As a follow up to my post earlier this week about how emotional involvement in a brand drives brand loyalty, today I will provide three steps to generate emotional involvement in your brand. I call these three steps the 3 S’s of Customer Loyalty. It’s a concept I first introduced in my book that was just released in the U.K. (coming to the U.S. in August), Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon. By ensuring your brand offers customers the 3 S’s of customer loyalty, customers will become emotionally involved in your brand. Let’s take a closer look.
The 3 S’s of Customer Loyalty:
- Stability: Customers are driven to emotional involvement in a brand when it sends a consistent message.
- Sustainability: Customers are driven to emotional involvement in a brand when they expect that brand to be with them for a long time or at least a specific amount of time with a clear end.
- Security: Customers are driven to emotional involvement in a brand when that brand gives them a feeling of comfort or peace-of-mind.
The 3 S’s of Customer Loyalty link directly back to the three main steps to developing a brand – consistency, persistence and patience as well as the need to meet customer expectations for your brand. So while many people might argue that branding is not important, I argue that branding is an important part of driving profits. Branding helps to create customer loyalty which leads to repeat purchases and perhaps the best form of marketing any company can hope for – word-of-mouth marketing from your best customers.
Take a look at your brand. Is it driving emotional involvement through stability, sustainability and security? If not, make the necessary changes now, and you’ll reap the rewards later with increased customer loyalty.
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye
