Customer loyalty marketing is a term that can include any marketing behavior aimed at keeping consumers from switching to another brand or service provider. This could be as simple as keeping prices low, but usually the term describes things above and beyond the most basic business practices. Some examples of customer loyalty marketing techniques include rewards programs, additional services, and perks for long-standing customers. In theory, an effective rewards program might be expensive, but it will often generate much more money than the price of implementation.
On a very basic level, customer loyalty marketing might involve reminding customers why they prefer one company over another. If the customer gets used to buying products from a certain company, and that company continues to produce products which cater to its specific market, a certain amount of customer loyalty will often be expected. Another example would be giving customers additional reasons to prefer a place of business. These could include things like friendly customer service workers and generous product replacement policies.
A common approach for customer loyalty marketing is for businesses to implement some kind of reward program. One common example of this is the frequent flyer miles benefit that some airlines utilize. If this sort of program is implemented well, the customer will be very interested in the benefit and, therefore, hesitant to waste his or her money on a competing company. The exact benefit chosen for the reward is often considered a very important key, and these programs may fail if the benefits aren’t interesting enough for the customers.
Another approach is to give customers perks through some kind of membership system. For example, customers may receive invites to special events or early access to certain products. Sometimes certain long-standing customers might even get deeper discounts than those without a membership.
Some businesses try to win back customers by giving them more reasons to stay. For example, if a search engine on the Internet simply offers a way to find websites, people may go there and find it useful, but another company might be able to easily compete if it also offers decent search results. On the other hand, if the search engine were to implement other features, like image search, video search, and email, customers might find the service almost impossible to deny due to the convenience of having so many things in one place. This kind of customer loyalty marketing can be taken even further, and sometimes it can become almost impossible for customers to switch brands. For example, if a company becomes dependent on several software products that are only available on a single operating system, that customer may have a very hard time making the switch.