As a small business owner the first thing you need to understand is that it’s much easier to keep your existing customers then spending money to acquire new ones. The small companies that realize this are the ones that continue to thrive in this economy and in todays retail landscape.

While many people feel that their loyalty reward program should be about squeezing more money out of these customers they should instead be thinking about brand awareness. With social networking the spread of your solid business and its great service is easy to achieve when these people praise your business to others and recommend you.

While building your small business in this manner is the right thing to do there are now two key areas in which you need to pinpoint.

Social Loyalty – Facebook fanpage, Google + page, twitter etc are great ways to build social branding and give your loyal customers an easy way to share their like for your business to their friends.

Mobile Loyalty – Foursquare is a key example of how you can award your customers for visiting your brick and mortar building. However if you do not have a brick and mortar company there are still ways you can use mobile to your advantage. Examples of this would be creating an app that promotes your business but solves a common question or issue many have in the niche.

There are a number of other ways you can build your business via your loyalty rewards. However remember your main focus is not to squeeze money out of your existing customers instead it is to reward them for spreading their positive review and brand to their friends.