It’s undeniable that social media has a direct impact on brand loyalty. It’s a cutting-edge tool for connecting with customers on an emotional level and winning their trust.
The following are five strategies on how to establish credibility with your target audience using social media, which tips the loyalty marketing scales in your favour.
Tips for Establishing Credibility Online
Good marketing is essential for every firm targeting consumers in the modern era. Companies that don’t have a clear mission or values will struggle to connect with today’s most influential consumers: Millennials.
If your business does not already cater to the elderly, it will need to at some point since that demographic is changing as the population ages. Social media marketing is the first and last resort if you want to target younger consumers.
This group is the largest in history, and they are expected to own 24 trillion dollars in wealth by 2020, up from their present yearly spending of $200 billion. That’s beyond the stratosphere of crazy high. Moreover, this new generation is far larger than its predecessors.
The catch, though, is that much has changed since the days when the parents of millennials could buy everything they wanted. This has caused a lot of marketing upheaval, particularly among established companies who were slow to adapt and hence failed to establish meaningful relationships with these new types of customers.
Since today’s consumer spends most of their time on Instagram and similar photo-sharing apps, those are the places where marketers should be concentrating their efforts to increase brand loyalty. It’s where they experience the greatest number of emotionally engaging visual storytelling. With the right approach, social media marketing can do wonders for your business, from attracting new customers to strengthening your existing relationships with existing ones and ultimately inspiring brand loyalty.
In 2023, businesses that wish to earn their customers’ trust must pay attention to the interplay between social media and brand loyalty. You don’t need to look any farther if you’re having trouble with it. Here are a few tried-and-true methods for fostering an emotional connection with your business’s social media followers, which in turn is sure to increase brand loyalty.
It’s important to be genuine
In recent years, the term “authenticity” has been used more frequently than ever before to describe the things that Millennials value. What does that even imply, though? It is a very valid concern; overuse may cause words to lose their original significance.
It alludes to honesty and integrity, or “no bullshit” as it’s known in the business world (pardon my french). For this generation, fake messages are as offensive as a truffle patch to a pig. People are drawn to authentic narratives, particularly those that reveal the founding team’s commitment to a larger mission. They want communications that accurately reflect the principles they advocate for.
Show Some Humanity
Nothing turns off customers faster than a brand that seems uninterested in them. Adding a human touch to your customer interactions and marketing touchpoints, especially on social media, can help you create trust with your audience.
Customers want to know that their favourite companies are staffed by real people. They like interacting with them and seeing flashes of the synergy that goes on behind the scenes. That’s why BTS videos constantly go viral, and why social media is the preferred channel for contacting support.
It’s important to be open and honest
Customers in today’s market are interested in more than just the final product. They want to know everything about the production process, including where it is created, who makes it, how long it takes, how much the supply chain costs, how much carbon dioxide is released during production, and so on.
Now that consumers have access to more information than ever before (thanks, technology! ), it’s crucial to be as transparent as possible when communicating with them. It’s no longer acceptable to pretend that problems don’t exist within an organisation. Customers today demand instantaneous responses to their inquiries, and if a business fails to meet their information needs, they will simply go somewhere to conduct business.
Visual social media platforms like Instagram give businesses a great way to get their message out to the public and respond to questions from customers in real time. They may share their story in a more genuine and engaging way using this medium.
Utilize UGC
If you haven’t heard, user-generated content is a powerful tool for increasing the desirability of your items. If a product is shown in a lifestyle setting with a real person, rather than just a generic product photo, the viewer is more likely to see themselves using the item in question. In a nutshell, user-generated content is the engine that propels business. In the long run, it’s capable of so much more.
Repurposing Instagram posts that were originally published by other Instagram users (either independently or as part of a partnership) shows that you care about the Instagram community and want to help promote positivity. By giving your followers a shoutout, you are showing them that you appreciate the material they make in your name and are thanking them for their support. It may either be done on your main feed or in Instagram Stories.
Be aware that it is considered rude not to credit the original poster by tagging them in the new post and mentioning their account using the @ symbol in the description if you are reusing their tagged photo. They would enjoy it much more if you take it a step further and DM them to ask for permission.
Don’t talk about tacos on your plant shop’s social media if you sell plants. This would not only be extremely difficult to understand, but it would also be a huge credibility mistake. When that’s gone, so is people’s ability to trust. It’s hard to put together and easy to break down.