How To Use Content To Grow Customer Loyalty

Content marketing is one of the most potent strategies for acquiring customers today. Companies that utilize content marketing have had proven ROI again and again, across every business and industry.

Part of the appeal of content marketing is its versatility; content can take many forms and serve a variety of goals, including building customer loyalty. If you’re looking to grow and increase customer loyalty and retention, consider how you can use content to do so. 

Why Is Content Helpful For Building Customer Loyalty? 

There are several reasons content helps brands build and grow customer loyalty. For example: 

• Helpful, informative content can help customers avoid or solve problems
• Content allows customers to interact with a brand without requiring a purchase or transaction - a "no strings attached” value. 
• Content provides opportunities for customers to discover and share brand stories they enjoy

Content plays a significant role in supporting customer loyalty efforts. At its core, brand loyalty is created through emotional connections. Customers stay loyal to a brand because they enjoy the products, the quality of service, and the overall experience associated with the brand. Essentially, customer loyalty is created when a customer enjoys how they feel when engaging with a brand. Content can help to generate these positive feelings for customers across all different channels and areas. 

Here are a few ideas for using content to grow customer loyalty. 

Create Helpful Content

Educate and Inform

As stated above, providing helpful, informative content is a significant way for brands to connect with and please customers. Sometimes customers need help understanding how products work or how they can be used. They might need ideas for gifts or help determining which products are required for a specific event or occasion. Creating educational content benefits both customers and your brand. 

Promote Special Deals Or Offers 

You can also use content to help customers purchase your products. If you’re running a special deal, using content to promote it gives customers the information they need to take advantage of it. Banners, blog posts, social media announcements, push notifications, or other methods are all types of content you can use for this purpose. 

If your brand has a loyalty program, you can use the program to feature other brand promotions. For example, let’s say you’re a brand that produces sportswear. When one of your distributor or retailer partners runs a special promotion on your products, you can promote it within your loyalty program while also highlighting point earnings and other benefits. 

Create Fun Content

Entertaining content is another great idea for customers. Some different types of entertaining content include:

Interactive Calculators

People love engaging and interactive content. Interactive calculators or other types of modules are part of that group and can be a great feature for customers to use, depending on how you incorporate it with your brand and products. For example, interactive calculators are a massive plus for loyalty and incentive programs. For B2B programs, program members can use them to test different sales scenarios and see when they can qualify for certain perks and incentives. B2C programs allow consumers to track their progress on missions or challenges and calculate when they’ll reach the next tier or a specific reward.  

Quizzes and Trivia 

Quizzes are proven to be popular types of content. Just see the success of Potterworld, where individuals take an extended quiz to see what Hogwarts house they’d be sorted into. Quizzes are great because, by nature, they’re very personalized to the individual consumer. The wide range of quiz variations means they can be used for any mix of fun and functionality: a quiz can help a customer identify their specific needs or wants to determine which service or product they should purchase, or a quiz could let a consumer learn something fun about their unique personality type. Regardless of the intent, consumers overall find the personalized results appealing and enjoy the experience. 

Create Content That Connects 

Showcase Your Brand Community

Your loyal brand advocates are some of your most important customers. It’s always a great idea to take the time to recognize and demonstrate your appreciation for their loyalty. These don’t always have to be private demonstrations either; you can create content featuring your top brand ambassadors or VIPs, each chosen based on different criteria or occasions. Videos, articles, and social media posts are great ways to introduce the specific individual and highlight why they’re being recognized. 

Highlight User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful opportunity for brands. It’s also extremely easy for brands to utilize thanks to various social media platforms. Using APIs and hashtags, your brand can curate user-generated content that showcases your customer community, brand, and brand products. Pulling all this UGC into a public site, such as a gallery or collage, allows visitors to peruse and share the content further. 

Promote Charitable Initiatives

Nearly every brand now has some charitable giving or initiative. Thanks to the rise of corporate social responsibility and evolving consumer expectations, corporations today need to demonstrate that they’re part of their customers’ wider community and share similar values. 

Taking this into account, it’s essential to create content that focuses on your brand’s charitable or social responsibility initiatives. Year-end highlights, goal progress, and new successes are all great opportunities to create content around. But you don’t have to wait for a milestone to pass - you can make other content that helps educate customers on the Who, What, Where, Why, and Hows of your charitable initiatives (which will also help to build trust, another big part of customer loyalty). You can also tell customers how they can get further involved. 

Tips For Creating Content

We've covered all the different types of content you can create and the other methods for using it. When creating content to build loyalty, remember to center it on your audience, as you do with different marketing strategies. This means you need to consider factors such as customer ages, demographics, lifestyles, goals, interests, challenges, and more. Doing so will help your audience connect more deeply with your content and help it do its job of fostering loyal connections with your customers.

It’s never been more critical to make sure your loyalty program stays personalized and relevant. Contact the customer loyalty and rewards experts at Brandmovers today!