authentic in your reply, and offer a solution, such as sending a product replacement or a genuine apology. This signals to customers that you’re listening and care about making them happy. 

Among unhappy shoppers, 70% will do business with a brand again if their complaint is resolved and 34% will delete a negative review if they’re satisfied with a brand’s response.

3. Answer customer questions 

If an in-store shopper asked you a question about a product or your customer service, would you answer them? Of course, you would. So you need to answer online questions, too. Answering customer questions is a critical part of brand reputation management — it builds loyalty and helps shoppers make confident, informed purchasing decisions.

Enabling a questions and answers platform on your product page(s) can also slash your return rates and the number of customer complaints you’ll receive, and boost conversion rate. 

For example, brands that use Bazaarvoice’s Questions & Answers platform to respond to shopper queries can see a 98% jump in conversions. You can also garner valuable insights from the customer questions to help improve your products or business.

Nestlé Canada enabled Bazaarvoice Q&A on its site and within three months had already responded to 700 questions. Noting consistent negative questions and comments about a particular product, the brand reacted by changing the recipe and the product’s average star rating jumped from 1.7 to 4 stars.

4. Share your mission 

Consumers increasingly want to shop with ethical brands that have a mission that aligns with their own values. Especially millennials and Gen Z. 71% of consumers think brands and retailers have the potential to positively impact society, and about 60% believe brands have a social responsibility to speak out and take action on important issues. 

Sharing your mission — whether it’s sustainability-focused, supporting specific social causes, or being a top-notch place to work — across social media sites and on your e-commerce site helps build trust and emotional connections with shoppers. 

When you share your mission and commitment to important causes, it makes your brand more relatable to the public. This will do wonders for your brand reputation. According to a Sprout Social report, 64% of consumers want to connect with brands, and 53% feel connected when a brand’s values align with their own. 

Communicating your mission also helps you control the narrative that surrounds your brand and lets you present your values in an authoritative and accurate way. 

5. Embrace visual and social content 

Authentic experiences are important to today’s shoppers. They like to see products in real-world settings — clothing modeled by real people and consumers demonstrating how something works. Actually, 40% of shoppers won’t purchase if a product page lacks UGC. Consumers seek out customer photos on product pages, search engines, social media, and other websites that sell the items.

Deploying the right visual and social content across every channel where your brand can be found engages shoppers and promotes a positive brand reputation. 

Displaying authentic imagery from real shoppers on your e-commerce site does more than just improve your brand reputation. When consumers interact with visual content on-site, shoppers spend more time on the website, buy more, and conversion rates soar.

For example, Le Col has seen average order value increase by 13%, revenue per visitor by 155%, and conversion rate by 125% when shoppers engage with UGC. 

6. Optimize creative product pages

Shoppers want to feel confident that anything they buy will meet their needs, and they rely on product descriptions to provide all the information they need. When product detail pages lack details, it’s so frustrating for consumers that they abandon their shopping cart. 

A whopping 98% of shoppers say they’ve been dissuaded from purchasing something because a product page didn’t have enough information. Not including detailed descriptions or including incorrect information can weaken your reputation and drive up your return rates. 

Highlight a product’s key features and use sensory wording that’s relatable to consumers. Include details about how an item works, how it’ll help in consumers’ daily lives, and the results that it will provide. Featuring visual UGC, reviews, and questions and answers helps shoppers make quick (but well-informed) decisions and inspires loyalty. 

7. Step up your SEO tactics 

A significant amount of shopping journeys start on search engines, like Google. So, it’s crucial to optimize your SEO strategy to ensure your brand gets noticed at this critical stage. Producing high-quality, SEO-centric content on your website will help you stand out. So, your brand reputation management process should factor in SEO, including how you’ll monitor negative online search results and what action you’ll take. 

You can gather insights into the wording that shoppers use to search for your products and describe how they meet their needs from syndicating reviews and other UGC. This information can then be used to create your SEO strategy around user sentiment and keep up with Google’s algorithm changes. 

8. Monitor your reviews on other websites

The more ratings and reviews that your products have, the more likely shoppers will be inspired to purchase. But, your website isn’t the only place where people can leave reviews. A key part of your brand reputation management strategy should be to keep an eye on what consumers are saying about you everywhere reviews can be posted. Channels like social media, Yelp, or your Google seller rating.

With thousands of reviews likely to pop up on multiple platforms, overseeing it all can be overwhelming. If you need help, a ratings and reviews platform can streamline everything. The right tools feature built-in insights and analytics to help you quickly identify themes and problems that could affect your brand reputation. As well as ways to take action to improve the sentiment around your brand.

9. Focus on top-notch customer service

Happy customers keep coming back. The best way to keep your most loyal shoppers happy is with proactive customer service and unique, personalized customer experiences. Customers are actually starting to expect these experiences from brands, with 25% of consumers saying they’re interested in personalization in shopping.

Getting it right — which involves actively listening to consumers and quickly resolving any problems that come up — offers endless benefits, including higher customer satisfaction and conversion rates, which translates to a stellar brand reputation. 

The most loyal customers tend to use words like “happy,” “love,” and “adore” when discussing their favorite brands. This kind of customer sentiment resonates with other shoppers and helps attract new ones. When happy customers share something positive about your brand on social media, for example, reward them with a special discount or other perk or highlight their stories on your website.

Showing appreciation for your best customers will amplify your brand and reinforce your reputation. 

10. Crack down on fake reviews

Nearly all shoppers (97%) say fake reviews make them lose trust in a brand, according to our research of 10,000 global consumers. That’s significant because 81% of shoppers also say they’d never use a brand again after losing trust in it. And they’re getting better at spotting fake reviews:

Cracking down on fake reviews associated with your brand is an essential part of your reputation management. Effective tactics include:

• Don’t allow fake reviews. Sounds obvious, but don’t be tempted to allow fake reviews just because they may be positive. Use an in-house our third-party content moderation service to screen them out
• Keep on top of legislation. Fake reviews are becoming so prevalent that new regulations are constantly being drawn up. For example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recently proposed new regulations to crack down on fake reviews
• Never incentivize positive reviews. You can ask customers for reviews (and you should!) but never offer financial reward for a positive review. If you do incentivize a review, through a coupon for example, then make sure to add a disclaimer to the review

Brand reputation management case studies

1. Retail giant River Island keeps on top of its brand reputation management through authentic visual content. The brand wanted to provide an authentic shopping experience for customers so they incorporated visual UGC onto their homepage, landing pages, and product pages. Visitors that engaged with this visual UGC on the brand’s site drove a 184% increase conversion rates
2. Hairhouse wanted to build a web presence that today’s shoppers expect by providing social proof through honest reviews. Not only did implementing reviews provide this, but the brand ensured only authentic, genuine reviews were featured. This real life social proof from shoppers inspired other shoppers to make purchases and led to a 35% increase in conversion rate.

Get a head start on your brand reputation management

These days, with consumers always-on, you can’t ignore your brand reputation. Taking the opportunity to listen and respond to customers, in both positive and negative situations, is crucial for growth. Follow these steps, repeat them and repeat them again and again — brand reputation management is an ongoing process. But a worthy one.

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And while almost all shoppers use ratings and reviews (88%) to evaluate or learn more about products, fake reviews are affecting their ability to confidently turn to reviews as a trusted source when making product purchasing decisions.

And preserving that trust isn’t just about maintaining your customer base and increasing sales. It’s also about maintaining regulatory compliance. Government agencies all over the world enforce consumer protection laws that prohibit unscrupulous marketing practices — including fake, deceptive or misleading reviews.

In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently announced two important regulations they’re taking to battle fake reviews:

1. They published the final Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. This is the first refresh of the Guides since 2009 and it provides new and updated guidance around endorsements by social media influencers as well as ratings and reviews 
2. The proposed Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials which clarifies what constitutes a “fake” review

What does the proposed FTC regulation say?

The new regulation proposed by the FTC will strengthen the agency’s ability to impose significant monetary penalties in cases involving fake and deceptive consumer reviews — up to $50,120 for each offending review to be imposed each time the review is viewed by a consumer. The aim is to ensure that consumers are provided with a more authentic, honest shopping experience and businesses are able to better protect their brand.

In its notice of proposed regulation, the FTC explained the need for the new rule by citing examples of clearly deceptive practices from its recent cases. They specifically called out the widespread emergence of generative AI, which will make it easier for bad actors to create fake reviews.

According to the FTC’s Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, “Our proposed rule on fake reviews shows that we’re using all available means to attack deceptive advertising in the digital age” and “should help level the playing field for honest companies.”

The proposed new rule clarifies that businesses are prohibited from:

• Selling or obtaining fake consumer reviews and testimonials. Writing or selling reviews by someone who doesn’t exist or has never bought the product
• Review hijacking. Using or repurposing a consumer review written for one product so that it appears to have been written for a substantially different product
• Buying positive or negative reviews. Providing compensation conditioned on the writing of consumer reviews expressing a particular sentiment, either positive or negative
• Illegally suppressing negative reviews. Using unjustified legal threats, other intimidation, or false accusations to prevent or remove a negative consumer review or hiding a negative review from the website
• Using “insider” reviews. Having employees or other insiders write reviews or testimonials of its products or services, without clearly disclosing their relationships
• Selling or buying fake social media indicators. Selling false indicators of social media influence, like fake followers or views
• Fake websites. Creating or controlling a website that claims to provide independent opinions about a category of products or services that includes its own products or services

As the champions of authentic shopping experiences, we at Bazaarvoice fully agree with the premise of this proposed rule and already provide our customers with powerful tools and processes to help them comply. This is simply another strong and welcomed step to help protect brands and the sanctity of consumer reviews and the role they play in commerce.

3 ways to protect your brand

Whether you’re in the US or another country, here’s the three golden rules we instruct our clients and partners to follow, to ensure they protect their brand, and their bottom line, from fake reviews.

1. Be transparent about who you collect reviews from, and how you do it

While consumers continue to trust reviews, they’re increasingly on the lookout for any signs of untrustworthy content. Typically, the behaviors that causes the most suspicion among consumers are:

• Multiple reviews with similar wording on the same product (55%)
• Review content not matching the product (49%) 
• Bad grammar/spelling mistakes (36%) 
• An overwhelming amount of five star/positive reviews (35%) 

Consumers have a right to trust the reviews they encounter and businesses have a responsibility to ensure this content is legitimate. The importance of this trust is further echoed in the guidance being put out by governments and consumer agencies around the world, echoed by the proposed FTC regulation. 

There’s a variety of ways businesses can ask customers to provide a review — review request emails, directly from e-commerce sites, sampling campaigns, or in a social media campaign. Additionally, brands may choose to share the reviews they collect with their retail partners so that consumers can find them anywhere they’re looking to make a purchasing decision. 

Regardless of how a review is collected, brands should never ask for or incentivize positive reviews. If consumers are offered a free product, promotional material (such as discounts or coupons), or a chance to win something of value in exchange for providing an unbiased review, then we recommend adding descriptors such as “this reviewer received a free product in exchange for their honest feedback” to any reviews collected using a promotion. 

2. Don’t screen out negative reviews — find value in them 

While some might think that negative reviews are an absolute disaster for their brand to have, they’re actually a necessity for your ratings and reviews program to thrive. In a survey we ran, over half (60%) of respondents said that negative reviews are as important as positive reviews in their decision to buy a product. The majority claimed that negative reviews contain more detailed info on product pros and cons, while 32% think that they are less likely to be fake reviews.

In addition to giving consumers a true feel for a product or service, negative reviews are an opportunity for engaging with consumers and identifying potential product improvements. 

Responding to, and taking action on, negative feedback will protect your brand by fostering trust and loyalty with customers.

3. Have a zero tolerance policy for fake reviews

Not protecting yourself against fake reviews undoubtedly puts your brand at risk. In the same research as above, respondents said that fraudulent reviews from a brand’s employees (42%) and from other customers (34%) would cause them to lose trust in a brand.

We also found that after losing trust in a brand, a vast majority (82%) of consumers would avoid using the brand ever again. If shoppers suspect a product to have fake reviews:

• 36% wouldn’t buy the product
• 28% wouldn’t trust the brand,
• 27% wouldn’t trust the site’s other reviews
• 25% wouldn’t purchase from the website
• 18% said ‘all of the above’

Companies should be aware of the possibility of fraudulent content through a variety of means, including disruptive or trolling activity, commercial messages, generative AI submissions, illegitimate or degrading content by a competitor, and self-promotion by employees.

We help protect our clients from a variety of different types of fraud. Using textual moderation and data driven, anti-fraud processes to evaluate reviews in the Bazaarvoice Network helps us to protect our clients and their shoppers. 

Our biggest and best piece of advice to protect your brand is to ensure you have a process in place to detect fake reviews, and to not allow them to be posted on your site. Hiring a third-party ratings and reviews provider and moderator is a huge help for this task. 

Protect your brand now

User-generated content is necessary in commerce today. But a reputation for fake reviews will damage your brand reputation as well as your bottom line. Brands and retailers need to continuously and proactively work to combat fake reviews by ensuring they have the right processes in place to protect themselves and their shoppers.

The steps we’ve outlined above, as well as the new guidance and proposed regulation from the FTC, will help you achieve this.

When shoppers can turn to ratings and reviews as sources of truth, it helps them to feel confident in purchasing from your company. Which boosts your bottom line and who doesn’t want that?

Learn more at Bazaarvoice.com/fakereviews.

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Unfortunately, once companies decide to build a customer advocacy program, they often jump straight to the tactics to build programs, like implementing a sampling program, launching a blogger outreach campaign, creating gamification, or starting a social media page on a new platform.

But there’s steps to take and questions to ask yourself before diving in. Before we get into that though, there’s one question that first needs answering.

What is customer advocacy?

Customer advocacy is the method of nurturing relationships with your existing, loyal customers so that they champion your brand, products, or services in return. A strong customer advocacy program will turn your loyal customers into vocal ambassadors for your brand. Why is this important?

Because according to Gartner research, over 75% of B2B buyers consult three or more sources of advocacy before they make a purchase decision.

So the more acts of advocacy you have, the higher your chances of making a sale. But it’s not just new sales that are impacted — the customer advocacy cycle impacts every stage of the buyer journey.

Customer advocates want to share their experiences with your business and help other customers get the most value out of your product or service, which includes upselling and cross-selling. Advocates are who shoppers want to hear from, which is why at Bazaarvoice we have a strong focus on customer advocacy.

Types of customer advocacy program

There’s multiple customer advocacy strategies you can use to enhance the voice of your customers, from simple case studies to guest speakers on webinars.

• Speaking engagements. What better way to advocate for someone than to hear it directly from the customer’s mouth? Inviting a customer to speak on a webinar or at an event is a powerful form of advocacy, which also provides your customer with a brand promotion opportunity.
• Reviews. 88% of shoppers turn to reviews when evaluating a product or service, so having customer reviews on your website and social pages inspires confidence in potential customers. Platforms like G2 are a great source of business reviews.
• Case studies. Probably the most common customer advocacy program, case studies tell the success stories of your existing customers. Prospects don’t need to hear your sales pitch, they want to see how other similar businesses have performed and the potential ROI they could see too. Case studies to just that
• Customer quotes. Often easy to source and even easier to display, quotes are a quick way for customers to share their experience with your brand. They can (and should) be shared across websites, social channels, and email

What to consider when building a customer advocacy program

When there’s more than one strategy on offer, it can be difficult knowing where to start or which is best for your brand. Taking a step back to consider the three points below can help you choose tactics that work best for your advocates and your company — and build a successful program from the start.

1. Why do customers buy your product or shop in your stores?

Often, the answer to this question will be based on research you have already done or insights gained through social media monitoring. As you build your advocacy program, you’ll start to clarify why customers shop with you. But it’s important to have an idea in the beginning to see how to best interact with your consumers.

For example, advocacy programs for a business that knows that people buy its products to belong to a group versus one that knows customers choose its products because of convenience will be completely different, with different messaging and tactics.

2. What motivates customers to be advocates?

This is key for your customer advocacy program. Step into your customers’ shoes and ask why they would want to interact with you. Understanding this will help you bring what’s valuable to your customer to your program.

For example, if you look at what Sharpie did to engage with its fans online, you can see that they know that its customers want to show off their creativity. So Sharpie provides a place for advocates to receive recognition for their creative powers.

Sister company Prismacolor engages its audience in a slightly different way: Prismacolor loyalists define themselves as artists who want to give advice and learn from other artists, so the Prismacolor studio provides an avenue for artists to collaborate.

The tactics are similar, but the messaging and interactions are different, based on differences in their advocates.

3. How do I make it easy for my customers to advocate?

The big question. The easier you make it for advocates to talk about your products or services, the more volume you’ll see. Consider how customers interact with you today and where you could easily add a new touchpoint to encourage them to advocate. Or, how are they already advocating? Are they using particular hashtags or sites more than others? These behaviors might be ones you can noninvasively participate in, too.

Often the easiest way to build customer advocacy is through a brand community. These communities provide a platform for customers to engage with your brand and encourage them to share stories about you.

Customer advocacy examples

Diving down into these three areas can help you get the most of your customer advocacy program and help you decide on your next steps. The answers to these questions can help you decide which tactics would be most effective — and which to avoid. So, what will your advocacy program look like?

Although brands understand influencer marketing’s importance, shoppers are no longer looking to their favorite celebrity for purchasing guidance. The tide has changed, and shoppers want to follow individuals they feel like they know and trust. 

Bazaarvoice research suggests shoppers prefer content from micro-influencers such as brand employees, because they are more relatable, genuine, and authentic. Micro-influencers could easily be their next-door neighbor or best friend who genuinely enjoys and uses this product or service. 

Employee influencers strategies

With this revelation, some brands’ influencer efforts are shifting to the people who know their products or services the best — employees. As the micro-influencer trend begins to ramp up, here’s the companies are leading the pack. 

Spotlighting behind-the-scenes initiatives

Walmart is no stranger to the impact of social media. Beginning with local Facebook groups for almost 5,000 locations, Walmart gave its stores the autonomy to post unique content about the goings-on in their location. To take social media a step further, Walmart’s launch of their Spotlight program has begun to transform 500 employees into pint-sized influencers.

Under this Spotlight intuitive, employees become the brand by sharing behind-the-scenes content on their personal social media accounts. From the #WalmartHolidayShuffle TikTok trend to the Thanksgiving-themed Instagram campaigns, not only does the Spotlight program give shoppers an insider look at the brand, it also rewards employees for their influencer efforts.

The program is still in its infancy, but Walmart hopes to grow the influencer program to roughly 1,500 employees soon.

Purely social engagement 

Dell has always been a social media pioneer. The company realized big dreams early on by launching response analysis and social media monitoring technology. Dell’s forward-thinking spirit inspires the brand advocacy of its employees. To capitalize on their employee’s brand passion, Dell created an employee-driven social sharing content strategy.

With over 10,000 employees participating in the program, Dell encourages advocates to use their platform to share inspirational content relevant to Dell customers. Only 20% of Dell’s content is about the brand itself, while the other 80% highlights the organization’s passions. Empowering the employees has exponentially grown brand advocacy and loyalty.

Strengthening company culture online 

Zappos’ free-spirited persona seemingly attracts a large audience. To give shoppers insights into the brand’s daily operations, Zappos encourages their Zappoians (aka employees) to share content about all things happening within the company walls. From simple meetings to costume extravaganzas, Zapponians can post freely on the EyeZapp – Zappos’ official Twitter page, using the hashtag #CompanyCulture.

As a result of Zappos’ employee influencers efforts, shoppers and employees alike flock to be a part of its culture. 

Coffee lovers unite

Early on, Starbucks understood the weight of empowering employees to share their voices. To amplify the impact of their brand’s message, they created the “partners” platform for their employees to share their daily activities with Starbucks enthusiasts worldwide.

Calling employees partners and encouraging them to share their love for all things coffee under the Starbucks brand increased its authenticity and allowed employees to have a sense of closeness and accountability. 

As part of the Starbucks mission to engage employee influencers and brand advocates, they also crafted a social media account specifically for its partners, which grows weekly.

Exercising social media opportunities 

In 2020, Peloton sought micro-influencers in the fitness community to broaden their reach, ramp up user participation, and increase their long-term bottom line. By combining social media, virtual events, and its digital power, Peloton enhanced the way instructors connected with riders while enriching their fitness experience. 

Peloton continues to rely on its instructors and fitness enthusiasts’ love for promoting and sharing content about products and experiences they love. 

Turn your employees into influencers

On average, research suggests that employee content sees 8x more engagement than content shared through a brands channel. Empowering employees to become micro-influencers and brand advocates not only builds trust and shopper confidence, but the employee feels valued and appreciated for their expertise – an overall win-win for any brand.

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Brand loyalty success means that a customer feels connected to your brand and keeps coming back for more. Think about the brands you’re loyal to. You trust them, and you’re more likely to shop with them over other brands or retailers that offer similar products. You’ve probably recommended them to your friends, family, and maybe even strangers.

Hubspot found that customers today trust companies ​​55% less than they used to. However, if you can overcome that barrier and build loyalty and trust, you’ll set your brand up for success. About 61% of loyal customers go out of their way to buy the brands they love, and 60% make more frequent purchases. 

How do you build brand loyalty?

A consumer will start to trust a brand when the brand delivers on exactly what it presents itself to be. Brands and retailers can accomplish this by being authentic in everything they do. About 80% of customers have gained loyalty for a brand over time because of great experiences with an excellent product, service, advice, and more.

Brands that have a positive, seamless end-to-end shopping experience and find ways to make existing customers feel special are the ones that are most successful today.

3 brand loyalty examples

Let’s take a look at a few brands that excel at building loyalty with their customer bases with these best-in-class brand loyalty examples. 

1. Starbucks

Starbucks gets a gold star for brand loyalty. Starbucks fans support it like supporting a football team. The company has developed a loyalty program called “My Starbucks Rewards” that keeps coffee-drinkers coming back to stores over and over again. As of July 2021, the loyalty program has 24.2 million members in the U.S.

The Starbucks app makes ordering, customizing, and paying for coffee very easy. The company also uses personalization to offer customers individualized rewards based on past purchases. Plus, customers earn stars every time they make a purchase in the app that they can eventually redeem for free food, drinks, or Starbucks merch. 

Yes, there’s probably cheaper coffee in your town or a cool shop that uses the freshest, highest-quality beans, but people keep returning to Starbucks over and over because of brand loyalty. 

If your brand decides to go down the loyalty program route, there’s several options for how to do it. There’s points systems, tiered, rewards, and VIP programs. No matter which one you pick, you need to ensure the program is easy for your customers to use. 

With Starbucks’ program, customers simply order on their phones, and the app does the rest of the work by calculating star rewards and letting customers redeem them.  Loyalty programs that are confusing or inconvenient won’t inspire the repeat purchases you’re looking for. By rewarding your customers for choosing you, you’ll be rewarded with loyal shoppers for life. 

2. Coca-Cola

Morning Consult asked 6,600 customers which brands they’re most loyal to, and Coca-Cola came in at number 8 on the list (Walmart and Amazon were numbers 1 and 2, respectively). While there’s other sodas out there, like store brands or Pepsi, Coca-Cola drinkers are most loyal to their brand. In fact, the internet is full of memes about customers being frustrated with being asked, “Is Pepsi okay?” when they order a Coke. 

We’ve all seen Coca-Cola commercials that either elicit nostalgia or show a wide range of people drinking and enjoying Coca-Cola products. But one of the most significant ways the brand has built loyalty over the years is by adapting to meet its customers’ changing needs and tastes. There’s Coke Zero, Coke Life, and a wide range of milks, juices, teas, and more under the Coca-Cola brand name. 

How can you follow Coca-Cola’s lead? Listen to your customers. Analyze the feedback they’re giving you in product reviews and on social media. Do they wish you offered a different type of product? Do they want one of your products to have a certain feature? Listen to their changing needs and give them what they’re looking for to show you’re on their side. 

3. Fenty Beauty

Launched in 2017, Fenty Beauty is a relatively new brand, but it already has a massive base of loyalists. Within the first few weeks of launch, the brand reported $100 million in sales. The brand was created by Rihanna, who already had millions of loyal fans worldwide. Still, a lot of the brand’s success can be attributed to its inclusivity (a popular foundation comes in 50 shades!) and its authentic social media strategy. Fenty builds loyalty by using its social media to showcase customer tweets and customers who use its products. The brand also posts makeup tutorials on its Youtube channel so customers can see what the products look like and how they apply. 

Any brand can have an authentic social media presence. Visual user-generated content (UGC) gives shoppers social proof about what their peers love and how products look in real life. This social proof inspires customers to make more confident and faster purchasing decisions. 

On-site galleries that populate product pages with social media content are a great way to bring social UGC to your website. Ask customers to upload their own photos of your products using a specific hashtag for a chance to be featured on your website and social channels. 

Turn these brand loyalty examples into profit

Authenticity in everything you do is what will drive better brand loyalty success. One of the easiest ways to be more authentic is by tapping into the voice of the customer — in the form of ratings, reviews, social media posts, videos, and more.

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In short: yes. Brand loyalty is essential if you want your brand to succeed today. Or any day. Using the latest research and Bazaarvoice data, we’ll detail how brands can grow loyalty, highlight brands with high levels of loyalty, and explain how they achieved it.

Spoiler alert: It’s because customer retention is much more valuable than finding new customers.

Chapters:

1. What is brand loyalty?
2. Types of brand loyalty
3. The importance of of brand loyalty
4. How to build brand loyalty
5. Brand loyalty examples
6. How to measure brand loyalty
7. Brand loyalty is key to long term growth

It’ll come as absolutely no surprise that e-commerce is a saturated industry. For any shopping-related search, there’s pages and pages (and pages) of search engine or social media results that follow. With all the options consumers have at their disposal, how can brands earn their loyalty?

As McKinsey & Company partner Jess Huang stated in a McKinsey interview:

“It’s not that consumers are necessarily becoming less loyal. Now it’s just so much easier to access them and so much easier for them to try something new. So brands are really trying to figure out a way to develop and maintain that relationship with the consumer.”

In a crowded playing field where shoppers are fickle — especially Gen Z — how can brands win loyalty from their customers? And why should they? In a rapidly expanding market, companies have to keep up with what drives consumers’ brand loyalty. And, in particular, the tactics that will consistently win them over.

What is brand loyalty?

Brand loyalty is when shoppers continue to make repeat purchases from a specific brand, in spite of there being similar (or cheaper) offerings on the market. It’s important for businesses because brand loyalty means higher retention rates and higher growth rates, leading to a recurring revenue stream.

Types of brand loyalty

Brand loyalty can take multiple forms. There’s customers who are loyal because of how they perceive and relate to a brand. And there’s those in it for the rewards. Both are valid and contribute to the growth of your brand.

• Community building. This is when the customer derives meaning and alignment with a brand because of a shared purpose or values. It’s how customers become psychologically attached to a brand
• Rewards programs. The more traditional brand loyalty definition associated with loyalty programs. It includes rewards in the form of customer points, perks, and discounts

The importance of brand loyalty

What’s the benefit of having loyal customers? On a personal level, it creates a sense of community. From an ROI standpoint, it increases customer retention and creates natural brand ambassadors. As a result, it ultimately boosts your bottom line.

After all, it’s easier — and much more lucrative — to sell to existing customers than new customers. According to a Semrush report, there’s a 60-70% probability of selling to a previous customer and only a 5-20% probability with a new customer. Furthermore, previous customers are 31% more likely to have higher average order values (AOV).

Another valuable outcome of loyal customers is that some become brand ambassadors — at no extra cost. Unlike influencers who require a fee or freebie, brand ambassadors do it out of sheer love for your products/brand.

So, these customers-turned-brand-ambassadors promote your brand through word of mouth and user-generated content (UGC).

How to build brand loyalty

Now that you know what drives brand loyalty, implement a strategy to strengthen your own. These are the actionable steps and qualities needed to grow brand loyalty.

Define your goals and target customers

First, decide what your end goal is for your brand loyalty strategy. What do you want to gain: loyalty program members, higher AOVs, subscribers, better product launches? All of the above? Identifying your desired outcomes will help you focus and plan your efforts.

Next, know who your target customers are so you can better serve and reach them. Your current customers are your best resource. Because not only are they your target customers, but they’ll also help inform what will attract the loyalty of new customers. As Huang points out:

“Look at your customers’ transaction-and-engagement data and understand how they’re interacting with you. Do your consumer research to learn what they want and what you can offer them before you even start thinking, ‘Well, I want my loyalty program to look like X.’”

Analyze what they like and don’t like about your brand. Review the questions they ask. Survey what needs or requests they have from your brand to illuminate opportunities for improving brand loyalty.

Align with the values of your target customers

Increasingly, consumers are looking to do business with brands they identify with. An Accenture survey of over 25,000 customers found that modern consumers, “are purposefully seeking to influence their communities and the environment” through their shopping behavior. As a result, they’re willing to switch brands and pay extra for those that take visible action for a positive societal impact. This is especially prevalent since the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brands must grow with this shift if they want to compete. This means re-evaluating their approach and standards and, subsequently, their communication and operations.

According to a McKinsey study, “As many as 30 to 40 percent of consumers continue to switch brands or retailers, driven primarily by younger consumers seeking value, combined with greater emphasis on purpose-driven alignment and quality.”

Offer Membership and loyalty programs

One of the primary and most common ways to build brand loyalty is through a member-based program. These types of brand loyalty programs provide members with deals but also deeper access to your brand, a certain level of status, and exclusivity. Consumers enjoy being part of a club, and for some, the prospect of not being a member can result in fear of missing out (FOMO).

VIP tiers, loyalty programs, and clubs are all ways brands can offer membership to their customers. Credit card companies and airlines are examples of brands that have mastered VIP tiers. With each membership level, customers achieve more perks, like bypassing lines, fee waivers, and upgrades.

• Clubs are ways for companies to offer customers who are interested in particular products more of what they love. And they can do so on a consistent basis. For example, wine shops that offer a monthly wine club. Or, perhaps the biggest club in the game — Amazon Prime. Club membership can include perks like free shipping, discounts on future purchases, exclusive access to sales and additional features, etc

• Loyalty programs are rewards-based, where customers earn points with every purchase, like a digital punch card. Think Sephora’s Beauty Insider program. This is a popular choice because it’s easy to execute for brands. Also there’s no additional financial investment or risk for the customer

For more revenue and customer loyalty opportunities, brands should consider adding tiers to their loyalty program.

Provide a high-quality shopping experience

The high expectations that consumers have for the physical shopping experience are just as important for e-commerce brands. The speed, usability, and presentation that shoppers are met with on an e-commerce site all matter. Especially for first-time and repeat buyers.

Exceptional customer service is also one of the leading drivers of brand loyalty. Quick response times, empathy, and a solutions-oriented approach are among the customer service elements shoppers expect. Bazaarvoice’s Questions & Answers tools provide a streamlined portal for easily and efficiently answering customer queries. As well as increasing conversions by as much as 98%.

We’re living in an age of digital immediacy. These days, 47% of customers expect websites to load in two seconds or less. Website speed directly affects the shopping experience, from the home page to product and checkout pages. As for Gen Z, this particular customer segment has a low tolerance for slow or poorly functioning websites. 

Promote affordability with discounts and deals

Savings continue to be a top motivator of brand loyalty for consumers. According to a GWI research report, almost four in 10 shoppers actively seek discounts and offers, and about three in 10 buy lower-priced products more frequently.

Promo codes, email subscriber-exclusive offers, loyalty and membership program discounts, flash sales, a diverse product portfolio. Just some of the tactics for offering discounts and value items to customers.

Be strategic about offering discounts so that it doesn’t compromise your bottom line. Offer discounts on slow-moving items, during downtimes, for an exchange like a newsletter sign-up. Or increase conversions with free shipping, for example.

Leverage user-generated content (UGC)

In a competitive, fast-paced online marketplace, the focus should be on the customer. You need to provide the best service, value, and experience for them. UGC puts the customer at the forefront with marketing that shoppers trust, as opposed to only promotional content from the brand.

Reviews and visual UGC are very influential for shoppers. Product reviews can increase conversions by 74%, making product pages the prime location to showcase UGC. As demonstrated below:

Bazaarvoice’s reviews and gallery tools help brands acquire and display UGC across their product pages and websites. This way, shoppers can see the social proof and realistic representation of products that UGC offers.

But it doesn’t stop at product pages. Social media is another extremely effective platform for sharing UGC. In fact, UGC from social media highly impacts the purchasing decisions of nearly 80% of shoppers. Social media enables brands to engage directly with their audience. UGC makes that connection even stronger, fostering brand loyalty in the process. When customers post authentic UGC of your products, that presents the perfect opportunity to engage with, and repost, their content.

Bazaarvoice customer Parachute perfectly demonstrates how to showcase visual UGC on product pages. Simply with a link to see more on their Instagram Shop.

Consider an Augmented Reality feature

If it makes sense for your brand, augmented reality (AR) is the one. It’s e-commerce’s new solution to shopping for products you can’t physically test or try on. According to GWI, online shoppers’ interest in AR is high. Especially so in the automotive, fashion, home decor, and electronics categories. Particular interest in these categories stems from consumers’ preference for experiencing high-priced and aesthetic products before making an investment.

AR takes the interactive experience to the next level. The beauty industry has already made good use of this trend. MAC’s YouCam makeup simulator resulted in a triple increase in engagement for the brand over a two-month period. And similarly, consumer engagement from the introduction of Estee Lauder’s virtual lipstick try-on feature increased by 133%. AR is nearing mainstream adoption if Shopify’s YouCam Makeup app is any indication. Brands that implement this innovative tech early will be leaders of this growing trend.

Brands that offer an AR feature present another opportunity for their customers to interact with them. At the same time, they create an enhanced and elevated shopping experience that adds value by solving a specific need.

Conduct predictive analysis

Predictive analysis is particularly helpful for designing your loyalty program. It’s the practice of analyzing consumer behavior to project future interests and purchasing decisions. This strategy can help guide consumers to products of potential interest based on their purchase history. In turn ensuring the loyalty program is mutually beneficial. As Huang goes on to say:

More companies are trying to identify specific things that they want to do through their loyalty program by understanding the analytics. Which is really important, so that they don’t give too much away to the consumer.

Predictive analysis can also determine the best timing for certain promotions. How? By looking at time periods with high engagement and sales spikes.

Encourage subscriptions

Subscriptions inherently guarantee brand loyalty, as long as they’re executed well. By signing up for a subscription, the subscriber is willingly agreeing to make repeat purchases on a regular basis. To make this kind of commitment, the subscription must be something they already enjoy, or it solves a pain point. Some brands offer subscriptions as an additional service line. For others, like HelloFresh and BarkBox, it’s their entire business model.

The subscription model is booming. From 2012 to 2018, subscription businesses grew more than 300%, approximately five times faster than S&P 500 companies’ revenues. Since then, the pandemic accelerated the subscription economy, and its revenue is projected to more than double by 2025.

The key to a successful subscription strategy is to deliver an unmet need. That can be having products consumers love delivered to their doorstep every month. Or it’s full access to publications like The New York Times. Best practices for a sustainable, successful subscription program include excellent customer service and providing value, convenience, variety, and flexible pricing.

Use a sampling strategy

One sure-fire way to get the attention of customers is to send samples to them directly. This can apply to product launches or hero products that might need a market refresh. People love free products and delight in receiving a delivery. 

On this note, we recently surveyed 6,000 Influenster members who had recently participated in a sampling campaign. Of those we asked:

• 53% said the product became a staple for them
• 49% followed the brand on social
• 95% wrote a review about the sampled product
• 88% recommended it to family and friends 

For each target customer, sampling led to several successful key brand loyalty metrics.

Brand loyalty examples

Learn from the pros. These top brands show how to expertly generate high brand loyalty from their customers.

Adidas Creators Club

The Adidas Creators Club is a membership-based rewards program. It’s a genius model that rewards customers for engaging with their brand. Members earn points by creating an account, completing their profile, reviewing products, and participating in Adidas training sessions and events. As members earn more points, they are eligible to advance to the next club tier.

The four Creator Club tiers come with their own collection of perks. They include exclusive rewards and the chance to partner with Adidas to give back to causes. Aka, combining multiple brand loyalty motivations into one program.

Microsoft Rewards

Microsoft Rewards is cleverly crafted to drive engagement and purchases toward focus products. For example, members earn points by using Bing, Edge, and Windows 10 for their online searches and activity. Like Adidas, their rewards program includes automatic donations to selected causes with acquired points. And, as with credit cards, members can earn one point for each dollar spent on Microsoft products.

Microsoft Rewards also features daily gamified challenges for extra chances to earn points. Points can be redeemed for gift cards, sweepstakes entries, nonprofit donations, and more.

Home Depot Canada’s Seed Sampling

Bazaarvoice customer Home Depot Canada gets it. The brand is a prime example of how to strategically make a sampling program that hits the trifecta:

Partnering with Bazaarvoice, Home Depot Canada launched a Managed Sampling campaign for their most loyal customers to generate buzz around their high-priority items.

This tactic produced enthusiastic reviews from the target customers. But more importantly, it doubled conversions for products in the seed campaign. This resulted in successful product launches for Home Depot Canada vendors.

BEKO

Beko is an appliance and consumer electronics brand that relied on UGC for a successful expansion into the Australian market. Working with Bazaarvoice, Beko accumulated over 8,000 customer reviews and syndicated them on their retail partners’ websites, which increased their exposure to their target market, strengthened their retail partnerships, and converted new brand advocates.

Petco

Petco focuses on building trust with its customers to increase brand loyalty. With its partnership with Bazaarvoice, Petco accrued 80% of their 1.5 million reviews through syndication. This large volume of UGC inspires confident purchases in other shoppers. Beyond reviews, Petco recognizes its responsibility as a supplier to pet parents who care deeply about their pets’ health and happiness. In addition to selling quality products to pet owners, they’ve become a trusted resource through Bazaarvoice’s Questions & Answers tool.

With Bazaarvoice Connections, Petco can team up with their vendors to efficiently and effectively answer any customer questions or concerns. This allows them to connect with customers and gain valuable product feedback.

For further reading, a few more brand loyalty success stories can be found here!

How to measure brand loyalty

With the many tactics to build brand loyalty comes multiple ways to track it:

Customer satisfaction surveys. Want to know the level of loyalty your customers have for your brand? Ask them. Luckily for you, we just produced a guide on how to do exactly that!

Engagement. Website visits, customer reviews, social media followers, social media interactions. All are indicators of how invested your customers are in your brand.

Track repurchasing behavior. Use your customer and inventory management insights to track repeat purchases. The number of customers who continue to buy from your brand will tell you how high your brand loyalty is.

Number of loyalty and rewards program members. Track how many people are enrolled in your membership, club, or loyalty program and the trends over time. Determine what could be attributed to the rise or fall in members to identify areas of opportunity and improvement.

Number of subscribers. If your brand offers a subscription, or is subscription-based, how many subscribers you have is a key indicator of brand loyalty. If you’re not consistently gaining subscribers, you should reevaluate your subscription’s price point, variety, and value to the consumer.

Brand loyalty is the key to long-term growth

Clearly, building brand loyalty requires a multi-faceted, holistic approach. It’s not one simple step but many to achieve a high level of brand loyalty. But once you get it, you’ll have returning customers who make repeat, and often larger, purchases.

According to Accenture’s study, the majority of consumers are willing to pay more to brands that meet all their needs. And according to a McKinsey survey on loyalty, 62% of members in a paid loyalty program are likely to spend more with that brand. That amounts to increased revenue over an extended period of time. Something every brand wants!

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Masterclass: How to maintain brand loyalty in a tough economy

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Follow along and you’ll be able to create a sustainable path to long-term loyalty and e-commerce growth.

Chapters:

1. What are brand pillars?
2. Why should you establish brand pillars?
3. How to define your brand pillars
4. How to optimize your brand pillars for maximum impact
5. Brand pillars examples
6. Brand pillars require big picture thinking

Brand pillars are like first impressions — good ones are memorable and make you want to know more. Lackluster ones are forgettable. Bad ones are a red flag. Like when you’re on a first date and he tells you he’s a magician. 

They give meaning to brands and convey their identity. That’s why it’s crucial for brands to have strong pillars in place so they will click — and stick — with customers.

Take TOMS, for example. The apparel and accessory brand known for its comfortable slip-on shoes is synonymous with social impact. Their mission to support grassroots efforts is embedded in their business model and pervasive throughout their marketing. They’re a company with rock-solid brand pillars that literally hold up their business.

Brands pillars that resonate strongly with customers fuel brand loyalty and help build your community — if they’re executed effectively. Discover how to wield the power of brand pillars to attract, retain, and increase your customer base.

What are brand pillars?

Brand pillars are the key traits you want people to remember about your brand. They are, as the term implies, what your brand stands on and what your brand stands for.

They communicate what’s most important to know about your brand. Some examples include:

• What pain point your brand solves: convenience, efficiency, affordability, special expertise, etc.
• Values: empathy, inclusion, accessibility, sustainability, etc.
• Mission: the actionable and tangible goals your brand seeks to accomplish

Though related, brand pillars are a separate entity from core values and mission statements. Brand pillars can incorporate aspects of both, but are more expansive and elaborate. They’re the connective thread woven throughout your team’s communications, strategy, and actions.

For example at Bazaarvoice, ours are as follows:

1. Customer. We see our own success through our customers’ outcomes. We approach every situation with a customer-first mindset.
2. Passion. Our energy is contagious, because we hire for passion, drive, and curiosity. We love what we do, which makes us laser-focused on our mission.
3. Transparency. We believe in the power of authentic feedback. It’s in our DNA. We do the right thing when faced with hard choices. Transparency and trust accelerate our collective performance.
4. Innovation. We seek to innovate as we are not content with the status quo. We embrace agility and experimentation as an advantage.
5. Strength. We bring our whole selves to the mission and find value in diverse perspectives. We champion what’s best for Bazaarvoice before individuals or teams. As a stronger company, we build a stronger community.

These pillars act as the Bazaarvoice moral compass. They guide how we interact with each other, our customers, our partners, and the world.

Why should you establish brand pillars?

Brand pillars distinguish your brand from competitors. But more than that, they’re also a tool for catching and keeping the attention of your customers.

Increase brand loyalty

Influential brand pillars frame customers’ perceptions of your brand in a positive way. Brand pillars register with customers because they speak to them on some level. Emotionally, intellectually, financially, motivationally, etc. This draws customers to the brand, and the delivery of those promises is what keeps them. And there, you have brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty has a wide range of benefits, including lowering customer acquisition cost (CAC) and creating customers that spend more and make up the majority of your overall customers.

Provide long-term success

Brand pillars that outline the brand’s impact on customers, community, and society are what support long-term value. According to Harvard Business Review, focusing more on stakeholder interests rather than shareholders alone will secure longevity for brands. “Accordingly, companies are rethinking how to grow their businesses while communicating both purpose and strategy.”

This approach aligns with consumer expectations. After all, the majority want to know how the brands they support are focusing and taking action on social and environmental issues.

Make your brand relatable to customers

Strong brand pillars allow potential customers to get a sense of your brand at a glance and find something that they relate to. This could be one or multiple components, like your brand’s values or solutions that appeal to them. A Sprout Social study found that 64% of consumers want brands to connect with them. Another 53% reported feeling connected when a brand’s values match their own.

Brand relatability is especially important to millennials and Generation Z. They want to see what issues brands support and what their behaviors are before they make a financial decision. The brands that conflict with consumer values tend to suffer for. Look at Chick-fil-A and CrossFit, for example. Both companies faced boycotts as a result of their individual CEO’s social stance and controversial comments, respectively.

Control your narrative

Determining and communicating brand pillars allows brands to present themselves to the public authoritatively and accurately. Achieve this by documenting what your brand does, what impact it has, and the beliefs and point of view it abides by. It also creates a guideline for brands to hold themselves accountable in their daily and overall operations. Aka, practicing what they preach. An essential way to win over today’s consumers.

If brand pillars are successfully developed and followed, they serve as a reference point to anyone who might misunderstand or question your brand’s intentions.

Align team members on shared vision and goals

Brand pillars not only represent your brand to your external audience but to your internal team as well. This way, staff can be on the same page and integrate the brand pillars in their own work and professional communications. A little company-wide education can go a long way. The peace of mind from not having to worry about the content your staff post is invaluable.

Pro tip: Brand pillars can also be a handy tool for attracting prospective talent. How? By appealing to their own values and goals. Fill your careers page(s) with values-led content so prospects understand what kind of company they’d be signing up for.

How to define your brand pillars

To develop and determine your brand pillars, answer these questions with the key decision-makers in your company. For example, let’s say Company X is an apparel company. Here’s an example of how they might answer these questions to decide what their brand pillars should be:

• What’s your brand’s vision? To offer sustainable clothing that is stylish and affordable
• What do you want your customers to know? How do you want your customers to remember your brand? What will resonate with your customers? Company X is a family-owned business. It was started by two sisters with a clothing design background and a passion for supporting under-served communities
• What matters to your brand? Supporting and featuring independent designers. Reducing our carbon footprint. Inclusivity. Making high-quality, fashionable clothing available to a wide consumer base
• What problems do you solve? Selling clothing for all body types, attentive and helpful customer service, fast delivery, affordability
• What makes you better or different from your direct competitors? We source all our products and materials from independent artisans and designers in low-income locations. We also offer free shipping on all orders, and invest profits on select items into at-risk communities

Based on this assessment, Company X might define their brand pillars as: inclusivity, affordability, sustainability, community, and convenience. Company X would then expand on what each pillar means to them and how they operate accordingly.

How to optimize your brand pillars for maximum impact

Defining your brand pillars is just the first step. To see results, you have to implement them into your:

1. Business strategy
2. Team management
3. Coaching
4. Marketing team
5. Sales team
6. Branding

Make brand pillars part of your company language

This is brand stewardship in action. Don’t just let your brand pillars sit on an “About Us” page on your website to be forgotten. Regularly including them as part of your company culture will help your team get familiar with them, understand them, and feel comfortable speaking to them.

When developing a brand strategy, use your brand pillars to help inform and describe the main points, tactics, and goals. Using the previous Company X example, what would they ask themselves? Probably, “How does this strategy convey and accomplish inclusivity, affordability, sustainability, community, and convenience?”

Likewise, when evaluating your own performance or a coworker’s, use the pillars to help describe achievements. As well as that, look for areas of opportunity and space for improvement. For example, a team member might excel in one pillar, like supporting diversity and inclusion efforts. However, they may need to grow in another, like their customer service skills. Expose new hires to brand pillars early, explaining and using them in training documents and presentations.

Instill them in your team

Foster an environment that inspires your team to embrace and project your brand pillars. On a systematic level, build a staff team that reflects your brand pillars:

Thinking strategically about your team structure and roles can be the catalyst for change. This will pivot how your company operates in accordance with your brand pillars. Be transparent in sharing your thought process and planning with the company to encourage brand pillar stewards and enthusiastic supporters on your team. If you’re in the brand pillar development stage, loop in the rest of the team to get their input.

That way it’s a collaborative process that will boost sentiment and support of your brand pillars.

Increase online visibility and awareness

Make your brand pillars easily accessible and prominent. Consider a hashtag campaign to encourage social sharing to spread them wider in online communities. Some primary platforms to share your brand pillars include:

• Your website: Post brand pillars on your About Us page or a dedicated brand pillars page
• Social media: Create social media posts on your main channels with links to where your brand pillars are on your website. Indicate relevant brand pillars in messaging and captions. 91% of survey respondents believe in social media as a connection tool for brands, so social platforms are the perfect space to reach customers
• Email campaigns: Include emails specifically about your brand pillars or that include a section detailing your brand pillars in your brand’s email newsletter

Leverage user-generated content

Brand ambassadors that represent your brand pillars through their own content can be a great source to extend reach and impact. Start by organically acquiring brand ambassadors through online engagement:

• Like, share, and comment on posts from your followers mentioning or tagging your brand
• Respond to followers’ comments and DMs
• Include content and tags from followers in Story highlights
• When customers ask questions or leave reviews online, respond to them — whether they’re positive or negative

Once you have followers-turned-brand ambassadors and glowing reviews from happy customers, promote their pictures, videos, and testimonials — a.k.a. user-generated content (UGC). Sharing visual UGC of your brand represented by other customers shows your audience your brand in a relatable and appealing way.

Seek out UGC that’s specifically relevant to you. There should be a large selection if you’ve successfully promoted and disseminated them. For example, Bazaarvoice’s Social Media Management tools offer a storage hub of permissions-granted UGC to use for sharing on social, or posting to website galleries.

While visual UGC promotes your brand pillars, it can also increase conversions by 150%, average order value by 15%, and time on site by 150%.

Reviews are an extra effective form of UGC. In fact, reviews influence purchasing decisions for 97% of shoppers, and the chance of conversion doubles for those who interact with reviews. Brand websites, social media, and emails are great places to highlight helpful reviews. Show social proof of your brand pillars and bolster their influence with reviews that mention or reflect them.

Brand pillars examples

Brand pillars are applicable to all companies and brands, regardless of size or industry. Use these examples that go above and beyond to inspire your own brand pillar strategy.

Home improvement

The home improvement retailer’s corporate responsibility page clearly lays out their brand pillars, which it names as their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy. It’s defined as, “Values-based and centered on three key pillars: focusing on people, operating sustainably, and strengthening our communities.” To encourage sharing among their online community, they include a corresponding #doingourpart hashtag.

Each pillar has its own supporting content and metrics of how Home Depot reflects them. Their brand pillars are the launching pad for community programs, like the Homer Fund grants and scholarships and the Home Depot Foundation for skilled trade training and education.

Home Depot even created a highlight video to show the impact of its ESG brand pillars, which is an example of supporting content to extend their reach.

Consumer electronics

The foundation for Samsung’s branding philosophy includes five main pillars: “Innovation, cutting-edge technology, world-class designs, recruiting the world’s best talents, and internal branding.”

As a way to distinguish them from their commercial rivals, Samsung went all-in on their brand pillars. This included investing in an R&D department committed to identifying areas for innovation and new technologies, and differentiating from giants like Apple with intentional mobile design. 

Samsung leaned heavily on pushing their brand pillars in advertising and marketing campaigns, and ensuring separate departments within the company collaborated with each other to help support brand pillar implementation.

Food & beverage

With a new strategic approach, dubbed Performance with Purpose (PwP) by CEO Indra Nooyi, the established global company focused on a long-term strategy with an emphasis on societal contribution and impact. This new direction was based on four sustainability pillars: financial sustainability, human sustainability, environmental sustainability, and talent sustainability.

These pillars led to significant progress. The brand saw a healthier product portfolio, water conservation, a 39% increase in women working in senior management roles, and an 80% growth in net revenue. PepsiCo’s PwP model laid the framework for other large-scale global companies to reform their brand strategy.

Land O’Lakes, a Bazaarvoice customer, also has distinct brand pillars that are authentic and specific to their brand and background. Its website outlines their pillars, including tech innovation, sustainability, and prioritizing its farmers and community. The brand’s social media and blog posts support and express the motivations and main ideas behind their brand pillars.

Beauty

Feelunique, a European beauty retailer and also a Bazaarvoice customer, outlines their brand pillars on their About Us page. The company specifically references their inclusive philosophy that, “beauty is more than skin deep,” its charitable partnerships, its focus on excellent customer service, and its commitment to natural and vegan ingredients.

Environmental sustainability is becoming increasingly more important to consumers. It’s a top brand pillar that many major beauty brands have in common. A Bazaarvoice study of over 8,000 consumers revealed that the majority seek out green or sustainable labels when shopping, and are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products.

LUSH Cosmetics has a dedicated page for their brand pillars in the form of declarative statements. For example, “we believe in making effective products from fresh, organic fruit and vegetables, the finest essential oils, and safe synthetics,” and “we invent our own products and fragrances.”

LUSH implements its brand pillars consistently and cohesively across its marketing channels. Their Instagram Story highlights pinned to the top of their profile represent their brand pillars organized by category. Including Community, Values, Take Action, and their range of clean products.

Technology

Our brand pillars are the soul of what we do here at Bazaarvoice. They’re highlighted on our About us page and clearly outline our mission and values for everyone to see. After all, transparency — our third pillar — is key.

Heeding our own advice, though, we don’t just let our pillars sit idly on our website. They’re an integral part of our DNA. Taking innovation for example, our fourth pillar. We actively encourage experimentation and embrace change to stand out from the rest. And our passionate pursuit of performance — through hiring teams who match our pillars — makes every employee hyper-focused on our brand mission. Everyone from the CEO right down to yours truly.

Brand pillars require big picture thinking

Developing and practicing brand pillars is part of the long game, which means creating a sustainable path to long-term brand loyalty and growth.

To achieve this, think about what you want to evolve over the next five, 10, or 20 years. What will still be important and valuable to your customers? What sparks meaning and pride when communicating with your internal team and your external audience?

Big picture planning means long-term security for your brand. It means thinking beyond short-term profits to how your brand will make a difference for your customers and communities.

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The human brain is hardwired to seek rewards, and research shows that consumers are 80% more likely to choose a brand that offers a satisfying loyalty experience over competitors. It’s no surprise, then, that a proportionate number of businesses want to reward their loyal following.

Brand loyalty programs are a win-win for customers and businesses alike because they reward the customer and transform them into long-term brand advocates. Looking for inspiration? Check out these winning brand loyalty examples to get you started.

Most popular types of brand loyalty programs

There’s several types of loyalty programs that brands can choose from. They all reward customers for spending and advocating for the brand, but the right fit comes down to your specific customer base’s purchasing behavior.

Point-based brand loyalty programs

This type of brand loyalty program offers points — a type of branded currency that can be exchanged for rewards — when customers complete purchases or other activities that demonstrate their loyalty to the brand.

They’re simple to understand and easy for consumers to adopt. It’s the same concept as a child’s piggy bank, where a small amount of currency is accumulated over time and then used for a reward. And for anyone who had a piggy bank as a kid, we know how satisfying that is.

The most common example of brand loyalty program, point-based programs are ideal for frequent purchasers. Customers that buy items regularly — gasoline, groceries, or hygiene products, for example — are perfect for point-based loyalty programs because points will inevitably accumulate.

Brands can get creative with how points are awarded, too. Nordstrom, for instance, awards more points to Nordstrom credit card-carrying members and those who redeem points through the iOS app.

It really comes down to how you can entice your members and tease their psychological reward and pleasure centers. It might sound manipulative, but if you’re offering real value to your members, it’s beneficial to all sides — and therein lies the advantage of points-based loyalty programs.

Tiered loyalty

Tiered loyalty requires consumers to reach a certain benchmark to be upgraded to the next level. Instead of accumulating points, spending them, and starting back at zero, the benefits of reaching a higher tier are permanent.

Alongside our psychological need to be rewarded, when humans achieve something, they almost immediately start looking for the next accomplishment. If someone gets a promotion at work, suddenly they’re thinking about the nicer car or home their newfound success would allow them to afford. They’re thinking about that sweet prestige that comes with their higher-paying job. Tiered brand loyalty programs are effective because they make consumers work toward a goal, and it provides that sense of achievement and status once a higher tier is reached — spending more along the way.

And tiered loyalty programs are great on the business side as well. They remove challenges from maintaining points-based programs, such as points expiring or needing to be meticulously tracked. Different tiers also allow you to segment your customers better, offering a more personalized and exciting experience to each bracket.

Tiered and points-based loyalty can actually complement each other. Growing bag retailer Caraa actually combines a point-based structure with a tiered reward program. The customer’s tier is determined by how much they spend and also affects the number of points they receive for birthday purchases and other special events.

Paid membership

Paid members pay a recurring fee for access to exclusive deals and VIP treatment. This can be a hard sell, but once customers are in, they’re really in.

There’s value in that commitment, too. Research from McKinsey found that members of paid loyalty programs are 60% more likely to spend more on a brand after subscribing, versus only 30% for free loyalty programs. Equally as impressive, 70% of consumers would be willing to pay for a premium loyalty program provided the benefits were relevant and desirable to them.

Paid brand loyalty programs are best suited for customers that know what they want and crave an “insider” experience. If you look at many subscription models, you’ll see they’re actually premium loyalty models that offer tangible incentives to join.

Take Watch Gang, for example. Nobody is going to join a subscription with that name unless they are interested in building a watch collection. They pay their recurring fee and receive a watch each month, but they’re also paying for massive exclusive discounts on the online store as well as the chance to win premium-tier watches every week. 

The rewards align with the customer’s lifestyle perfectly, offer an exclusive experience, and provide the business with an opportunity to upsell their loyal members.

6 brand loyalty program examples to inspire you

These brand loyalty program examples should give you a great idea of how to get creative — and what works. Many of them combine parts of points-based, tiered, and paid programs to deliver a dynamic loyalty experience.

1. Sephora offers flexible rewards to members

Sephora’s Beauty Insider program is enormous, boasting 25 million members and making up around 80% of annual revenues. Sephora is an excellent brand loyalty example because it combines point and tier memberships.

What makes Beauty Insider unique is the flexibility in how points are spent. Members not only get access to point rewards, but also discounts, savings on shipping, exclusive gifts and events, sample products, and more. Points can even be redeemed for more exclusive offers like limited edition products or personalized beauty consultations.

2. Starbucks makes its app central to customer loyalty

Starbucks was the first brand to make its app the home of a rewards program. Customers take advantage of the program by ordering and purchasing through the app, earning “Stars” in place of points to redeem for rewards.

The app is the go-to for members to order, pay, and redeem points for personalized rewards. 40% of Starbuck’s total sales come from the Rewards Program, with some same-store sales rising by as much as 7%.

Centralized loyalty purchasing through one channel gives the brand a goldmine of customer data. Popular menu items, popular locations, and customer lifetime value are all insights that help Starbucks improve its experience and offer more relevant rewards.

3. Cineplex expands SCENE rewards to combat slow cinema traffic

Canadian cinema chain Cineplex broadened its SCENE loyalty rewards to increase traffic during the pandemic. This is a fantastic example of how a dynamic brand loyalty rewards program can breathe life into a business during slow times.

SCENE points were originally collected to be used for free movie tickets. Now, the possibilities have spread to a growing network of stores for members to enjoy. SCENE expanding how members can redeem points means they can take advantage of savings at their favorite retailers even if they aren’t going to the cinema.

Just because most people weren’t going to the movies doesn’t mean their hard-earned points shouldn’t be put to good use.

4. Amazon Prime membership wins customers from the competition

Amazon is an e-commerce titan, but certainly not a monopoly. There’s plenty of competition from other giants like Walmart. Amazon maintains its edge through its Prime loyalty membership and the benefits that come with it.

Members pay a flat annual fee for exclusive perks, including free rapid shipping, discounts, Prime Video, music access, and more. As of 2019, around 65% of Amazon shoppers were Prime members, demonstrating the loyalty program’s enormous appeal.

Amazon leverages its robust fulfillment network and software infrastructure to deliver benefits to its loyal members. Smaller brands won’t have the same assets, but can apply a similar paid loyalty program at a smaller scale, provided the benefits deliver real value to their members — especially if that loyalty program offers better deals than competitors.

5. Costco highlights exclusive appeal as a selling point for members

Costco started as a wholesale distributor that eventually evolved to selling wholesale product volumes to shoppers in a warehouse-like setting. It has always used a paid loyalty model, using exclusivity to elevate the value of its brand.

Members pay an annual fee for the right to shop in-store and online at Costco locations worldwide. Executive membership entitles members to percentage rewards and exclusive deals. As of May of this year, Costco has 110 million paying members.

The original membership-only retail experience, Costco has maintained die-hard brand advocacy with its members since its beginnings. “The Costco story begins in 1976, when entrepreneur Sol Price introduced a groundbreaking retail concept in San Diego, California. Price Club was the world’s first membership warehouse club, a place where efficient buying and operating practices gave members access to unmatched savings.”

Brands can benefit immensely from similar paid loyalty programs — provided they offer value that members can’t resist.

6. The North Face delivers exciting lifestyle rewards

The North Face’s XPLR Pass brand loyalty program is a great example of appealing directly to a customers’ passion — in this case for the outdoors. Offering rewards specific to customers’ lifestyles creates a closer connection between the brand and its buyers.

Rewards are collected and given in ways that align with outdoorsy lifestyles and environmental protection. Members can earn rewards by checking in at iconic natural locations or using a reusable shopping bag, for example.

Points can not only be redeemed for discounts and products but also for the chance to “field test” products and for excursions like hiking trips and mountain climbing expeditions. This shows a deeper understanding of what North Face’s customers value, creating a stronger bond and driving loyalty.

Brand loyalty programs pave the way for brand advocacy

Customers who are satisfied with their loyalty rewards are twice as likely to recommend the brand to others. That advocacy is incredibly valuable, as it’s the point where the customer has evolved from just someone who buys from your brand to one who has joined it.

Brands that want to build a strong community and relationship with their customers should focus on delivering valuable and relevant rewards. Following in the footsteps of some of the most popular and creative examples of brand loyalty programs is sure to help.

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Masterclass: How to maintain brand loyalty in a tough economy

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