A Guide To Branding & Marketing For Customer Retention

Cultivating brand loyalty should be a goal for all future-oriented businesses for a few noteworthy reasons. For starters, encouraging repeat purchases by existing customers is much cheaper than attracting brand-new buyers. To boost customer retention rates, it’s essential to build a memorable brand that speaks the same language as your audience.

If you’re looking to create a brand that inspires loyalty and gets customers coming back for more, there are some specific strategies you can follow. These include the use of brand merchandise, re-targeting customers through online ads and building a genuine brand community on social media. In this guide, we’ll cover these and other tips for building a brand that your customers will fall in love with.

Our top 6 branding and marketing tips for customer retention include:

• Use physical branding
• Establish a unique brand identity
• Run remarketing campaigns
• Maintain email marketing list
• Build a social media community
• Optimise your website

1. Use physical branding

Creating branded merchandise is a fantastic way to spread the word about your brand and help existing customers remember your business. There are an almost unlimited number of options for you to choose from when it comes to merchandise. Water bottles, planners and stickers are just a few examples of physical items you can stick your brand on.

Often, you’ll be handing out branded merchandise for free when people buy your products. When customers receive freebies, they’ll be much more likely to build an affinity with your brand and buy from you again out of appreciation.

Besides solidifying your present customer base, handing out branded merchandise also creates brand awareness among those who haven’t bought from you yet. Customers who receive free merchandise are likely to tell their friends and family about it, thus spreading the word about your brand.

When creating merchandise, make sure to stick to your brand elements as closely as possible. Your brand colours, fonts, logo and taglines should remain the same across all your physical merchandise so that people can recognise your brand at first glance. Creating consistent, desirable branded merchandise is one of the best ways of strengthening your bond with your customers and encouraging repeat purchases.

2. Establish a unique brand identity

The word ‘brand’ comes from an Old English term with connotations of marking something (usually a person) with a hot iron to set it apart. Similarly, your brand should set your business apart from its competitors and act as a point of differentiation.

To establish a unique identity, you need to take a holistic approach to brand building. When you think of the most recognisable brands in the world, you can usually point to multiple factors that distinguish them from other companies. Your brand values, the visual elements of your brand and the tag lines you use all need to stand out from the crowd.

When developing your brand, one of the first elements you need to think about is your brand colours. While personal taste comes into it, choosing colours is actually a much more scientific process than many realise. Brand colours have a psychological impact on your customers: in Western countries like Australia, red elicits feelings of passion and desire, while yellow carries connotations of happiness and enthusiasm.

It’s also important to establish the non-visual elements of your brand. This includes your brand values and your brand voice. Ensure that every single detail of your brand combines to create a unique whole that speaks to your target audience and inspires customer loyalty.

3. Run remarketing campaigns to boost brand recognition

Online ads are the bread and butter of most acquisition campaigns: most marketers are well-versed in running ad campaigns on Google or social media platforms like Facebook that are aimed at boosting brand awareness and generating conversions.

What some might not know, however, is that online ads can also be used to target past customers to encourage them to buy again. Platforms such as Google and Meta Business Suite allow you to run remarketing campaigns aimed at your existing audience. You can use a variety of ad types, including video and static ads, when running these campaigns.

Remarketing campaigns specifically target groups of people who’ve taken actions like visiting your website, downloading your app or ordering from your online store. It’s important to remember that there’s a minimum audience size for remarketing campaigns, so you need to have a fairly established customer base in order to take advantage of them.

Running ad campaigns online is a great tool for both acquisition and retention. Take advantage of remarketing campaigns to build loyalty among your existing customers and encourage repeat purchases.

4. Maintain robust email marketing campaigns

Alongside remarketing, email marketing is a fantastic way to connect to people with a prior association with your brand. Because your mailing list is composed of audience members who’ve previously given you their contact information, you can assume that they’ve already bought from you or at least have an interest in your products or services.

To use email marketing to its full potential, it’s important to use it as more than a sales tool. When done correctly, marketing emails can be an incredibly powerful way to build your brand and establish it in the minds of existing customers.

One way to build your brand and improve customer retention with marketing emails is to send out informational content. The main goal of this sort of email is not to sell directly, but to establish your brand as a source of knowledge for existing customers. Other brand-building emails you can send out include business announcements, interviews with industry thought leaders and re-engagement emails.

5. Build a genuine social media community

Social media is a digital marketing channel that’s impossible to ignore in 2024. By harnessing platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, your business can meet your audience where they are and establish two-way communication with your customers.

To improve customer retention, you want to establish a genuine community on social media, and not simply collect likes. This means creating an environment where your followers interact with your business and with each other. To do this, develop a common purpose for your community and outline a set of values. Constantly monitor your brand community and delete unwanted content like personal attacks and misinformation.

To encourage interaction in your social media community, your business needs to post relevant content on a consistent basis. This might take the form of a new product launch, a helpful blog post or a survey.

Social media is a powerful branding tool for improving your customer retention rate. By building a community around your business, you can create stronger emotional ties between your customers and boost retention.

6. Optimise your website

With the rise of digital technologies and the sheer commercial potential of digital platforms, it’s safe to say that all modern businesses can benefit from maintaining an online presence.  In the context of eCommerce enterprises, an online store gives you access to a wider market than simply selling through brick-and-mortar stores and allows existing customers to buy from you again with the click of a button. Even if you don’t plan to sell online, a website is a great way of advertising your products or services and establishing your brand.

When running a company website, you want to work with SEO professionals who can get your site and individual on-site pages and blog posts ranking on the first page of search engines like Google and Bing. A good SEO consultant will employ strategies like internal linking, keyword research and competitor analysis to make your site more discoverable.

To maximise your website’s effectiveness when it comes to brand building, consider adding a blog section. Engage a quality content creation service to write posts that are both valuable to visitors to your website and improve your site’s SEO. Writing relevant blog posts establishes your business as a thought leader in its industry and builds customer trust.

It’s also important to make sure that your website’s UX and UI are up to scratch. Seemingly small details like font size, the speed at which pages load and the quality of the images you use all contribute to a visitor’s overall experience of your site. You should also make sure that all your brand elements, including colours, fonts and symbols, are present. You want costumes to associate your website with your broader brand.

The Final Word

Branding is an essential part of customer retention. A strong, memorable brand is one of the best ways of fostering bonds between your business and its customers and encouraging repeat purchases. In order for your brand to be the customer retention tool you need it to be, it’s crucial to get certain things right.

In this blog post, we’ve gone over some branding strategies that can help you increase customer retention. Implement tips like running remarketing campaigns, building a strong website and sending out informational emails today to increase loyalty among your audience. Want to kickstart your customer retention strategy? Contact our digital marketing experts here at Digital Next to see how you can elevate your brand with your own tailored and targeted marketing campaign.