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Brand equity, outside of the value of your products, is the value of the brand itself. It is needed to make your company stand out against your competitors.
Building strong brand equity is essential as it is the value a brand name brings to your company. Branding includes the logo, image of your company, and provides a view of the attributes of your products or services.
Nowadays, companies are increasingly putting more focus on the general perception of a brand than their product. Though most consumers and customers expect more from the services and product, as well as how they treat the people around them from their customers to employees to the environment — companies manage to stay ahead of this shift. They achieve this by considering various marketing strategies that contribute to promoting their brand.
Now let us dwell deeper on brand equity. In building your brand equity, it is about “owning” the market niche. By owning a market niche, it makes you capable of charging premium prices to your customers.
What is Brand Equity?
Brand equity, outside of the value of your products, is the value of the brand itself. It is needed to make your company stand out against your competitors. It is a way for your company to be easily distinguishable from others and it needs to be well-thought-out.
Organizations must establish brand equity to assure that they are providing positive experiences to persuade their customers into continuously buying and availing their products or services. This helps build trust, reputation, and name recall for your target market.
Additionally, having positive brand equity gives your product and your company a competitive edge, resulting in a higher rate of profit and revenue. You can also explore adding more product lines with ease, knowing your customers already trust your brand. Ultimately, having positive brand equity can help facilitate growth and expansion for your company!
Tips for Strong Brand Equity
When talking about building a strong, positive brand equity, one of the most popular tactics is the Keller’s Brand Equity Model. Kevin Lane Keller is a professor of Marketing at the
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and the author of the textbook, “Strategic Brand Management.”
The Keller Model centers on shaping how consumers perceive and experience the brand, and building a positive mix of feelings and opinions towards the brand. There are four steps to building a positive brand equity — brand identity, brand meaning, brand response, and brand resonance.
Step 1: Brand Identity
Brand identity answers the question: who is your brand? The first step is brand salience: being recognizable and standing out. But brand identity isn’t limited to logos, aesthetics, and how your customers perceive you.
It’s also important to make your brand become exactly what the customer needs. The first step is knowing who your customers are. Conduct a thorough study of your market. Find out how your customers perceive your brand, and what are the factors that made them choose you instead of your competitor.
The results of the study will show you whether your brand identity aligns with how your customers perceive you! If it doesn’t align, it might be best to rethink how you’re promoting your brand.
Step 2: Brand Meaning
How does your brand perform? What does your brand stand for? To create brand meaning, you must answer these two things: performance and imagery.
Performance relates to whether the brand attends to the customer’s needs. The product has to work as shown in advertisements and promotional materials, and it has to get the job done. This has five aspects per Keller’s model:
primary characteristics and features
product reliability, durability, and serviceability
service effectiveness, efficiency, and empathy
style and design
price
Imagery, on the other hand, relates to whether the brand attends to the psychological and social needs of a customer. How does your product look in the eyes of the customer? You can find out through marketing strategies like direct promotion, word of mouth, organic social media interactions and engagement, and firsthand customer experience.
Step 3: Brand Response
What response does your brand evoke in your customers? Brand response can be categorized into judgments and feelings.
Generally, a consumer’s judgment fall on the following categories:
Quality
Credibility
Consideration
Superiority
Knowing the judgments your customers make can give you insights on how you can do better than your competitors. This requires a thorough and honest assessment of your marketing, brand packaging, and the likes.
On the other hand, a consumer’s feelings can be categorized into the following:
Warmth
Fun
Excitement
Security
Social approval
Self-respect
Customer needs evolve day by day! The challenge is how brands can keep up with them, and how they can find creative ways to make their customers feel positive brand feelings.
Step 4: Brand Resonance
Brand resonance means taking care of the customer relationship that you’ve built. This is usually done through constant purchases, social media presence and engagements, and a solid brand ambassador that delivers the image you want for your company.
To have stronger customer loyalty, it’s important to have your brand prioritize connecting customers! This is very important in facilitating organic customer-business relations.
Essentially, brand resonance is important because it is how you ensure continuous customer loyalty. Connecting customers lets them know that you value their patronage and that they can expect good customer service in return.
Conclusion
Building brand equity doesn’t have to be complicated! It is simply becoming attuned to your customer’s needs and taking steps to meet them. In just four easy steps, you now know how to make your brand name have a value for itself, how to have lifelong relationships with customers, and how to move forward with your business amidst changing customer needs and preferences!