The Brand-to-Consumer Relationship Is Changing Due to Web3
A corporate brand in the past created intellectual property to create a product. The company then employed marketing to generate demand for the product and cultural capital. Consumers would then purchase the product after that.
Today’s business owners have a variety of starting points. In Web3, they are attracting a community first, and that community aids in the development of their cultural capital. This approach initially fosters a sense of affinity, emotional connection, and loyalty. The brand does not create IP or introduce new items until this emotional connection and loyalty have been formed.
There’s a strong probability that if you’re a small or medium-sized firm approaching things the traditional way, you’re falling short when it comes to providing your customers with experiences.
What Today’s Brand Customer Loyalty Programmes Lack
Loyalty has a very high emotional index when you consider it with respect to other individuals, such as your spouse, your closest friends, the people you graduated with, and so forth. The most important relationships in your life are these ones.
However, loyalty’s value is substantially lower when it comes to businesses. This is most likely because consumers view each customer loyalty programme as a transactional one that offers benefits for returning customers. We get that a restaurant will give up some of its profit margins in order to keep a repeat client by offering a free item after ten purchases, as it is less expensive to keep a consumer once they have been lost.
The loyalty paradigm feels unfinished in its current form. NFTs and Web3 provide new media that can connect people to businesses beyond the product or service being supplied, even though there is always a reason for value as part of a loyalty programme.
Instead of replacing the loyalty paradigm entirely with something new, NFTs and Web3 technology offer a significant potential to complete it. Businesses can build layers that tie customers closer to their brand by emphasising value, self-realization, contribution, and belonging. Future brand loyalty will be largely dependent on this new flywheel of community contributions, engagement, retention, and acquisition.
Steps for Launching Your Own Web3-Based Loyalty Programme
Interested in creating a Web3-based loyalty programme but unsure of where to begin? You’re with some nice folks. Even major brands are having trouble answering the who, what, how, and when questions.
Here is a summary to help you if you’re taking the do-it-yourself in-house route.
You must first pick who will be the owner of your loyalty programme. Are they your CEO, CMO, or head of digital marketing? The lines become hazy, and numerous departments will be involved in a successful programme.
Include innovation and operational champions who can work cross-departmentally when building your team so that it maintains a sense of clarity about the mission coming from the top.
You’re probably one of those champions if you’re reading this. With no regard for their badge, search inside your firm for other people. People from a variety of areas, including eCommerce, brand marketing, legal, content planning, app development, and others, made up the Adidas loyalty programme team.
Next, think about how your firm as a whole views innovation. You’ll require extra time to build the programme if it tends towards tradition. You can go faster if it’s more exploratory and agile. When selecting when to launch, it’s crucial to take external considerations like market competition and timing into account.