Brand Loyalty for the Nonprofit Marketer

For your typical retail brand, brand loyalty is a familiar and critical concept. Brand loyalty is customer retention: your customers return again and again to purchase from you instead of other competing brands. According to Shopify, “Not only do repeat customers buy your products more, but they also have a higher average order value than first-time consumers.”

Brand loyalty matters for nonprofits, too! It means your donors choosing to support you time and time again, and the communities you serve continuing to work with you over other organizations, and your members staying engaged for years and years.

Brand loyalty comes from an organization like yours living up to your brand promise, your brand’s mission, and your brand’s values… those essential components of your core messaging and identity that you’ve heard us talk about before. Brand loyalty is also one key part of your brand equity: the value you’re delivering for your various audiences and for your sector overall.

So, here’s the big question: How do you, the brilliant nonprofit marketer, cultivate brand loyalty?

Build a positive reputation within your community.

In the nonprofit world, generosity is the name of the game, and it’s a value that’s deeply-embedded in our daily work. So carry that value through by being generous within your own sector, and representing your organization as a collaborative, positive partner for your peers. You all have a mission to make the world better, right? You’re more likely to do that by working together, and by being a good organization to work with. That builds trust, and trust leads to loyalty.

Boost awareness of your org with your target audiences.

If you’ve put off doing any kind of customer discovery or persona work, now is the time to do it. Knowing your audience is critical for discovering what they need from a brand like yours, and how you can reach them to deliver what they need.

We’ve talked about this stuff before, but let’s review:

When you know who you want to connect with, you know exactly how to connect with them based on their preferences and needs. The more authentically you can do this, the more likely your customer is to feel acknowledged and valued. 

For example, a new mom wants very different things than a high-level executive when purchasing a car. A mom is likely looking for safety features, and an executive may want to know how it will boost her reputation or communicate a certain level of wealth and power to others. 

They both might buy the same car, but the reasons they bought it will be different because of their needs and motivation for making this purchase.

That kind of thinking is what results in two different kinds of marketing campaigns that cater very specifically to their target audience. You can do this, too! Use our handy-dandy guide to customer discovery here, and use this guide for building personas. Scan the data you have available through your website metrics, your social channels, your donation software, and your email marketing. By getting to know your audience and their specific needs and wants, you can design campaigns that speak directly to them in ways that make them feel seen and validated, which builds trust and loyalty.

Think through all aspects of how you’re engaging with your audiences, even in little ways.

How does this build loyalty? Again, it’s about feeling seen; by prioritizing the experience of your audience in all the various ways they might interact with you, from the emails they get from your employees to the donation process and the thank you notes you send, your audience knows that you think they’re important. So important, in fact, that you want to get every little detail just right.

Take some time or interview your staff and consider every kind of interaction you might have with your audiences. Write them all down in one place, and we really. mean that! It’s a great way for you and your team to realize that you may be communicating with your audience in many ways you didn’t expect at all, so each thing you put on that list is an opportunity to improve their experience and build… you guessed it… trust.

Identify and correct anything that may be creating a negative experience.

Pay attention to things like Glassdoor, Charity Navigator, and other review sites that might have you listed to see if your audiences are having any negative experiences with your brand. When you’re interviewing your staff about how they interact with your donors, members, and supporters, also listen for any problems. Each negative experience you might see or hear about is an opportunity, too, either to correct what happened and make it right, or to learn what not to do in the future.

Often, these negative experiences are a direct result of your organization not providing enough value to your audiences, or not communicating that value effectively. If your audience doesn’t feeling like it’s getting anything valuable from you, or they’re not seeing you do anything of value through your work, they’ll move on. Quickly.

Give your community lots of ways to show their loyalty.

At the moment of “we love you,” be ready to give your audience any means necessary to share how much they love you with their friends. That means creating interesting, valuable content that can be easily shared, and embracing the fun stuff: TikTok filters, merch, perks and rewards, you name it. Your supporters want to feel like a part of a community, so give them lots of ways to identify with you and what you do. That loyal community is one of your most valuable assets! And they’ll reward you by tellings their friends and families about you, leaving reviews, and coming back for more in the future.