Seth Godin brought up the Two kinds of loyalty in one of his blogs this week.

Seth makes a strong argument that the loyalty we’re all striving for is the identity loyalty which comes from satisfied customers.  This loyalty makes clients ambassadors of your brand and these clients are so committed to your relationship they identify themselves as a patron of your product or service.  These are people who aren’t even tempted to shop around for another vendor.  Examples of this kind of brand loyalty are Apple, Nike or (to a lesser degree) Lululemon.

Unfortunately, too often we mistake loyalty of convenience for identity loyalty.  I might even argue that in our busy professional lives, we consider loyalty of convenience “good enough” and get back to the grind stone rather than perfect our marketing mix.  Why do we let second tier loyalty breed complacency?  Because it’s difficult to obtain identity loyalty.

Identity marketing doesn’t just mean the marketing team is doing their job, it means the brand is delivering.  If the customer service department drops the ball or the installation team makes a mistake, it’s going to affect brand loyalty.  And so much of the sales cycle is out of the marketing team’s hands.  When all that you do is vulnerable to the effort of others, it’s tough to remain motivated.