Has your business hit the wall? Done everything, but still no change in results? The product/service is top-quality, but still, customers never return?
Stop where you are. Shift your focus from the product/service to your brand experience. For this, you need to go back and rework your brand strategy.
A brand strategy defines the personality of a business. How it looks, sounds, writes, listens, and behaves. Even how you, as a business, make your customers feel falls under brand strategy. It can include your communication with the audience, their perception of you, and their final experience with your offering.
Speaking in Gen Z lingo, brand strategy is the vibe your business gives off to people around you. It can be professional, friendly, empathetic, cold, or just transactional. When people connect to this vibe, they become loyal to your business and return whenever they need your product/service.
Don’t you keep going back to people you vibe with? Keep visiting the same café whose ambiance and food attracts you? Keep watching the same travel YouTube channel because you like the information, photography, and the approach. The same is the case with brands.
To help you build this vibe, we explore how your brand strategy links with customer retention and loyalty. We discover the brand strategy essentials that can help you retain customers and make them your loyal fans.
Brand strategy converts one-time buyers into loyal fans
Brand strategy is like a personality. If you like a person’s way of speaking, dressing, communicating, and behaving, you stay in contact with them. In the same way, if you like a brand’s personality, you stay in contact with them by becoming a brand fan and loyal customer.
But the brand needs to make an effort to make itself likeable. This is possible with:
- Familiarity and consistency in all messaging and customer communications
- Stand for the values, commitments, and assurances that are promised to deliver
- Unforgettable experiences customers expect at all possible customer touchpoints
These brand experiences make customers feel seen, heard, understood, and appreciated. It leads to developing your brand identity and market positioning, based on which customers trust you and become your loyal customers.
Do you know 28% of customers become brand loyals after consistent branding across all channels (SAP Emarsys’ research)? Moreover, 88% of customers return to a trusted brand. (Deloitte research).
Brand strategy enhancements bring customers back for repeat purchases
Customers do not like it when brands do not pay attention to them, address their pain points, give timely updates, provide seasonal benefits or discounts, etc. And what do they do? They churn and shift to another brand. Customers come back if you keep providing consistent, positive experiences and engagement across all touchpoints.
Your brand strategy needs to do the WORK here to bring back customers – how, which ones, when – it all depends on you.
It must be like a gardening plan. You know when to water, how much to water, what to plant, how to grow, which season to grow which crop, etc.
Your brand strategy must:
- Be clear about its uniqueness, offerings, and value delivery
- Align with the values of the target audience
- Stay consistent in voice, looks, behavior, and messaging across all channels
- Deliver exceptional experiences to solve customer problems
- Be personalized to make customers feel valued and more than transactional data points
Just as we gravitate toward people who understand us, we return to brands that reflect our values and preferences.
Proper nurturing with loyalty programs, value-driven products/services, community engagement, and personalized experiences improves customer retention.
Wish for customer loyalty and retention?
Focus on these aspects
How does the dating scene play for a person? You make an exceptional first impression, then talk and listen to build a connection. You go the extra mile to keep the relationship exciting. But before all this, you determine your desired feature list and make your identity and values attractive.
Brand strategy involves the same elements.
Ideal customer definition
You can’t please them all. Not everyone will use your product. So, focus only on your ideal customer. Define it clearly and make everyone in the team understand it. Niche down as far as you can. Then speak to them. The rest will follow.
A strong foundation
What is your brand standing on? It must have a clear purpose, a futuristic vision, a problem to solve, a mission, and a few values it won’t compromise. This is your foundation, which you must be confident about and communicate well to others.
Visual and verbal identity
Here comes the first impression, which involves your logo, website, packaging, designs, graphics, and tone of voice. Attract your customers with these, and voila, you’ve made the first confident move.
Customer-centric messaging
Your customers are attracted, but you need to communicate with them. Tell them about yourself, listen to their stories, and share your lives. Your taglines, marketing campaigns, storytelling, social media content, and designs make this possible. Value them, appreciate them; they will do the same by showing their loyalty.
Emotional connection building
Emotional bond takes time and needs nurturing. Keep on your promises and improve customer experiences. Share some real-life stories of founders, brand stories, and vulnerable situations. Your consistent efforts can help build a place in their heart.
Brand Positioning
Consistency builds reliability. If you confuse customers, they alienate themselves. So, keep your messaging consistent across all channels to build a positive, strong, and unique brand image in their minds. Customers develop brand affinity and make repeat purchases if you are consistent and clear.
Additional customer delights
Special people need special attention. Invest in customer delight if you want loyal customers and you see that element in them. Loyalty programs, interesting packaging, and exceptional experiences – all are necessary to keep the relationship alive and exciting.
A brand strategy case study with a positive impact on loyalty and retention
829 DESIGN’s complete brand build for The Road Home Law
The Road Home Law is a non-traditional law firm with expertise in post-conviction legal services. They wanted a unique brand identity unlike any other legal firm. They wanted their customers to trust them, consider them as a friend, and approach them with legal problems. When The Road Home Law approached us, they were starting from ground zero—no logo, no visuals, no identity, no brand.
That’s where 829 DESIGN stepped in.
We created a complete brand strategy to show what the Road Home Law is, what its world is, and what it does. Based on an understanding of their why, who, and how, our strategy blueprint included defining the:
- Defining their mission, vision, and values
- Crafting a unique value proposition
- Clarifying their brand purpose, identity, and positioning
- Creating detailed target audience personas
Once the strategy was placed, we moved into the specifics. We created Stylescapes to give an idea of the brand’s tone, mood, and aesthetics. Then we proceeded with fonts, colors, logo, typography, brand collateral to create a living space for the brand. Based on these factors, the brand’s digital home – a one-page website was built to reflect what they stand for and engage with the audience.
All these aspects of the brand reflect uniqueness, confidence, boldness, legal aesthetics, and transformative vision.
Now, clients are building trust with The Road Home Law because they emotionally connect with them. Clients get the much-needed hope for transformation, empathy, and an optimistic vibe from them.
This is how we build brilliant brands at 829 Design from nothing to unforgettable.
Brand strategy already in place?
Use these best practices to fine-tune
You know the deep connection between brand strategy and customer retention and loyalty. If you wish to level up, you can do the following:
- Find out the problem areas. How? Conduct regular brand audits.
- Make every interaction fruitful. How? Communicate your values, promise, and vision in all your customer messaging.
- Build on emotion. How? Personalize each customer experience.
- Make your messaging consistent. How? Align marketing, sales, and support teams on one single emotion.
- Listen to customers. How? Ask for their feedback and act on it.
- Humanize your customer relationships. How? Educate, empower, guide, and stay connected.
Let’s build your brand’s next chapter
Building customer loyalty and retention is not easy. It requires significant effort. Especially in terms of your brand strategy. You can focus on creating memorable customer experiences, a unique value proposition, and consistent brand messaging.
Customers remember you, build a connection with you, and are happy to deal with you. They return to you again and again for your value offering. This is how you score a goal to reach your business goals.
Don’t want your customers to leave you?
Give them more than just a product or service.
Share stories, build connections, and enhance experiences.