and the occasional car wash ? 🙂

.
The Big Red Car thrives on a little praise and some 10W30.

BRC
.

well said.

.
Just as the military has “special forces” in addition to “ordinary forces”, customer loyalty is also subdivided between loyal customers and advocates/zealots/evangelists.

This latter description of loyalty is a subset of loyal customers and is a creation of the Internet in which referral, testimonial, reputation management have become new conduits for communicating loyalty concepts.

They were always there but until the Internet there was no way to identify and target them.

BRC
.

At Influitive, we used to make a distinction between loyalty and advocacy. Advocates will die for you, and they will sing your praises without too much prodding. Loyal customers, as you indicated will continue buying from you, but they are mostly passive. Their impact on others is minimal.

That said, many people don’t see that nuance as clearly as you and I would see it, i.e. 20% are the advocates, or maybe even 5%, but that’s a powerful bunch. But JLM’s list was describing many advocacy related actions and measures, without calling it “advocacy”.

.
Ahhh, I agree more with you than you do with yourself, Phil.

BRC
.

No I am saying that to really leverage “loyalty” you need to do two things:

Keep your best customers. I currently have 1,088,541 miles in my USAir account.

You need to also move those customers that are not your best customers up into that bracket

.
I am not absolutely certain what you are saying. Are you suggesting that the 20% are NOT loyal customers? In the end, every relationship is mercantile–therefore volatile and mercurial–and you have to deliver value to have any customers.

Dogs are always more loyal than customers and cats. Nonetheless, the notion of loyal customers or brand evangelists is a real notion.

BRC
.

I believe in Value Exchange Marketing. You provide value in exchange to let me market to you.

I don’t believe in the 80-20 view, I believe in the 20-80 view. 20% of your customers provide 80% of your value.

Is this bad?? NO. You need to keep that 20% and move some of the 80% up.

If that is not your business, just become a commodity supplier.

Loyalty is reserved for dogs. My dogs love me no matter what. Customers are cats.

And more and more customers prefer to take advice and get influenced by their peers, instead of sales people.