Your brand provides direction and vision for your company, determines the nature of your relationship with customers, and has a direct effect on your bottom line. Your brand equity is a measure of the emotional connection you have with consumers; and damaging it can be a costly mistake.
What Exactly Is Brand Equity?
There is no simple definition of this complicated concept, but it can be best understood as the way people feel about you and your product or service. It’s who you are, what people think when they see your logo or hear your name, and the emotions people have when they consider their connection to you.
When your brand equity is high, you can do more. It’s easier to launch new products or services because consumers trust you. Clients and customers are more likely to forgive you for minor mistakes. You can even charge more based on the strength of your equity or rent it out for others to use.
Since brand equity is so valuable, what can you do to avoid damaging it?
4 Mistakes to Avoid
Responding With Sarcasm
Bad reviews online can tank your brand equity. For whatever reason, we’re all more likely to leave a complaint than a compliment, and we tend to give more weight to bad reviews than to good ones.
When someone leaves a negative review, you naturally want to respond; particularly if it’s exaggerated or unfair. The key is to stay professional and dispassionate in your response. This isn’t the moment to publicly vent, and you can’t ever forget that what goes up on the internet is always public. The way you respond to a negative review will say a lot about who you are, and professional responses attract positive attention.
Trying to Go It Alone
Many brands try to jump straight into building their reputation without doing the important preliminary work and getting the help they need to do it right. Instead of partnering with an experienced media company that can help them understand what message they should offer and keep that message united across channels, they strike out on their own.
When that happens, the result is usually chaos. Instead of sending a strong, clear message, you send confusing signals that suggest you stand for nothing in particular. People never develop a sense of who you are, so they don’t build an emotional connection. Without that connection, they are likely to go elsewhere and work with someone they understand better.
Bringing Up the Controversial
The old adage is that you should always avoid talk of religion, sex, and politics when in mixed company. This is generally good advice for your brand. Unless your brand is actually about a particular religion or engaged in a specific type of political activism, the more you discuss controversial subjects, the more likely you are to create outrage rather than attract customers.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming your target demographic all think the same way, have the same political views, or expect the same thing out of a company. That assumption could cost you everything you have.
Breaking Your Promises
We’re talking here about brand values, not a specific promise to do something such as ship by a certain date. Consider Apple as an example. Their brand promise is “Think Different.” So long as they continue to offer cutting-edge, ahead-of-the-curve products, they’re fulfilling that promise and generating constant excitement. If they ever do a product launch where nothing has really changed, some people will desert them in disgust.
Whatever your brand value, or promise, you must always deliver and be consistent. That promise must be uppermost in everyone’s mind every day at work. When you deliver on it, you’ll earn and keep trust.
Build Your Brand Equity
If you’re ready to begin your evolution, contact our marketing strategists today. We can help you produce a consistent brand image and get your message out there with impactful stories that bring real results.
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