It’s a commonly held marketing mantra that people buy from brands they trust. That’s why it’s critical your prospective customers see your brand as genuine, trustworthy, modern, and approachable, even if it means ruffling some feathers on the board or across the C-suite.
Shaking things up brand-wise can help redefine your organization or help you emerge into new service areas, but there’s a point when the creative process can be disruptive rather than helpful.
After all, branding is a process that can seem long and arduous at times, but your business doesn’t need to grind to a halt just because you are in the middle of a branding initiative. By taking a different approach—and employing a new mindset—adding to and maintaining your brand’s value can be far less disruptive to the overall organization.
Thinking about brand development as a learning process that relies on nurturing and listening instead of a series of tasks to complete and budget to spend, you can grow the value of your brand without interrupting business operations.
We curated tips from some top marketing minds to help you approach your next branding initiative as an insightful journey, instead of a tedious distraction.
Pro Tips on Building Brand Value
1. Settle on a common definition of ‘brand’
Before you dive in headfirst to maximize your brand’s value, make sure you and your team agree on what you mean when you say “brand.” While a brand was once as simple as a logo identifying a product, the definition is now broader and more complex. Marketing thought leader, Seth Godin, says a brand is a “set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships that, taken together, account for a consumer’s decision to choose one product or service over another.”
Making sure you’re on the same page at the outset of a branding initiative is a good way to set expectations, reduce the number of surprises, and gain alignment across the organization on the direction being taken.
2. Understand the value of a brand
Regardless of the size of your organization or the amount of revenue it drives, your brand is your most valuable asset—worth much more than your property and even your products. Brands account for more than 30 percent of the stock market value of companies in the S&P 500 index, according to the The Economist. That’s why a Polo shirt costs more than another collared shirt, and why Coca-Cola sells more than off-brands. Brand value is multifaceted and includes factors like reputation, pricing, sales, and the tangible value of the product or service for consumers.
Understanding your brand’s value will motivate your team to see the branding process differently. Think of it this way: It’s your brand that keeps you connected to your consumer, so you want to nurture it continually. Your audience may have different needs and desires at different times, and you want to position your brand strategically to meet those needs.
3. Remember, your brand needs nurturing
Always keep in mind that your brand never stops growing. The best marketers continually invest time, energy, and creativity into their branding processes. Rather than approaching branding as a one-off expense, try to see it as a dynamic experience of hearing and responding to consumer needs. “A great brand has to be built every day,” says Ann Mukherjee, president of global snacks and global insights at PepsiCo. “People who think, ‘Well, I built the brand, now I’m just going to milk it,’ are not going to have a brand much longer. You’ve got to keep nurturing it.”
4. Understand and engage your audience
You can’t listen to your customers if you don’t know who they are. If you don’t know with whom you’re attempting to establish a connection or who is already engaging with your brand, it will be very difficult to find genuine ways to remain authentic.
There are many ways to meet and understand your audience so you can create and sustain a brand worth connecting with, according to branding expert, Carolina Rogoll, in Entrepreneur. You can increase your brand value by connecting with your audience through customer surveys, speaking engagements, SME panels, or social media polls. It’s also important to dig into your website analytics. That will help illuminate who is already using your products or services. To help improve brand loyalty, try offering incentives like free products or discounted services for those who take the time to engage with your brand.
Once you know who your potential new customers are, listen to them. “The most loyal customers in your brand will be the ones who purchase every new product or service without question. These are the people you can rely on. At the same time, you need to know how you got them in the first place,” according to Tech.co.
5. Emotional connections inspire brand loyalty
No matter how valuable or appealing your product is, an emotional connection is what inspires “loyalty beyond reason,” according to The Economist. “The emotional bond puts credit in the bank … brands must differentiate, appeal to distinct groups of consumers, and foster fidelity.”
Some studies even show that an emotional connection matters more than customer satisfaction. Harvard Business Review’s research concludes that “tapping into [consumer’s] fundamental motivations and fulfilling their deep, often unspoken emotional needs” is how brands can appeal to customers’ desire for safety, success, or belonging.
6. Content builds brand relevance and authority
In addition to emotionally connecting with your audience, it’s important to provide answers to their questions. Did you know 70 percent of organizations polled in Prophet’s 2016 State of Digital Content report were planning to increase efforts to align their organizations around a common content strategy? Content is an effective way to develop authority in the eyes of your audience and relevance in the eyes of search engines.
Content is also a cost-effective way to drive revenue. In fact, content marketing costs 62 percent less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads, according to DemandMetric. By creating original content, your organization can establish itself as a thought leader in your industry.
7. Protect your why
If you want to add value to your brand, reinforce your “why” instead of fixating on the “why nots,” says Mukherjee. “When brands get into trouble, corporations immediately want to say, ‘The brand is sick.’ They find a way to overcome why people aren’t buying the brand. When you market your brand against the barriers, your brand goes off track.”
Focusing on your why means keeping sacrosanct your organization’s reason for being. LEGO is an example of a top-tier brand that strayed from its why and paid the price, says Pradeep K. Chintagunta of Chicago Booth. “Several years ago, LEGO was in trouble because they’d forgotten that it was about innovation and the connection between them, the parents, and the kids. They started making movies and such. But now, the brand is doing extraordinarily well, largely because the company rediscovered their core, which is innovation: How do we make great toys that parents are convinced communicate some skill to kids?”
The Big Takeaway
Building value for your brand—whether you’re refreshing an existing brand or starting a new company—is a process that requires critical thinking and intentional actions. Building brand value without disrupting your entire organization, while still providing a great brand experience for internal and external stakeholders takes courage, creativity, and patience. Brands are like an organization’s identity and drastic changes without strategy or alignment is the quickest way to lose internal support for your initiative.
Visit our brand strategy page to see how we can help drive your brand-building project.
