Musings, interviews, product stories & more to boost your digital marketing.
Brought to you by the people behind Brightpod.
Branding

Tips for Measuring and Defining Brand Equity

May 9, 2017

A brand is a name or a logo associated with the product or service. The influence produced by a brand on the decisions made by customers is referred to as a brand equity. Simply saying, it is how customers recognize why a company is different from the others and better from those that provide the same products.

Clearly, customers shape their views on brands after interactions with them. For example, it could be as simple as direct experience with the product. This experience, if repeated over time, lays out the foundation for brand equity.

Brand equity is a dream of all companies but not every one of them is able to build it. No worries — the path to achieving this goal is clearly defined by a brand that already made it. Find out about the steps you need to take below.

1. Define positioning

The first critical step is to make the position of your company clear. The position is what the company stands for, so it is highly recommended that you avoid for advocating for a ridiculous number of positions. Each company is unique and cannot be an expert in many areas.

You don’t need to hire a professional to help you to define the positioning. All leaders of the company must sit down and discuss unique features. I realize how obvious this sounds but most businesses, especially small, skip this step to get right to making profits. Believe me, they get back to defining the positioning eventually.

Here is the formula that you can use:

“Our company is the only X that eliminates the problem of Y in Z unique way.”

In this formula, X is the product or service you produce, Y is the need of your target audience, and Z is the competitive advantage you have over other companies.

2. Produce positioning statement

When you defined the position of your brand, you need to let your customers know about it as well. This is done through the positioning statement. Not only it repeats the formula described in the previous step but also gives the rationale for the position.

All brands have a history of creation, full of extraordinary events and unpredictable developments. Essentially, all companies are stories that could be told to customers to give the reason why a specific positioning has been selected.

Let me give you a simple example. You always disliked fast food because it’s not healthy. Therefore, the restaurant you opened promises ‘real healthy food’ for the customers because it is made from organic products. That’s it, you can start writing the story of your brand using only this information.

It could sound something like this “our story begins with our founder who preferred healthy food instead of burgers and French fries. This value has been implemented in our new restaurant that serves only healthy dishes made from organic ingredients because we want everyone to be healthy.”

3. Bring the story to life

The example brand story that I’ve written above needs to be brought to life. This means that it should not be some unreachable ideal state of things but the ordinary business. For example, the design of the interior, the menu composed of organic food, and other elements should resemble your position and your story.

If you hide the truth about your business, you have no story to tell to people. You are just another company the goal of which is to make more money. Ugh. For customers, it would be much more difficult to relate to you. Nothing in common equals fewer customers.

4. Identify measurable components of brand equity

There are a number of these components that could be used for measuring customer experience, including image association, reach, and brand awareness. They show the effectiveness of your marketing effort.

For example, brand awareness is a component that indicates the success of spotlighting the product or service you offer. The reach shows how ‘far and wide’ the spotlight shines. Lastly, the image association demonstrates the values and promises that brands make.

5. Use both quantitative and qualitative approaches to collecting the data

There are so many different methods of gathering brand equity data, so you have to at least one from each category. This means that both qualitative and quantitative measurements should be taken to explore the motivation, decision-making process, and perceptions of the brand.

There are direct ways to measure brand equity, including:

Customer surveys. This method is excellent for the task because it can reveal real-life challenges with your products and ways to improve. For example, you can ask the customers about what they find the most useful in your products or whether they would recommend products to friends and why.

Monitoring of social media conversation. Facebook and Twitter users often hold active conversations about the products they prefer to buy. By analyzing these conversations, you can improve your products to meet the needs of the customers.

Lucy Benton

Lucy is a business consultant, marketing specialist at BestEssayTips. She helps people to turn their dreams into the profitable business. Lucy writes posts for websites, blogs related to marketing.

Branding8 Ways to Improve Brand Value Using IoT

Marketers need to figure out new ways to promote products and keep them aligned with the latest industry developments. In this article, we will show you 8 tips to improve brand value using IoT. Let’s check them out!

BrandingWhat is Your Employer Brand Saying About Your Business Brand

While most discussion revolving around a company’s brand tends to discuss these two notions separately, the truth is both your employer and your business b...

BrandingHow to Create a Strong Brand Voice That Will Be Heard

“If your brand was a guest at a dinner party you were hosting, what would you think about it?” This was the question we started with when trying to figure...