If you ask someone to name a few brands off the top of their head, they might name Netflix, Pepsi, or any brand that has resonated with them. Aside from being a fan of these brands, they all have something in common that makes them easily recognizable. One very important characteristic is brand equity that all top brands have in common.

What Is Brand Equity?

Brand equity, in simple words, is the weight a brand can possess. It comes from the value it has among its customers and their experience with the brand. So, the more positive the experience, the more equity the brand will have.

So essentially, if your brand gets a lot of positive reviews and is recommended to other potential buyers by your customers, you’ll have a high level of brand equity. Now, suppose, for some reason, you can’t deliver the sort of services your target audience is looking for. In that case, you’ll end up with negative reviews, leading to a bad customer experience and negative brand equity.

Why is brand equity so important?

Let’s say you get your morning coffee from a particular place near your work. You enjoy their coffee because they offer you the kind of service you want. The coffee is great, it suits your budget, the employees are polite and friendly, etc. As a customer, if you are satisfied with the kind of service you’re receiving from any particular brand, you’ll turn into a loyal customer.

That’s exactly why brand equity is important. It makes customers stay for as long as they are happy with the service. So, it is safe to say that positive brand equity gives you the ability to sell more and aim for higher profits. Brand equity is so important that it even helps businesses charge higher prices thanks to their brand value and the loyalty of their customers.

Engage with customers

One easy way to find how much brand equity your business has is to talk to your customers. After you get a rough sketch of where you stand in the brand equity spectrum, you can start to build from there.

There are a few common ways you can engage your customers to get a feel of their experiences with your brand:

• Ask for feedback after they finalize a purchase. You can send a feedback form to their email address, for example.
• Ask your customers to submit a review on your Google My Business account.
• Ask them about the misfortunes or the problems they faced with your brand and try to fix them.
• Run a newsletter.
• Include Q&As on your website.
• Try to include your customers in some of the behind-the-scenes activities. You can publish them on your social media platforms to get more traffic through those mediums as well.

The above methods and many more can help you achieve trust among your customers and turn them into loyal ones.

Grow trust and build relationships

Brand equity is directly connected to building customer relationships. And customer relationships mean that you start building brand awareness to entice your target audience to try the products or services you provide. If they have a memorable experience with your brand, they will return for more and quite possibly bring their friends and families along with them.

So, to ensure that your products and services become their favourite, you need to make sure your product is topnotch in the first place before succeeding in the brand awareness process to set the hook.

Build brand awareness

As we said in the previous paragraph, building brand awareness can be the biggest strategy to achieve high and positive brand equity. Brand awareness done right will lead to brand trust. It is not merely achieved with advertisements; your brand should be capable of achieving all the promises it makes and actually delivering the kind of product experience customers look for.

Brand awareness is also not a one-time deal. The process is never-ending. It includes multiple steps, like interacting with customers on social media, being present in social events, embracing brand values, and being proactive even if they’re not trying to sell.

Brand awareness is like building relationships in the real world. Imagine you meet someone and want to become friends, but they go and ask you for the kind of favours that sound unrealistic for a friendship in its early stages. Building brand awareness is the same. First, you need to build the kind of relationship that bonds the brand with its target customers, then pitch your sale.

Have an interesting brand story

A business can reach its potential brand equity by first understanding its brand story. Every famous and successful brand out there has accomplished its brand story in more than one way. For example, you can talk about your brand story on your website by explaining your goals and values with your products/services. Also, a brand can characterize its posts on social media in a way to convey its unique brand story. It is always encouraged to utilize the power of storytelling because humans naturally prefer real stories over fake and staged advertisements.

Understand where your brand equity is coming from

The top brands that got a huge experience in marketing have already discovered a way to understand where their brand equity comes from. These famous brands do a regular marketing analysis to understand which method has helped them increase brand equity. It is obvious that by monitoring brand equity, businesses will understand which tactics have proven themselves to be lucrative or which ones need to be ditched in the bin.

A brand marketing audit has to include a history of your latest marketing strategies and a host of information about how well the customers perceived them. You can use surveys, email newsletters, direct customer phone calls, and other customer research methods.  

The goal is to determine whether your marketing policy aligns with your customers’ views or if you’re knocking on the wrong door.

Conclusion

Brand equity has always been and always will be one of the most important aspects of every marketing campaign. It directly involves the customer experience and their perception of your products. Building reliable and positive brand equity hugely depends on the sort of relationship you try to achieve with your target audience. Communication is key from the get-go and throughout every step, you take in advancing your brands.

The point to take away here is that the key to success with all these famous brands is listening to their customers and making them feel participated in your brand evolution regardless of their buyer journey situation. If you manage to provide them with an incomparable experience, they will eventually become a customer or recommend your services. It’s a win-win situation for you.