Custom Merchandise: The Secret Sauce to Brand Loyalty

In the modern business world, “old-school” sales and advertising tactics are out, and experiences are in. Today's marketing focus is all about creating an authentic experience that resonates with your customer, and fosters into a lasting, loyal relationship with your brand.

Think about the core values of your business, and consider how they align with your target audience. How effectively are those values, and the ethos of your brand being expressed through your product or service? Adding surprise and delight touches that speak to these values has the power to evolve a transaction or a sale into a cohesive brand experience.

Brand Loyalty is Essential

Why should people connect with your company? This is the question your brand image seeks to answer. The thoughts, feelings and experiences consumers associate with a product, whether positive or negative, stem from the way its parent brand presents itself. Brands with positive associations draw people back time and again.

Your brand is the vision you have for your company, realized in a way people can feel, understand and link to their own lives. Branding is about establishing something bigger than a beloved product line or a reliable service. It incorporates a strong element of trust, stemming from the way consumers perceive and interact with your company, and creating a bond from which loyalty to your brand springs.

Why You Need More than Products

At the heart of every loyal relationship is an emotional connection. In order for consumers to emotionally connect with your brand and develop that level of loyalty, your business must come up with authentic ways to translate the ethos of your brand beyond the product or service you offer.

People are sick of having products and services foisted on them by companies fixated on nothing but making sales. With so many businesses being exposed to us every day, it’s easy to wander in and out of a store or click through to a website and leave a few minutes later without ever connecting with the brand.

It is imperative for your business to find avenues to build a customer base with a strong sense of devotion to your company, people who feel invested in what you have to offer and who are not only willing, but also excited to continue coming back and making purchases.

Creating a cohesive brand experience goes a long way toward establishing this kind of relationship. Today's successful brands offer more to their customers than their main product lines. Added touches, like custom merchandise, can help expand the consumers' interaction with your business by bringing an element of memorability to your brand.

Custom Merchandise Equals Customer Retention

Metaphorically speaking, while your product or service is the "meat" of your business, custom merchandise is the "secret sauce" that brings everything together, and keeps your customers coming back for more. Curating a collection of custom merchandise gives you the ability to transform your brand’s ethos into tangible items, items that your customers can touch and feel, and experience. These curated items give your customers a taste of the unique brand you’ve created.

When you craft your merchandise as well as you craft your product, you are gifting your customers with surprise and delight touches that they can, and - more importantly - want to incorporate into their lifestyle. Taking this approach to your promotional products will help evolve your customers into brand ambassadors, who live and breathe your brand every day.

This not only improves brand recognition but also increases visibility as these unique promotional products are carried from place to place, like traveling billboards. These products spark conversations, improve customer retention and generate wide-reaching word-of-mouth advertising you can’t get any other way.

Creating brand loyalty with unique promotional products ties the experience of your brand to the everyday lives of consumers. A cohesive brand experience will evolve your company from a product or service provider into a trustworthy partner customers can count on to enhance their lives.

Ready to add custom merchandise into your brand's recipe? We'd love to hear from you! Click contact to speak to a branding expert.