Top 6 ways to achieve greater customer loyalty through social media marketing

Social media has created one of the biggest shifts in how we discover, read and share information. For brands, social media marketing creates wonderful opportunities to connect with existing and new customers, and regular social media interaction can make a big difference to sales and popularity.

As a brand one of your main aims with social media marketing should be to strengthen customer loyalty. We’ve created 6 top tips on how you can get your customers attention and reap the benefits.

1. Write engaging posts with eye-grabbing images

Social media has made it easier for people to access and consume media at any given time, often causing us to have shorter attention spans as time has gone on. This means that when gearing your social media marketing towards your customers, you have to think from their perspective and create both engaging posts and images that stop their thumbs scrolling. You may have an important brand message you’d like to get across but if this doesn’t stand out to your intended audience it will fall flat. An important tip to keep in mind is that your brand’s message, mission, and values can be just as important as the product itself, driving customer loyalty as well as sales.

The plant-based brand, Oatly, is a great example of a brand that has mastered the art of creating engaging content for their social media channels and developed a community that supports them. Rather than the predictable messaging around why you should drink oat milk, which they do occasionally refer to, their social media marketing places particular emphasis on why you shouldn’t drink cow’s milk. Incorporating veganism, animal rights and plant-based discourse into their online content, thus promoting their plant-based alternative products. Through active and engaging content, Oatly has built a community that are passionate about the brand and about oat milk.

2. Knowing when to post and understanding why timing is important

It’s no secret that there are certain times of the day or week that are considered ‘better’ to post on your social media channels in order to capture the most engagement. For food brands it’s often recommended that you post about your food early in the day to plant the seed of your brand in your customers mind. Perhaps they’ll plan their weekend around visiting your restaurant or ordering a takeaway.

By using social media management tools such as Hootsuite, you’ll receive recommended days and times for you to post based on the data they hold, ensuring your social media marketing reaches more people and boosts sales.

3. Use different formats but keep brand consistency

Showcasing your brand across a range of different social formats is a great way to drive customer sales and loyalty. You’re able to market yourself in different ways depending on the platform and reach a wider target audience who become fans of your brand as you create content suitable for whichever platforms you choose to use. In doing this, you have to ensure your brand consistency remains intact. You may have TikTok followers who love your behind the scenes videos and Instagram followers who love your food photography, but the one thing all your followers and customers have in coming is that they love your brand. You don’t want to verge too far off your overall brand or tone.

Establishing the right balance between catering for your target audience and ensuring brand consistency within your social media marketing can be tricky. American fast food chain, Chipotle, has mastered Gen-Z marketing on TikTok. They rolled out the #GuacDance Challenge in celebration of National Avocado Day, and in 6 days racked up 50,000 video submissions and 430 million video starts. The well-known brand managed to make a name for themselves on TikTok with their younger generation of customers and keep on-brand at the same time, never losing their sense of self or tone of voice.

4. Interact and respond to customers

Another way to achieve greater customer loyalty is by showing the human side of your food business. Whether that’s interacting with customers in some way through a competition or poll or even responding to customers when they’ve left comments or questions. When thinking about your social media marketing strategy it’s important to factor this human element in and ensuring your brand comes across as friendly, responsive and kind is essential to gaining customer loyalty.

5. Offer new media strategies to keep users interested

Keeping your social media marketing ideas fresh and inclusive is an easy way to increase customer loyalty to your brand. Customers love it when you reward them for their loyalty and they’ll keep coming back for more and more. This is something Portuguese inspired food chain, Nandos, cottoned onto quickly during their online marketing escapades. For years they’ve offered a ‘High Five’ card given to celebrities who get to use the card for free Nandos whenever and wherever for 12 months. They then later branched out to a customer reward card, which works on a 3-staged colour system that enables consumers to get something back in return after 3, 6 or 10 visits.

6. Audit social media campaigns to address what does and doesn’t work

If you’re looking to improve your social media marketing, but don’t know where to start a marketing audit is your best bet. An audit can help you address what is and isn’t working for your brand, regarding socials, and an online campaign can be created based on these key findings, ensuring you get the best results, maximise customer engagement and loyalty.