![\"Online](\"https:\/\/www.customerservicemanager.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/rate-reviews.jpg\")
\nReviews are the lifeblood of businesses online and traditional brick-and-mortar. According to Search Engine Journal<\/a>,\u00a0 70% of people claim they form an opinion of a business based on their online reviews, and 90% of respondents claim they read less than ten reviews total before forming an opinion.<\/p>\n With so many people relying on the reviews they find online, the top couple of reviews are crucial for your reputation. One way to analyze this data is with an excellent online review management software<\/a> program to enhance your online presence. This analysis is fundamental, based on how customers form their opinions. Your business must thrive. To do so, cultivate excellent brand loyalty that will post great reviews of you, your product, and your service.<\/p>\n What Is Brand Loyalty?<\/strong><\/p>\n Brand loyalty <\/a>is best defined as your customers\u2019 tendency to make multiple purchases of your goods and services over competitors. By creating brand loyalty you\u2019re creating individuals to act as ambassadors with your brand and creating long-term customers.<\/p>\n There are three types of brand loyalists,<\/a> the heart loyalist, the head, and the hand loyalist.<\/p>\n The Heart Loyalist<\/strong><\/p>\n This type of person is dedicated to a particular product or service\u2019s specific feature or benefit. Think about sustainability in packaging as a cause that motivates a heart loyalist. A great example of this type is Tom\u2019s Shoes, the shoe company that addresses social causes and donates one pair of shoes to a needed child for every shoe purchased.<\/p>\n The Head Loyalist<\/strong><\/p>\n The logic of their purchasing decision drives this type. A Head Loyalist will decide based on the best value or some other metric that makes logical purchasing sense rather than one driven by a core-value or additional altruistic value.<\/p>\n The Hand Loyalist<\/strong><\/p>\n These are the most devoted of brand loyalists and stick to a specific brand regardless of a competitor\u2019s value or other advantages, even when the competitor offers little-to-no risk for switching brand loyalty. Think about the person that only buys a Pepsi over a Coke and vice-versa. Regardless of the price or other offer that Coke could make, a brand loyalist will still only drink Pepsi.<\/p>\n Now that we understand the type of loyalist and where their loyalties stem from, the next step is in planning how best to curate them into an ambassador that is loyal to your brand.<\/p>\n Tips To Cultivate Brand Loyalty<\/strong><\/p>\n Your strategy to create brand loyalists must think about the type of person, their motivations concerning your brand, and how they may think if you pivot or change your product.<\/p>\n As we discussed, hand loyalty type persons are the most loyal to your product and offerings even if you have to pivot or iterate your product (New Coke, anyone<\/a>?). Whereas the other two types of brand loyalists, the heart and the head, each could have different reasons they are loyal to your brand, and there may be an external factor that breaks them away from their loyalty.<\/p>\n By targeting the hand loyalist, you ensure long-term fans, and those fans act as ambassadors by their reviews, recommendations, and word-of-mouth advertising to friends, family, and colleagues.<\/p>\n So now that we know the best type of individual to target as a loyalist, the question is, how do we create those loyalists?<\/p>\n The best advice to create long-term brand loyalists is to craft a strategy that incorporates a multi-pronged approach that focuses on customer service, create a brand story, add a loyalty \u201crewards\u201d program, and engage fans on social media.<\/p>\n