Customer loyalty is often interlinked with a sense of supporting a company consumers can believe in. Your clients, when faced with all the available alternatives, should want to buy into your idea.
Simon Sinek demonstrates the power of selling an idea in an inspirational TED Talk. According to him, a company should start off with the 'Why'; the motivation behind their innovation, before they focus on the 'How' and the 'What'. In other words, instead of telling your client about your impressive product, or your state-of-the-art methods, sell your reason for being innovative in the first place.
Sinek uses Apple as a perfect example of how innovation is driven by focusing on the idea. "They are more innovative than all their competition and yet, they are just a computer company. They are just like everyone else. They have the same access to the same talent, the same agencies, the same consultants and the same media. Why is it that they seem to have something different?" The difference, he explains, is that Apple sell their belief in thinking differently than the status quo before they sell their computers.
The way to create a sense of loyalty in your client base is to inspire them to care about your idea. Appeal to their gut instincts by sharing a common goal. As Sinek puts it, "They don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it."
Inspiring your client to get on board and pursue your dream with you is what will inspire a lifelong relationship with your company or product. Often, this lies in a quest for innovative thinking, but it can also lie in a passion for improving the world.
Environmentalists are willing to pay more for products manufactured in Earth-friendly conditions, because they want to buy into the company's idea of sustainability.
Is your product making a contribution to humanity or a specific community? Making the idea the focus of your business, or as Sinek puts it, "Working from the inside out," is the difference between selling a result and selling a dream.
In the same sense, caring for your idea entitles your client base to sharing in your success. Loyalty program service providers are focused not only on creating a reason to stick to a particular brand, but also appreciating clients for sharing in the idea.
Sinek uses Martin Luther King as an example of someone who stands for an idea. His enormous following supported him loyally not because they loved him or knew him personally, but because he had a powerful idea they could relate to. "And by the way," Sinek says about King's historical words during the American Civil Rights Movement, "he gave the I Have a Dream speech not the I Have a Plan speech."
