How to maintain and grow your brand equity.
Brand equity sets apart branded products from the generic equivalent in a highly competitive market. In essence it is a value premium a brand generates due its brand image and consumer perception in comparison to alternatives. Constant and consistent branding, aided with targeted communication, outreach programs and fine crafted brand experience at every consumer touch point, go a long way in shaping market perceptions and building brand equity.
When a brand is known and trusted to the point that the customer recognizes it and feels a deep psychological bond with it, your brand equity is valuable and working to your advantage. Let us dive deeper into how to grow and maintain brand equity.
Read our fundamentals off brand equity if you missed it.
Greater Awareness
Consumers are not necessarily biased against unfamiliar products/ brands, but they are biased towards known and familiar brands. Familiarity breeds trust. You need to make sure your customers recognise your brand identity when they’re looking for goods or services, and that they perceive it in the way you intend.
Efficient brand development framework with a comprehensive brand identity and communication guideline is crucial to build your brand presence and in turn brand equity. To build brand equity, the identity of the business has to penetrate the consumer segment, and elicit cognitive and emotional connection with the audience. A coherent and consistent identity framework gives consumers an anchoring point to identify the brand, become familiar with it and base their emotions and opinions on.
More than brand awareness, aim to create awareness about the problem the brand solves for the consumer, how your offerings help them and give compelling reasons to choose your brand over alternatives. Take care to consistently connect with the consumers, create a feedback loop and constantly work on improving the brand experience each consumer receives across all touchpoints.
Use all possible social channels to spread the word and build a positive perception for the brand. The aim of all awareness activities should be to cultivate a strong bond with the target consumer segment and turn them to promoters of the brand who lend you their goodwill and trust. No greater advertisement than word of mouth.
Communicate what you stand for
Studiously developed brand ideas, repeatedly communicated through a well designed framework, ensures strong long term audience connect and creates immediate behavioral change in favor of the brand. The real power of branding lies in the ability to shape and guide consumer perceptions of your brand. Leverage the power to suggest to consumers what to think, feel and believe about your brand.
The communication framework has to focus on the crisp and transparent delivery of messages that highlight the pain point the brand tackles and the impacts ( social and psychological ) driven by the brand. Be sure to maintain integrity and transparency when advocating your brand. Consumers are judgmental and often unforgiving. Judgments are made about a brand’s credibility, capability, quality, relevance to need, and superiority over the competition, so it’s important to maintain the integrity in all of these.
Step beyond marketing the product, and focus on conveying how the brand is transforming their lives or accentuating their lifestyle. Communicate to the audience what your brand stands for, why to choose you and what greater good can be achieved through your brand.
Build loyalty among consumers
Make every interaction an experience that matters.
Consumers interact with the brand in a multitude of ways, and the experience they receive at these situations sum up to shape their perceptions and opinions of the brand. To drive a consumer from awareness to loyalty, it is important to map the consumer psyche and deliver a brand experience that inspires them and gains their confidence. Strive to deliver quality experience consistently across all the touchpoints.
Consumers who develop an emotional bond with the brand make repeat purchases and often act as promoters who lend social credibility and goodwill to the brand. Aim to make them feel as a part of a community of like minded people, making them ambassadors of the brand who promote you through their real life social interactions and digital social channels.
Brand connect that borders on customer evangelism is a highly valuable asset in any competitive market.
Beyond branding, it is equally crucial to deliver on the promised quality, stay reliable and go the extra mile to resolve consumer complaints and ensure fulfillment. Any brand that can maintain positive feedback and judgment can envision a fruitful future. Care has to be taken to stay transparent, maintain integrity, deliver on all promises and consistently improve on the brand experience through monitoring external feedback and suggestions.
Community Outreach
We are in a market reality where consumers are demanding more from brands than quality, reliability and legacy. The new age demands humane, ethical and inclusive brands that champion a cause and strive to do more and do good. To build a community around your brand, it is essential to reach out to the target consumer segment, understand their lives and involve in activities that excite and inspire them, to capture their attention and goodwill.
The market today demands brands to become social entities that are rooted in the contemporary world and in touch with the consumer base. Aim to amplify issues that are aligned with your brand and initiate programs for betterment of these issues.
Brand Equity is gained over the time through constant and consistent brand development activities that are focused on your target segment. Unique and strong brand identity armed with a consistent and concise communication strategy, when applied in a thorough brand development strategy ensures greater consumer conversion and higher brand loyalty.
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