Importance of Brand Equity For Growing Business: When you’re considering both accountants and marketing professionals also include certain intangible assets when they calculate the value of a business. Whether they refer to it as “goodwill” or “brand equity”, the effects of a great brand will always be reflected in a company’s books.
There is a bit of confusion about what makes up brand equity and what it contributes to a business’s bottom line. This article will help you understand the concept of brand equity and explain how to build and maintain it.
Strictly speaking, brand equity is the sum of assets and liabilities that are associated with a business’s brand name. It is a reflection of the relationship customers build with the brand. Marketing experts believe brand equity has six components.
The first step in establishing brand equity is creating awareness of the brand. This means customers know what the brand is and can associate it with certain product categories.
The goal of brand association is to make customers associate brands with certain key attributes. For example, if you manufacture and market sports apparel, you may want to associate your brand with talent, competitiveness, and brawn.
This is the total of your customer’s experience with your brand. When you can provide quality products or services, they will start preferring your brand over others.
A brand is a promise, and quality is the way your company fulfills that promise. Customers compare different brands in terms of the quality of similar products.
Customers tend to be loyal to brands that they think offer them the best quality compared to similar products. This results in repeat business and helps reduce the market cost.
Once a brand has established loyalty, it can then capitalize on that preference to charge more for the same type of products.
Now that we’ve defined what makes up brand equity, we can determine why brand equity is important to businesses. Good brand equity has four main effects on your business.
You don’t build a brand overnight. Good brand equity is the result of years of hard work, research, and strategy. Building brand equity takes place in three stages.
Building brand equity won’t have apparent benefits right away. However, if you keep plugging away at it, you’ll see its effects in the form of customer preference and public perception. Maggi, the Swiss manufacturer of instant soups, is one brand that took good care of its brand equity.
The brand is very popular in India, where customers consumed over 400,000 tons of Maggi products in 2014. Not even a food safety scandal could wean consumers away from the brand. In 2015, the Indian government banned nationwide sales of Maggi products due to high MSG content. Maggi kept up its marketing efforts and brought itself back to the shelves before the end of the year.
If your organization does not take care of its brand equity, two things could happen. First, customers could be antagonistic towards the brand. First, they could express their dislike of the brand openly.
Alternatively, people can stop caring about your brand, which is worse. One illustration of a brand not taking good care of brand equity is BuzzFeed. Many feel that the brand jumped the shark when one of its email campaigns sent out a newsletter titled “Hi, You’re Fired”.
The email contained a link about people who failed spectacularly at work. The newsletter title seemed like a good idea at the time. However, it also led to numerous people getting upset, including BuzzFeed’s staffers.
The rise and fall of BuzzFeed. Chart from Trackalytics. The “Hi, You’re Fired!” email newsletter also foreshadowed a string of layoffs within the company itself — BuzzFeed cut 100 jobs in 2017 and daily pageviews also dropped from a high of 36 million to just 8 million. It is very crucial to follow the right email marketing practices, especially when the brand name is at stake.
Brand equity is often overlooked, underestimated, and unnoticed, especially since its value is not immediately apparent. But, as we’ve seen in the examples we’ve given in this article, it is one of a company’s most important assets.
It serves as a valuable asset, influencing consumer perception, purchasing decisions, and long-term relationships. A well-established brand creates a positive image, distinguishes a business from its competitors, and contributes to sustained growth.
Consequently, investing in and actively managing brand equity is integral for businesses aiming to thrive in competitive markets and forge enduring connections with their target audience.
Several factors contribute to the creation of brand equity. Consistent brand messaging and visual identity help establish a clear and recognizable image. Quality products or services build trust and customer satisfaction. Effective marketing and advertising campaigns enhance brand visibility and reach. Positive customer experiences and strong relationships foster brand loyalty. Innovation and adaptability to changing market trends also play a crucial role.
In brand equity, both tangible and intangible factors play crucial roles, making it challenging to prioritize one over the other. Tangible elements, such as product quality and consistent branding, build credibility and trust. Simultaneously, intangible aspects like emotional connections and brand perception contribute to customer loyalty. Striking a balance between tangible and intangible elements is key to a comprehensive brand equity strategy.
Brand equity offers several benefits for businesses. Firstly, it instills customer trust and loyalty, as a well-established brand is often associated with reliability and quality. Secondly, brand equity can provide a competitive edge by distinguishing a company's products or services from those of its competitors.
The five key elements of brand equity are brand awareness, which ensures consumers recognize and recall the brand; brand loyalty, indicating repeat business and a strong customer base; perceived quality, reflecting the customer's belief in the brand's excellence; brand associations, encompassing the positive attributes and values linked to the brand; and brand identity, comprising the visual and messaging components that make the brand distinct and memorable.
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