How digital marketing can help turn customers into loyal customers

In an over-crowded marketplace, winning a customer is half the battle. Keeping them for life is the rest of the battle. Most often, businesses lose this battle. Despite offering the best service, placing a price with wafer-thin margins and providing stellar after-sales service, every business including yours will have to face customer churn. There is nothing stopping it. Be it mom-and-pop stores or the globe-dominating Amazon, churn is an inevitable part of running a business. 

If you are a business who is keen on growing the business, you must focus on reducing churn and maximising customer loyalty. That is the second half of the battle that you must. But, customer loyalty in any industry is hard to come by. Remember — acquiring a new customer costs five times as much as retaining a loyal customer. So retaining loyal customers matters a lot. 

There is a weapon that can help you with that. It came into existence hardly a decade ago and has replaced conventional marketing. It is digital marketing. Digital marketing is marketing for the new world where the internet, websites and mobile apps are the primary mediums through which information is sought and distributed. 

HubSpot defines digital marketing as thus: 

“Digital marketing encompasses all marketing efforts that use an electronic device or the internet. Businesses leverage digital channels such as search engines, social media, email, and other websites to connect with current and prospective customers.”

The gist of the definition is that businesses use various channels on the internet to reach their customers. Turns out it is cost-effective as well. Be it for lead generation or even for sustaining customer relationships, digital marketing can be an effective tool. In fact, it can also help turn your existing customers into die-hard fans of your brand. 

That is the beauty of digital marketing. It can position a brand as a premium one with niche features or make it appealing to a target audience that is cost-conscious. No matter what kind of target audience you are focusing on, digital marketing can come to your aid.

Here are some ways how it can help turn your otherwise ordinary customers into loyal customers for life.

#1 Content marketing to create awareness

Your product — it could be a software or an actual physical product. Your customers will keep using them and remain loyal to your business only if they are able to use it the proper way. Now, imagine a scenario where your product has a long list of fantastic features. But, your end users have no clue how to use them. They will just assume it to be a waste of money and time and think of switching to a competitor. If you want to eliminate such a situation, content marketing is the best shot. 

The Content Marketing Institute defines content marketing as such:

“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

Content can come in various forms. It can be a text-driven blog. An image, like an infographic or a flyer. A video guide that teaches users how to use the product and so on. Each form of content can be leveraged in a specific way to drive awareness about your product. Content marketing lets you pick from a wide form of content to spread awareness in the right manner. For example, you can use a demo video for first-time users and a checklist for seasoned users. The end result is that customers would be able to use your products better and find value in it. 

#2 Email marketing for feedback collection

There is one major difference between businesses that have transactional customers and those that have loyal customers. Businesses with loyal customers collect feedback from their customers and act upon them. 

In the digital age when your business is catering to countless customers virtually, it is impossible to visit each customer for feedback collection. So, what can help? Enter, email marketing.

Even when mobile apps are ruling the roost, the best way to reach out to customers is by shooting an email to their inboxes. If done right, it will land straight into the primary inbox persuading them to respond. 

Email marketing can be used to collect feedback. It can also be used for running surveys. The objective of both forms of information gathering is the same — find out what customers think about your business. Such a feedback collection mechanism can also help you understand customer pain points that could be rectified in the future. When customer pain points are addressed, they naturally remain loyal to your business. 

#3 Social media marketing for relationship building

In the virtual world, being social means being active on your social media handles which include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and the likes. Social media is not just for individuals. In fact, its biggest use is for businesses that want to connect with customers. There is a reason why Facebook whose mission is to bring the world together is a marketing behemoth.

Social media is for relationship building. It creates an ideal platform for businesses to build a personal relationship with customers. The right choice of messaging tone, the timing of the post and the frequency of posts can make customers interact with the brand on a regular basis. 

In fact, there are also other channels that form part of the digital marketing spectrum which can be leveraged to maximise customer loyalty. Webinars and podcasts to name the most popular ones. 

Final thoughts — is that it?

Content marketing. Email marketing. Social media marketing. Does that seem to be just four tactics in digital marketing? Is that it? Of course not. These are the top tactics you can get started with, in case you haven’t already tried them.