Chapter One: Brand Loyalty for Independent Companies
How to build brand loyalty for your products
Improve your brand loyalty, and you will increase your sales. If you sell products in a range of shops, you must stand out from competitors on the same shelf. Customers decide which product they’re going to buy, so you don’t have long to convince them to buy your brand.
You need to know how to add value to your products – a value that your customers perceive as being higher than the value your competitors are offering. You can achieve this through a brand loyalty programme.
What is brand loyalty?
The definition of brand loyalty is the positive feelings a customer has about their favourite brand. They choose to consistently buy their favourite branded products or services, even if competitors’ products are cheaper or more convenient.
All consumers have brands that they feel loyal towards. Coffee and mobile phones are two markets where brand loyalty is particularly strong. Most households purchase weekly groceries from the same supermarket, and this decision is influenced by a number of things that contribute to building brand loyalty.
How to build brand loyalty?
Brand loyalty is based on one foundation: a strong emotional connection between a company and its customers.
To build brand loyalty, you need to create a community around your brand. Use social media and other interactive platforms to engage with your customers, share new developments, and provide exciting updates. This encourages your audience to engage with your brand.
The elements of your brand need to be well thought out. These include your logo, fonts, colour schemes and more. Consistency is key, as it will ensure that your customers recognise your brand, no matter where they are.
Why is brand loyalty important?
The biggest advantage of brand loyalty is that the most loyal 5% of your customers are worth up to 1800% of your average customer’s lifetime value. This means that if the average customer lifecycle is three years, over which each customer spends £2,000,
Loyal customers are gateways for new people to engage with your brand. With social media algorithms giving precedence to posts with the most user interaction, having engagement will push your posts onto the newsfeeds of users who may have never seen your business otherwise.
If you can implement a plan to turn newcomers to your business into loyal customers, you will see an increase in your bottom line.
Top tip on how to improve brand loyalty
If you own an independent brand whose products are stocked by many shops, you must increase brand awareness to win loyalty in a physical way as well as online. With a brand loyalty programme, you offer customers points to help persuade them to buy your product instead of your competitors’.
With our loyalty scheme software, you can create QR codes that contain loyalty points. These can be printed on your packaging for customers to scan once they have bought a product, so no matter which shop they buy your products from, they can join your brand loyalty scheme.
You can set rewards for members of your brand loyalty scheme to redeem, using their points. These can be a number of things, such as a free product, branded merchandise or online discount codes for your web shop. All these things help to improve your relationship with your customers at minimal cost to you, as well as generating word-of-mouth recommendations.
There are several ways a brand loyalty programme can be implemented in different types of industry.
Chapter 2: Brand Loyalty Programs for Pet Food And Accessories
Pet food and accessory loyalty programs are becoming extremely sophisticated and important to both manufacturers and retailers. With the number of competitors in the market, it is difficult for anyone in the pet industry to stand out from the crowd.
To keep people returning to your brand, you need to provide a positive experience relating to your product and incentivise them. Each good interaction builds the level of trust a customer has for your business.
Why do pet brands need loyalty programs?
Winning customer trust and loyalty is critical to your revenue. Research shows that 61% of consumers recommend companies that they trust to friends and family.
If you’re a brand of pet food or accessories that holds stock across many independent retail outlets, you may find it difficult to compete with other brands on the same shelves.
Reward-It’s brand loyalty solution helps ensure pet owners continue purchasing your products, no matter which store they visit.
How to set up a brand loyalty scheme?
Our software allows you to create loyalty QR codes that can be scanned to enable customers to earn points when they buy your products. The number of points you offer customers for their loyalty, per QR code, is entirely up to you, and you can create as many codes as needed per batch.
Once you have created the loyalty QR codes using our simple online generator, you can simply incorporate them onto your product’s packaging. This is usually placed on the inside of your packaging or on a card that is placed into your product so that customers cannot access the loyalty QR code until the product has been purchased and, opened.
All customers need to do is scan your QR codes and earn loyalty points which are stored on a customer loyalty app which they will need to download on their smartphones. Each code can only be scanned once, so you don’t need to worry about customers reusing codes. The points will be added to their account, ready to redeem for the loyalty rewards you offer.
Your pet store or product’s loyalty rewards are set by you. Add your customers’ favourite products or services as rewards and set the number of points they have to collect to redeem them. All your customers need to do is look up your program on the dedicated customer app, redeem the reward they want, and show it the next time they’re in a shop that stocks your brand.
As an alternative, you can offer online rewards. To do so, you need to create a batch of codes that can be used to redeem certain products from yours, or a stockist’s website.
Collecting points, and the idea of exchanging them for rewards, works in the same way, but when the customer redeems the reward on the app, they will receive an email containing a unique code that can be used on your chosen online store.
Chapter 3: Brand Loyalty For Food and Drink
The food and beverage market is fast growing, with plenty of competition out there in every store that you stock your products in. When you are a smaller food brand it can be hard sometimes to compete with bigger, well-known brands which people have grown to love and trust. However, introducing a food and beverage loyalty program for your brand can bring customers back into stores to regularly buy your products. The chance to earn rewards gives them incentive to keep coming back for more.
What is brand loyalty and why do food and drink brands need it?
You need people to trust your food or drink brand, become loyal to it and recommend it to others, in order to grow. McKinsey & Co reported that word of mouth is the primary factor behind 20-50% of all purchasing decisions. Introducing a brand loyalty program for your company can set you apart from your competitors, and people love the idea of earning rewards!
Reward-It’s brand loyalty solution helps ensure food shoppers continue purchasing your products, no matter which store they decide to visit.
How to set up your brand loyalty program
Setting up a loyalty program for your food or drink brand is easy!
Using our simple online generator, you can generate unique QR codes to incorporate into your products packaging. It is recommended that these QR codes are added to the inside of the packaging or perhaps on a card placed inside your product so that people can only access the QR code and earn their points after they have purchased and opened the product.
Recent studies show that 69% of customers report being more likely to join a loyalty program if there’s a mobile app available. Once customers download our customer loyalty app to their smartphones, it then enables them to scan their QR codes and collect their points. Each code can only be used once, so they won’t be able to redeem their codes multiple times. They will then see their points in their account, which they can use to spend on whichever rewards you set.
Our loyalty app for brands allows you to set rewards, how many points customers earn per purchase, and much more. You have lots of flexibility when setting up your software and managing rewards, so you can tailor it to your brand however you like. Customers can easily find your brand by searching your program on our dedicated loyalty app.
When customers have redeemed a reward on the loyalty app, they can then show this in any store that stocks your brand’s products.
Alternatively you could offer online rewards. If you wish to do this, you need to create a batch of codes that can be used to redeem certain products from yours, or a stockist’s website. This works in the same way as collecting points and earning rewards, but instead customers will receive an email containing a unique code which can be used in checkout on your chosen online store. They will only receive this if they redeem a reward in the loyalty app.
Chapter 4: Brand Loyalty for Takeaways
For many food and beverage establishments, it can be difficult to run a loyalty program that is flexible enough to offer your customers points whether they dine in or take their food away to eat.
With so many different ways for customers to get food nowadays, independent takeaway businesses are usually signed up to multiple delivery services whilst also having the option to eat in, and their own delivery driver. Due to this, it can be hard to keep track of whether customers are earning loyalty points when they receive their food.
One way to ensure all members of your loyalty scheme can collect the points they have earned is by implementing a brand loyalty program.
Why do takeaways and fast-food businesses need loyalty schemes?
Independent companies that manufacture food and drink products face tough competition from brands that already have a strong presence on the market. These well-known brands often dominate the market for takeaway food by using pricing, deals and offers, and a large advertising budget that reaches millions of people.
For independent brands that have a lesser position on the market, they must offer an incentive to prospective customers that makes a good first impression – and converts them into buyers of the product.
Although many brands do this simply by marketing using flyers and menus, it can be difficult to further convert first-time customers into repeat buyers who choose their takeaway over well-known, cheaper ones.
A brand loyalty scheme is a tool that can help to convert customers and shift them along the brand loyalty ladder until they become advocates for the brand. This helps to further marketing, with word-of-mouth being an effective method of gaining customers.
How do food and beverage brand loyalty programmes work for takeaways?
With Reward-It’s brand loyalty management software, you can easily allow your customers to earn points when they buy your food, no matter who they purchase it through.
In the cloud-based software, you can generate unique QR codes that contain a set number of loyalty points. These can then be printed on your packaging (such as on a business card or stickers on a pizza box), and all your customer needs to do is scan the code with their smartphone to redeem the points.
The points can be redeemed for rewards that you set. This can be a discount on your food, branded merchandise, or even a free sample. Offering your customers rewards can also be an ideal way to launch a new dish, or to get rid of stock that isn’t moving as quickly as you’d like.
As your customers begin to sign up to your brand loyalty programme, you can use the software’s built-in marketing tools to communicate directly with your members. The email marketing system features a simple drag-and-drop builder, a collection of pre-made templates, and allows you to set up automated emails such as welcome emails, birthday discounts, and more.
You can also apply custom fields to your database, allowing you to record customer data like what product they prefer, where they shop, and more. These fields can be filled out using a registration form that you can send to new members using your email broadcasting system.
Alongside the loyalty and marketing features, the cloud-based software is updated in real-time, meaning you can view statistics using a built-in analytical dashboard. The figures you can see include the number of points you have given away, the number of points redeemed, the amount of times your QR codes have been scanned, and the rewards that have been redeemed most to name a few.
These statistics allow you to analyse the successes of your brand loyalty programme and refine your business plans, reducing any unnecessary costs and allowing for cash injections in other areas of your business that can help you to compete against household brands.
Chapter 5: Brand Loyalty for Beauty Companies
The beauty industry is one of the biggest. As of 2020, the UK’s beauty industry worth is £27 billion and ranks as the seventh-largest global cosmetics market in the world. It holds the third spot for largest markets operating in the UK. This means that for smaller beauty brands, it can sometimes be hard to stand out from household name competitors.
With so many beauty brands out there, introducing a brand loyalty programme lets you stand out from the crowd – and keeps your customers coming back for more.
Small makeup brands
Starting an indie makeup brand from scratch isn’t easy, and now, more than ever, many people are joining the market. Over the last few years there has been an increase in small makeup brands advertising and marketing their branded beauty products on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, as the very clever algorithm enables them to find their target customers easily.
These Instagram and TikTok makeup brands are becoming more prevalent, and with so many competitors, it is essential for indie beauty brands to take their marketing one step further. Introducing a brand loyalty programme is an affordable and effective option to take your beauty brand ahead of your competitors.
It is also useful as most indie beauty brands got popular online throughout the pandemic. An easy choice for delivery, these online brands were a go-to choice for shoppers, however, now we are no longer under any lockdown measures, many business are beginning to move their products into stores. This means that independent beauty brands need a multi-pronged approach when it comes to marketing their branded beauty products.
Why introduce a brand loyalty programme?
In order to increase profits and gain a trusted status in the market, you need loyal customers. Word of mouth is one of the most effective ways of marketing, and a brand loyalty scheme for your indie makeup brand will certainly get your customers talking! Everybody loves being able to join a free scheme where they can earn rewards for their loyalty, so a brand loyalty scheme could be a gamechanger when it comes to your independent beauty brand.
Introducing a brand loyalty programme is easy, affordable, and effective. It was recently found that increasing customer retention processes and efforts can increase profits by as much as 25-95%. A brand loyalty programme is an incredibly easy way to keep your customers coming back for more.
The way your customers collect points is easy, and not to mention it is all done digitally, so customers can collect their points from the comfort of their own homes. This is ideal for businesses who trade both online and in a store.
How can you set up a brand loyalty programme for your independent beauty brand?
Setting up a brand loyalty scheme is easy! With our loyalty management software, you can generate unique QR codes to incorporate into your branded beauty products packaging. It is recommended that these QR codes are placed the inside of the packaging or perhaps on a card placed inside your product to avoid customers collecting points before point of purchase. However, if you are a TikTok makeup brand or an online-only small makeup brand, this will not be a problem as customers won’t have access to the packaging until they receive the product.
Customers can easily download our dedicated customer loyalty app to their smart phones and use their phone’s camera to scan the QR codes. This then enables them to collect their points, and there is no risk of customers redeeming the same code multiple times as they can only be scanned and used once! You can set up rewards for your customers to spend their collected points on.
Our loyalty app for brands allows you to set rewards that suit your business, how many points customers earn per purchase, and much more. You have lots of flexibility when setting up your software and managing your rewards, so you can tailor it to your brand however you like. Customers can easily find your brand by searching for your business name on our dedicated loyalty app.
