Brand equity is the intangible value that a brand holds in the eyes of consumers. It represents the perception, recognition, and trust that consumers have in a brand, which influences their purchasing decisions and loyalty over time. Building strong brand equity is essential for you to build long-term success and remain relevant, and competitive on the market.
What is brand equity?
At its core, brand equity revolves around the following components:
1. Brand Awareness: This is the extent to which consumers recognize and recall your brand. High brand awareness increases the likelihood of consumers considering and choosing your brand over competitors.
2. Brand Associations: These are the attributes, qualities, and emotions that consumers associate with your brand. Positive associations, such as quality, reliability, and innovation, contribute to building strong brand equity.
3. Perceived Quality: Consumers’ perception of a brand’s quality significantly influences their willingness to pay a premium price and their overall satisfaction with the brand experience.
4. Brand Loyalty: Brand equity is also reflected in the level of customer loyalty and repeat purchases. Strong brand equity fosters loyal customers who actively advocate for the brand and contribute to its growth through positive word-of-mouth.
How do you build brand equity?
So now that you know this, how can you actually build that for your brand?
1. Create a consistent brand strategy: Make sure that your brand is consistent across all brand touchpoints — that includes messaging, visuals, and customer experience. This reflects trustability.
2. Figure out what makes you stand out: The current market is extremely saturated and it’s more important than ever to highlight what makes you stand out from your competitors. Figure out what’s special about your offer and make it the basis of your brand strategy.
3. Give meaning to your brand: Creating a brand that looks great is amazing — but it’s only the surface level of brand strategy. Before you start working on a visual identity that you like, make sure you know what your brand stands for, and how you can communicate it. Think values, origin story and purpose.
4. Build a relationship with your audience: Your brand simply doesn’t exist without your target audience, so it’s essential that connect with them in order to measure how they feel about your brand. That can be done through social media, but also by simply making sure your story and identity resonates with them.
5. Focus on Customer Experience and loyalty: Create an experience around your offer — and ensure that every interaction across your customer’s journey with your brand is positive, and memorable. It’s also important that you work on a brand strategy that makes your client come back, and recommend you. The first and most important way to make this happen is building trust — but it can also be done through incentives, personalization and loyalty programs.
6. Monitor and Adapt: You need to be ready to change and evolve according to the market, trends and to your target audience. Assess your brand’s performance, listen to your customers, look at what your competitors are doing and adapt your brand strategy accordingly.
Let’s put it that way — brand equity is at the core of your business’s growth, and without it it’s very difficult to achieve long-term success and remain relevant on the market. But remember, building brand equity takes time, and really is an ongoing effort. As your business grows, so does your audience, so does the market — and so should your brand’s strategy.
Want to discuss how we can build equity for your brand? Reach out to us!
