B2B companies put considerable effort into retaining their existing customers for good reason, and it’s about more than just upselling, cross-selling, or generating referral opportunities. Retaining customers is highly cost-effective, as existing customers spend 67% more than new ones.
The challenge is that your competitors have growth goals too.
Their strategies often involve attracting your customers and luring away business. Stopping this cycle isn’t always easy, but building stronger brand loyalty can help. Unfortunately, this approach is often overlooked.
“Companies that have won consistently over the past decade have invested in their brand early and built a defensible brand,” says Trevan Strean, creative director at Act-On. “So brand loyalty isn’t necessarily more important to B2Bs now. It’s just that some haven’t invested as heavily because they had a strong sales channel.”
Building stronger brand loyalty, in addition to having a strong sales channel, can help solve many challenges B2Bs deal with, such as churn and hitting growth goals.
The Lines Are Blurring Between B2B and B2C
When it comes to customer experiences, B2B and B2C aren’t islands. Customers interact in both sectors, and their expectations cross-pollinate between the two.
Amazon taught customers to expect fast delivery, Netflix taught them about entertainment on demand, and Spotify showed them personalized experiences based on previous interactions.
Research shows that over half of consumers say a company’s customer experience matters as much as its products or services. With expectations from B2C crossing into B2B, this also shapes brand loyalty.
“When you’re shopping for business software, you might think, ‘Okay, in my everyday life, I experience Netflix, and that’s an amazing solution,’” says Trevan. “So you have this dichotomy of really great B2C experiences and customers carrying that into what they expect from B2B.”
When experiences fall short of expectations, brand loyalty can take a hit. B2Cs often do a good job establishing consistent customer experiences and building trust and reliability. B2Bs have an opportunity to create similar interactions to grow loyalty.
The Brand Consistency and Loyalty Connection
Twenty years ago, the iPhone didn’t exist. Brands communicated through channels like direct mail, radio ads, print media, and television. Today, marketers have far more channels available, along with greater opportunities to make mistakes. One such pitfall, according to Trevan, is a lack of consistency.
“Make sure the marketing you’re putting in front of your audience is consistent, related to your other efforts, and speaks in the same voice and visual language,” says Trevan.
He believes this strategy has a greater impact than most marketers realize. A customer who views a social media post that misaligns with their original reasons for loving the brand might lose confidence in it. For example, a company that promotes its software as eco-friendly might lose customer trust if it posts about a new product that requires extensive packaging made from non-recyclable materials. . As a result, the customer becomes more vulnerable to churn, and competitors are positioned to steal their business.
Marketing tools, such as automation, can help support consistency through cross-channel campaign coordination. For example, you can create multichannel campaigns across email, web, and social using the same platform, making sure your brand’s voice and messaging remain consistent.
Content that Builds Loyalty and Trust
Trevan explains that the content you create for audiences can be a powerful tool for building brand loyalty.
“As a marketer, I might have more than one audience—let’s say an executive like a CMO and a manager,” says Trevan. “I may create reports or studies to help the CMO perform their job, while also providing tactical resources like case studies, webinars, or how-to guides for the marketing manager. Even though these audiences are different, maintaining brand messaging consistency is important. It helps reinforce loyalty and prevents ‘chinks in the brand armor.’”
These chinks can occur when a customer receives an email that misaligns with the brand due to inconsistent messaging or voice. Achieving consistency across all channels can be a challenge. One approach we’re experimenting with here at Act-On to address this issue is automation.
“We’re currently working on a project that uses AI to scrape a large amount of content data and analyze it for brand consistency,” says Trevan. “This data is then used to generate guidelines. Our project can assign a score out of 100, highlighting elements that are on-brand and providing recommendations for improving content alignment.”
With this information, marketers can correct inconsistencies that may leave prospects and customers confused or, worse, disengaged. Using AI tools in this way allows marketers to remain authentic and human while leveraging modern technologies to achieve goals, such as improving brand loyalty.
Building on Solid Ground with Customer Feedback
Customers often talk about brands ‘behind closed doors.’ They do this increasingly in niche communities, especially when peers are shopping for a new solution. You need insight into these conversations to understand brand loyalty. However, according to Trevan, getting visibility into these conversations is difficult due to the number of layers between marketing and customers.
“There is so much legwork to get that feedback,” says Trevan. “But if you can access those insights, they’re a gold mine for understanding what your customers love about you—and avoiding the trap of ‘marketing blindly.’”
Trevan suggests building strong relationships with the teams that interact directly with your customers, such as customer success and support staff. With these relationships, you can understand insights, such as “What’s driving people to sign up for an upsell or to make the decision to renew?”
“If customers are saying, ‘You have better support than anyone I’ve ever worked with,’ that’s really important to capture,” says Trevan. “Now, you have social proof to back up that point instead of just putting a message out there—because anyone can say anything, but once you have proof, it’s worth more.”
This type of feedback can also shape your brand messaging and build the loyalty needed to drive cross-sells, upsells, and referrals.
Measuring Brand Loyalty Impact
Marketers are under increased pressure to show the results of their efforts. Eighty-five percent of B2B marketers say connecting performance to business outcomes is challenging.
Measuring brand loyalty can be difficult, but several metrics can help, including:
Repeat Purchase Rate: What percentage of customers make repeat purchases over a specific period?
Referral Rates: How many of your new customers come from existing customer referrals? Higher referral rates often indicate loyal customers are willing to advocate for your brand.
Brand Affinity Metrics: What is your share of voice in social media discussions, brand mentions, and sentiment analytics compared to your competitors?
Customer Surveys and NPS score: What is the likelihood that a customer will recommend you to others?
Trevan points out that even though measuring brand loyalty can be tricky, it doesn’t mean it’s not important.
“You’re going to have to get creative about how you measure and report things,” says Trevan. “But just because it’s hard to measure and isn’t a clean metric doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing.”
If you’d like more ideas for improving your brand loyalty, watch our on-demand webinar, Content Glow Up: Taking Your Content From Ho Hum to Fabulous, where you’ll learn our favorite strategies to connect with your audience.