Given a choice between launching a marketing campaign or a loyalty program, most business owners usually go for the first option over the other or by investing in outsourced customer service. It’s easy to see why: marketing has traditionally been regarded as one of the best methods to get the word out about your product and convince people to buy.

Loyalty, on the other hand, conjures up warm, fuzzy words like “values” and “enthusiasm” and even “passion.” It requires that you instigate a two-way conversation with customers to find out what lights them up instead of standing on a pedestal to force people to listen to your “brand message”.

But with social media, consumers now have their own pedestals from which to voice out their opinions, and often their voices are just as powerful as yours. They also have a myriad of options, which means they can easily leave your business whenever they want.

The one thing that might give them second thoughts? Loyalty.

Here’s why you should focus on loyalty more than marketing.

1. It boosts sales

Take the case of Apple. Their fan base is known for their extreme loyalty, where consumers don’t think twice about waiting in line the night before whenever a new iteration of the iPhone is launched. With an average customer loyalty of 87% in Europe and the US, as much as 74.5 million units were sold by the time the iPhone 6 was launched by the end of 2014. While they may have had a few traditional ad campaigns leading to the launch, the majority of their sales can be attributed to their solid fan base.

2. It’s cost-effective

While it might take a lot of time, effort, and resources to start a loyalty program, it’s not as expensive as most people believe. What’s costly is having to acquire new customers and ignoring your current ones. This is because numbers research studies conclude that keeping your existing customers is up to four to 10 times less expensive than trying to find new ones. For the most part, the budget you allocate towards a loyalty campaign will pay off with additional business generated in the long term.

3. It improves your brand image

Word of mouth marketing has become more powerful with the advent of social media. Whereas in the past exchanging customer brand experiences used to be relegated to a small circle of friends, family, and coworkers. Customers’ opinions can now be broadcasted on their own Facebook or Twitter accounts for anyone to see. For business owners, this can work both ways: you can re-tweet good feedback to strengthen you reputation, or you can take bad feedback as an opportunity to improve. If you manage to turn things around for a disgruntled customer, it can highlight how well handled the situation, and boost your image even more. You’ll get the support and recommendation of happy customers and continue widen your circle further.

4. It’s a form of market research

If you pay attention to the results of your loyalty programs, it can be a valuable source of market research for your business.  You get an intimate glimpse of your customer’s buying behavior and see the type of incentives that elicit a positive, lukewarm, or negative response. This will help you decide which ones to use in the future, or how to approach your rewards system for better results. By knowing which ones your customers responded favorably to, you can iterate that program for future success.

5. It’s a self-sustaining program

It’s not easy to begin a loyalty program. The initial steps entail research, some financial outlay, and tedious administrative concerns to get things going. But once your rewards campaign has been up and running, you can pretty much leave it alone and it will continue to bring in growth. This can be attributed to its cyclical nature. More client purchases lead to more rewards, which will in turn entice them to keep buying from you. As long as you continually update your system to encourage client engagement, it becomes a self-sustaining program.

In the end, you don’t even have to choose one over the other, because your loyalty program could very well be your marketing campaign. A well-crafted loyalty program could yield the same results traditionally attributed to the best marketing strategies of yore: it will deliver your brand message, let other people know what your business is about, and ultimately convince them to buy.

The difference? Loyalty will have the added bonus of helping to form a relationship with your customers, one that is bound by values more than sales. That’s a potent formula for success right there. It’s a win-win partnership wherein customers keep coming back for more while you maintain a healthy bottom line for your business.