Your company’s brand is one crucial connection point to your customers. When you increase your brand value, it lets them know what you organization values, how you differ from your competitors, and the type of products and services you offer.
This all adds into brand value, which Seth Godin defines as “merely the sum total of how much extra people will pay, or how often they choose, the expectations, memories, stories and relationships of one brand over the alternatives.”
Increasing Brand Value
Here are five ways to build a strong brand for your company.
1. Give Your Brand Meaning
What is your company truly known for? Entrepreneur discusses a few different company personas: is your company the young, nervy upstart or the reliable, established institution? Are you the high-quality, high cost option, or the low-cost, high value option?
There are also the visuals to consider. How do your logo, fonts, colors, photography, packaging, letterhead, and website all contribute to your brand?
Then there are the emotions that you want to evoke. How do you want your customers to feel about your company? Excited? Comfortable?
2. Create and Showcase Your Brand Personality
Your brand personality is how your brand expresses itself. For example, market research company Millward Brown discusses 24 different adjectives (e.g., straightforward, friendly, creative, caring) and 10 different archetypes (e.g., friend, seductress, maiden, mother) that can be used to describe a brand’s personality. If your brand is adventurous, it should be shown in your website, advertising, and in the way your company offers its products or services.
3. Consider Customers’ Perspectives
Millward Brown further explains that a customer filters through your brand’s personality through their own values and cultural understanding. You should understand how your customers may perceive your brand, as well as how your brand can shape that perception.
4. Keep Design Standards High
All those visual elements that are adding value to your brand—e.g., logos, letterhead, packaging—can show you’re serious about your company and its customers. Even if your company has low-cost products, your branding should still show that quality matters to your company.
5. Build Brand Loyalty Online Through Content
There are a number of ways to engage customers and build brand loyalty online. Social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Snapchat have become mainstays for businesses. You’ll need to determine which mediums work best for your brand, as well as the right content. Experiment and see what works best.
- A Snapchat session showing how your company works behind the scenes
- Keeping a weekly blog with company updates from the CEO
- Displaying customer stories and testimonials on your website
- A weekly Twitter chat around an industry hashtag
Strong Brand Value Comes Down to Your Ability to Stand Out
When you add value to your brand, you’re creating a lasting experience with your customers. You’re also creating and maintaining relationships. As you create strong brand value, there are questions that you should continue to ask.
- What makes your brand unique?
- How can you be memorable in the right way?
- How do you motivate your customers to spread the word about your organization so you can gain even more customers?
By consciously adding value to your brand, you can answer these questions confidently and get the results that you want: more mutually beneficial relationships.
