The key to long-lasting business success lies in customer loyalty. This means creating experiences, products, and services that compel your customers to dismiss the idea of moving to a competitor. Building loyalty matters especially when your audience can have their pick of products and competitive prices.
The key to driving customer loyalty is to create positive reinforcement when customers behave in a desirable way i.e. buying from your brand, sharing your social media posts, and more.
Positive reinforcement is a psychological concept where you reward specific desired behaviors as soon as they are done. Very quickly, the desired action is associated with a positive outcome and emotion. This leads to the behavior being repeated again.
When applied as a business strategy, you have a powerful tool to boost customer loyalty.
How do we apply this in a practical manner to your business? Try giveaway contests.
A giveaway contest is one where you give your customers the chance to win a prize. Giveaways are a tried and tested marketing technique to generate a buzz. And the many benefits they offer are neat too. Let’s take a look at what they are:
- You can create a campaign to boost social media engagement – getting more likes, shares, and comments
- Get user-generated content for your content marketing effort by asking your audiences to write a slogan, draw, or use your product creatively
- You’ll build your subscription list
- It’s an effective way to drive traffic to your site
By planning your giveaway contest, you can opt to accomplish several goals at once or focus on one important objective, such as boosting your social media followership.
Giveaway Ideas
When it comes to your giveaway’s success, your giveaway prize matters as you can drive loyalty with it. Here are some giveaway ideas that will help you win customers over in the long run by building positive experiences.
Free Product Trials
A product trial will help you draw in customers who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer. By giving your audience a free trial, you’ll help them understand your product and its merits. They’ll become familiar and grow to rely on your brand.
A trial of your product or services will allow you to nurture your relationship with your customers and build loyalty.
Company Swag
Gifts from your brand that has your branding on it can be a wonderful way to connect with your audience. It’s a gesture that’s endearing and meaningful to your customers. If you can create quirky, useful, and personalized gifts, it’s more likely to get interest and also engagement on social media.
Free Upgrades
Nothing shows appreciation like offering your customers a free upgrade on their existing subscription with you. It’s a compelling giveaway that can really motivate customers to engage with your giveaway contest.
With this type of giveaway, your customers will overcome doubts about upgrading and when they see the benefits of a higher product offering, they’re more likely to continue using it.
Bonus Loyalty Points
Loyalty programs are built with the idea of fostering customer loyalty. You can continue to work along with current loyalty programs by offering bonus points, badges, or some other kind of reward for members.
Bonus points can act as a stimulus for customers to make more purchases. They’ll also find it convenient and beneficial since they’re getting something ‘extra’ for using your products.
Gift Cards
Gift cards that your audience can redeem for purchases or experiences are a favorite with most people. This is because it offers flexibility and freedom of choice. When your customers are able to choose what they really want, they’ll appreciate the giveaway more and in turn will hold your brand in a positive light.
Giveaway Game-Changers Will Boost Loyalty
A giveaway content is a powerful technique that you can leverage for any marketing goal. You can send more traffic to your website, get more followers on social media, generate content to feature on your site and much more.
It’s important to use the right tools and platforms to create your giveaway contest. For those who aren’t tech-savvy, creating a giveaway contest is easy if you have a WordPress website. All it takes is downloading a helpful plugin to do the job for you.
A giveaway plugin like RafflePress will let you easily create an attractive content that’s instantly shareable.
Designing a giveaway contest on RafflePress (Source)
When building your giveaway campaign, make sure that you have a clear goal ahead of time. This is because when you create your actual giveaway, you’ll need to choose options that ultimately realize your goals.
Since we’re looking at boosting customer loyalty. Consider offering your giveaway to customers who join up with your membership community or refer other customers to you.
An online community is an impactful means of creating loyalty since you’re building group dynamics. Also, customer referrals compel your existing customers to remind themselves why they’re willing to promote your brand – which also strengthens loyalty.
We’ve looked at some effective ways to boost customer loyalty with giveaways. Apply these techniques to your own business marketing efforts to build long-term customer relationships.