Brand loyalty and frequency of purchase, are not the same thing, although we seem to act most often as if they were.
Sometimes we marketers believe our own bullshit, not recognising we are usually delusional, or at least subject to a severe case of confirmation bias.
When was the last time you actually came across a customer who was so loyal, they wanted to ‘have a conversation’ with your brand?
Perhaps they were just shopping around and wanted a ‘conversation’?
Never, right?
Yet the term is used often as we indulge ourselves in developing marketing collateral.
Frequency of purchase, read loyalty, can be the result of many things, awareness, market share, delivering better distribution, price, shelf position in a supermarket, big advertising budgets, and so on.
Only when you significantly increase the price, and some customers stick like glue, or go from retailer A to retailer B for the single reason of being able to buy your product, do you have real loyalty. Even then, it is likely that rare, wonderful customer could not be bothered having a conversation with your brand, at the risk of the men in white coats carrying them off.
Even the exceptional brands, Apple is one, IBM used to be another, a deli in Flemington, Sydney, is another, known to a relative few who simply would not go anywhere else, do not have conversations.
Nobody in their right mind tries to have conversations with these brands.
They do have conversations with employees of the companies that own them, as they seek information, pricing, availability of spares, after sales service, and all the rest of the things we need, but nobody has a conversation with the brand.
Except in the mind of marketing dreamers.
They have conversations with people, your employees, their friends, and friends of their friends, people they meet in supermarkets and service facilities, the list goes on.
The real key is to ensure that when your brand is spoken about, in whatever context, people are telling others of the value delivered, the problems solved, and that it ‘delivers’.
Forget the frills, jargon, and self delusion, it is a tough world out there, and your product needs to perform as promised, then people will talk about you.
Header cartoon credit: Tom Gauld New Scientist.
