Loyalty- it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Loyalty is the holy grail for all brands.

The one thing that people are told to fight for above all others.

Unfortunately, loyalty isn't actually a real thing.

Sadly people are inherently fickle and shop based on a myriad of factors; convenience, availability, price, promotion, newness, the perception of the brand in relation to self at the time of purchase, aesthetics, or even because the packaging has a big shiny, glittery star on it (true story).

A study by how brands grow: 71% of Pepsi drinkers also buy Coca-Cola, and 41% of Mars customers also buy Carte D'or.

"Apple & Harley Davidson are the poster child of 'brand loyalty...in reality Harley's customers buy other bike brands twice as often and Apple's repeat purchase levels are lower than Dell" Long and the Short of It

And both Apple and Harley Davidson have some of the most well-resourced and most significant marketing budgets in the world.

I am not saying that you shouldn't focus on people who have already bought you, as they have hopefully had a (positive) experience with you and thus have built some memory structure of the brand, but they should not be focused on in replacement of bringing new people into the brand.

You need to operate a retention AND acquisition strategy.

As a brand, you need to constantly think about the top of the funnel, how to recruit new consumers, and drive greater brand awareness at a broad level.

As you scale this will also mean going after an ever-broadening market, and starting to use more mass media channels to reach your audience.

So, whilst looking after your editing customers is important, you always need to be thinking of how to bring more people in, even if they are the very lightest of buyers.