What is customer loyalty?

The term "customer loyalty" is thrown around quite a bit and is generally used to describe (supportive) behavior from customer to merchant. As business people, we all want our customers to be "loyal" to us -- that is, to give their business to us instead of a competing merchant. So the term "customer loyalty" typically refers to a buyer's preference for doing business with a particular business establishment.

But is this (one-sided) definition a good one?

I don’t think so.

A MODsocket subscriber recently requested assistance in setting up a campaign to recruit agents for selling his product. While his need was very specific to a particular industry and group of products, it does represent a typical need of most small businesses: that need is effective lead generation.

The MODsquad felt it would be instructive to share the essence of our guidance to this subscriber as we believe it wil be helpful to other MODsocket users.

We are pleased to welcome you to MODsocket.com.

MODsocket, the world’s first marketing-on-demand ecosystem, is the brain child of Ad Giants founder David Farmer.

David is an accomplished advertising veteran who spent decades in the advertising industry servicing some of the world's largest brands. During his tenure in the mainstream advertising world, David was afflicted with the desire to extend the professionalism, quality and considerable resources of the ad world to small businesses -- the real engine of the economy.

This may seem like a fairly straightforward question, but you might be surprised by the number of people who answer that there is no difference -- that the terms are synonymous.

They are right in the sense that the two terms are typically viewed and used as synonymous; but I am going to suggest two distinct definitions that I believe will permit better conceptualization, execution and performance of advertising and marketing campaigns.

Advertising: