5 Ways To Gain Customer Loyalty

Differentiating on functional features is only an ephemeral advantage when considered in the long run.

Eventually, others will catch up.

"Features" get commoditized sooner than later.

Ex: when Trello came out, the Kanban board visual model was a novelty at that time. There was a lot of noise around how easy it was.

However, now you see the same board feature in nearly every tool now - from Notion to Asana to Monday. Trello can't retain customers on that basis alone.

Similarly, Invision made waves with the idea of collaborative design thinking. Now, Figma & Miro are charging down their horses in the same path.

In that way, features lose their shininess pretty fast.

However, there are other aspects of a product that contribute far more to capturing loyalty & retention:

Bucket loads of data

Acquiring native, non-public data in colossal quantity which, in turn, fuel your recommendation engines or insights, creates an advantage that's difficult to replicate overnight.

Ex: Google's search & email suggestions.

Branding

Your brand is an invisible force field. If consumers identify with your brand with positive associations, it can magnetize them to you.

Branding creates an unspoken perception of security, reliability, empathy & care, ultimately, triggering emotions that influence buying activity.

Ex: Zappos managed to stand out in a crowded e-commerce market with relatable social campaigns & targeted messaging.

Customer Success & Support

Support is a transactional activity where a user has a problem & needs help to overcome it. Products that can resolve issues at hyper-speed for customers tend to create delight that keeps on compounding.

Ex: Hubspot provides exceptional chat & email support to resolve issues.

Customer success, on the other hand, is the long-term relationship that a brand has with it's customer.

Ex: Gong's customer success reps listen to their clientele & keep educating them.

Community

When audiences feel they are part of a like-minded tribe, it's hard for them to just leave. That sense of belonging, once created, is a powerful retainer.

Ex: Pakwheels grew fast primarily because of it's tightly-knit forum

community.

Content

There are three forms of Content that:

• Educational (original primary research Ex: surveys done by Product School)
• Inspirational (templates, blueprints etc. Ex: massive design template libraries on PosterMyWall)
• Transactional (ad listings, products etc. Ex: Airbnb)

Educational content arms consumers to make better choices Ex: Product School surveys.

Inspirational content helps users to open their mind to possibilities Ex: PosterMyWall's myriad of templates.

Transactional content gives users access to items of value in masses (typically user-generated or catalogs) Ex: Airbnb listings, Amazon marketplaces.

Products that invest in building content layers give more compelling reasons for users to stay.