“Brand relevance or customer loyalty,” you ask. Good question.
Loyalty marketing as it has been called is being eclipsed by the new era of Movement Marketing. The old way was based on the idea that people will keep buying the same stuff from a company with incentives.
Yet, according to recent consumer research from Kantar Retail, 71% of consumers now claim that loyalty incentive programs don’t make them loyal at all.
Does your customer retention strategy depend on “buying” loyalty with rewards or discounts? Does loyalty cost you a lot? Does it tell people they get something for nothing?
Rather, with the rise of digital interception strategies, people are increasingly buying why a brand is relevant to their lives and their unique needs at the moment they Google you.
Don’t be loyal to the status quo
To succeed in this era of relevance, marketers and companies must be continuously willing to abandon the old. As new technologies shift customer journeys and expectations, they can (and should) also enhance companies’ abilities to engage with customers in the most relevant ways.
Often, the greatest roadblock is a company’s lack of willingness to transform their processes, organizations, and mindsets as needed.
To overcome that barrier, some companies have shifted from a product-focused mindset to a platform approach.
To become a living business, companies should expand their thinking to include the following five P’s as well: purpose, pride, partnership, protection, and personalization.
These form a simple and comprehensive test of relevance.
The first four extend from the top to the bottom of the psychological hierarchy — from what Maslow called “self-actualization” or fulfilling your full potential, to safety, a more basic need.
The fifth, personalization, enables companies to connect with customers around any of these needs.
- Purpose: Customers feel the company shares and advances their values.
- Pride: Customers feel proud and inspired to use the company’s products and services.
- Partnership: Customers feel the company relates to and works well with them.
- Protection: Customers feel secure when doing business with the company.
- Personalization: Customers feel their experiences with the company are continuously tailored to their needs and priorities.