Brand Equity

When it comes to business and entrepreneurship, the term branding gets thrown about quite a bit. Although everybody seems to have an idea and understanding of what branding is and what it does from one person to the next, you are going to get a different description or idea of what it’s all about. But when we think about the result of branding, that is the willingness for somebody to choose one brand over another or to pay a premium for one brand over another and the value of that willingness is called Brand Equity.

What is Brand Equity?

Brand Equity is essentially the value we place on the willingness of our audience to either choose our brand or to pay a premium for our brand. Let’s look at this from another perspective. People who buy and sell businesses, when they go and buy a business there are a few key things that they look for. First of all, they look at assets. What assets do they have? They might have some machinery, premises, or intellectual property. They’ll have a look at liability as well like any commitments, rent, staffing costs, or operational costs that they might have and then they’ll have a look at their turnover, the revenue they’re generating, their sales process, and how much the business can expect to make annually. In the middle of all of that is the intangible asset that includes your brand equity. Essentially, the brand that you are building, the logos, the fonts, the image style, the website, the positioning, the messaging, the storytelling, all of these things coming together is the brand that you are building. External parties looking at businesses and looking at the value of a business will look towards your brand as an actual asset.

How Does This Affect Brand Building?

If you think about what you’re doing, the elements that you’re building, your positioning, messaging, internal brand, differentiation strategy, the personality and all of those assets, your brand identity system, website, and any collateral that you have. What you are doing with all of those and the end goal is to influence the mind of your audience and influence their willingness to choose your brand over the next. Therefore, everything you do in branding is to influence and grow that willingness which is to grow your brand equity.

Taking Brand Equity with Clients

If you are a professional in the branding space, then obviously you need to know what brand equity is because it’s part of your role. But there are added advantages to clearly understand brand equity and being able to discuss brand equity with your clients as well. When it comes to branding, people have different ideas about what it is. Some people think it’s a logo or just a website or a few messages but when you’re able to talk about brand equity and point to the fact that the brand they are building is an actual asset to their business, it shifts their perspective on what they’re willing to commit to building an asset for their brand and it elevates you and your profile as an expert in your space. If you can talk about assets and growing assets for the business, they won’t just see you as a designer or website builder or a brand developer, they will see you as a business person that understands business and that’s trying to help them grow their equity.

How to Build Brand Equity

When it comes to branding, brand equity is kind of a big deal. If you’re building a brand for yourself or your client you should be doing everything in your power to build strong brand equity. Luckily for you, it just happened I have a ten-step process that I’m going to share with you.

Build Visual Awareness

Your logo and your overall visual identity is often the very first touch point that your audience will have with your brand. As humans, we’re able to remember visuals in as little as 13 milliseconds. It is an advantage for your brand if you have a very unique brand identity. Make sure you leverage that and give your audience something to remember so that they’re able to easily recall your visual brand.

Go After Your Position

There’s absolutely no point going into the market and trying to be the same as everybody else or trying to follow the trendsetters and to offer something similar to what they are offering. Your job as a brand builder and as a brand strategist is to clearly define the position that you want to own in the mind of your audience and go after that position. You want to make sure that they understand what it is that you represent so that they can place your brand in the right position in their mind.

Stand For Something

Consumers are switched on today and there are a lot more conscious than they used to be. They push back from brands that are all about push marketing. If you can show your audience that you’re there for more than just that revenue, then you are going to earn a soft spot in their mind and that will help them to remember your brand.

Communicate the Value of Your Difference

Too many brands today go into the marketplace and make assumptions. They assume that their audience knows what they’re all about; they assume that their audience understands why they’re there and why they’re different. But if you don’t tell your audience clearly why you’re different and the value of that difference, they’re not going to know. Too many brands assume that their audience knows what they are all about so take the time to articulate why you’re different and the value of that difference to your audience. Give them a reason to remember you.

Engage With Personality

Going back a few years, brand personality was a bit of a nice-to-have for brands but today it’s an absolute non-negotiable. You cannot go into the market today whether it’s through your social posts or your website copy and speak like a corporate entity and sound like an entity that has no real people behind it. You need to go into the marketplace and show that you have characteristics. Engage your audience on a human level. Take the time to understand who your audience is, what characteristics they’re attracted to, and make sure you ooze personality going to the marketplace.

Leverage a Unique Tone of Voice

What you say as in your messaging has always been very important. It tells your audience what you’re all about but the way you communicate is becoming increasingly different. If you have a unique tone of voice that you can engage your audience with coupled with those characteristics from your personality then your audience is going to feel that you are familiar. It going to feel like there are people behind that brand and that they’re talking to an actual person, not this corporate entity. Take the time to understand again who your audience is and to clearly define a tone of voice, and a language profile that your brand can use consistently.

Deliver Consistent Messaging

I just covered earlier the way you say and way you deliver your messages is really important but what you say has always been important. There’s this idea that your core message for your brand is all you need as a foundation for your brand communication. But when you think about it, a core message is a single paragraph and today there are hundreds of touch points that your brand might have with your audience. You need more than just a core message. You need a set of key messages that you want your audience to understand about your brand and overtime delivering those consistently is what will shape your audience’s perception of your brand.

Tell Stories

Over the last 10 to 20 years, neuroscience has uncovered the details about what we’ve known to be true for literally millions of years and that is that we as humans love stories. If you can tell stories about a journey that represents your audience’s journey and a journey that they can relate as well then they will resonate with that story if you’re able to then weave your brand throughout that story, they will align your brand with the idea of success.

Be Accessible

Growing a brand, therefore, growing your brand equity is all about building relationships and nurturing those relationships. Make sure that you grow organically and you take the time to keep those relationships going and be accessible through social media and email.

Show Up Consistently

Building a brand takes time. Building brand equity takes time. It is brick-by-brick and every single message, social media posts, emails, it all builds that relationships, and in turn, it influences your audience perception. Over time the influence of your audience’s perception turns into influencing their willingness to buy and their willingness to pay a premium.

Remember the brand that you’re building is an asset. External companies will look at your business and they’ll look at your brand as an asset with actual value. Take the time to build that asset and understand that over time as it grows the value of that asset will grow as well.