How to Grow Your Brand Value
In the previous module, we discussed why it’s so important for your company to establish a positive brand—in other words, to earn customer trust and goodwill, and for the public to feel positive emotions whenever they hear or read about your business or your products.
According to research reported in The Economist Magazine, brand value alone accounts for more than 30% of total stock-market value of the S&P 500, which includes companies like Facebook, Allstate, and The Coca Cola Company.1
That makes intuitive sense. In any competitive industry, a business can’t expect to gain market share or become a dominant player simply by being similar to all of its competitors. A company needs to create a unique identity for itself and unique relationships with its customers—relationships built by earning those customers’ trust, consistently delivering on the company’s promises, and creating a customer experience that sets the company apart from its competitors.
Only organizations able to create and maintain this positive connection with their customers and the general public—companies like Disney, Apple, Google, and Amazon—are able to dominate their industries for years and even decades.
Which means growing your brand value should be a top priority for your company. Here are 10 proven strategies.
10 strategies for growing your brand value
1. MAKE IT A COMPANYWIDE EFFORT
As we’ve pointed out several times in this course, your brand’s value represents the sum total of people’s experiences and emotional associations with your brand.
That means every touch point that every prospect or customer has with your company (across any department, any time) can either add to or detract from your brand’s value with that customer (and all of the people they tell about it). It also means that no matter how well you position your company in your marketing messages, you can easily undermine your brand value if your customer service team isn’t properly trained.
In short, growing your brand value needs to be the shared responsibility and goal of everyone in your business.
Which means that whatever other strategies you choose to try for growing your brand value, one of your first steps should be to communicate to everyone across your organization the importance of preserving and protecting the unique brand your company is working so hard to establish and grow.
This should include:
- Sharing your company’s brand identity and goals with everyone on your staff
- Conducting companywide training to help each department and every individual on your team understand how they can contribute to preserving and advancing your brand’s value (with customers, prospects, vendors, partners, the media, industry analysts, etc.).
- Recognizing and publicly rewarding those in your company whose work helps build and grow your company’s brand value.
2. TELL A POWERFUL STORY
Great brands connect with people on an emotional level, and telling a powerful story with your brand is one of the most effective ways to do this.
When it launched, Airborne, a vitamin C-based supplement for immune-system support, included a message right on its package that read, “Invented by a schoolteacher!” That’s a powerful, easily understood message: Few people in the world have to work harder than teachers, after all, to protect themselves against colds.
Of course, the idea that a schoolteacher would necessarily be in any better position to invent a product that could boost our immune systems or combat germs — unless she were also a scientist — is absurd.
But for millions of consumers, the notion of buying a product invented by someone dealing with the exact same problem they were facing had real emotional resonance.
3. CREATE YOUR OWN BRAND CATEGORY
Let’s talk about Netflix. Why, in an already-crowded market of businesses fighting over each other to deliver us movies and TV shows on DVD—at movie-rental stores, in music and electronics stores, in supermarkets—did Netflix build such strong brand value so quickly? Because they invented a new category: DVD rentals through the mail.
As a small startup, Netflix couldn’t go head-to-head with a massive corporation like Blockbuster that had already established itself as the dominant player in the DVD-rental industry. When it came to DVD rentals, in fact, Blockbuster owned the brand.
So Netflix instead took a side door into the market: They invented an entirely new service, and from the start Netflix was able to own that brand.
This one is risky, obviously. If you build something truly original, you have no frame of reference ahead of time to know if it will resonate. Successful TV producer Steven Bochco enjoyed hit show after hit show using a familiar episodic-drama format. Then he produced Cop Rock: a police procedural drama and… musical. It was new, and different—perhaps too different—and it failed.
But if you can make something new that actually resonates—as Netflix did—then you can build real brand value.
4. BE DIFFERENT
One of the most successful soda drinks of all time was Jolt Cola. In the 1980s, in the crowded soda market dominated by Coca Cola and Pepsi, Jolt took a completely different approach to marketing its drinks and finding its core fans.
Jolt’s tagline sums it up best: “All the sugar and twice the caffeine.”
While Coke and Pepsi (and every other carbonated beverage maker) highlighted the healthier versions of the products—pushing their diet and caffeine- and sugar-free drinks—Jolt staked out the different position: They proudly played up the least healthy aspects of their product. As a result, the drink earned a loyal, committed group of fans.
Don’t be afraid to be different.
5. TALK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS ON AN EMOTIONAL LEVEL
Businesses that build great brand value understand that they are selling to people—and people make decisions based on their emotions. And yes, this is true even for B2B companies: If you sell a product to other businesses, you’re still selling to the people at those businesses.
Let’s say your business manufactures firearms primarily for law enforcement agencies and private security firms. It might feel tempting to craft messages that focus exclusively on your guns’ quality and reliability, or about the great service your business provides. But is that really going to move anybody emotionally? Is that going to help your company distinguish itself from the rest of the field—and build a valuable brand that resonates with your market?
How about a simple message to these organizations: “Be ready for anything.”
That’s a message that could cut right through the noise and connect with your customers on an emotional level. The buyers at the police departments and security companies you’re selling to, after all, know they’re sending their colleagues into harm’s way every day. So if you can become known as the “be-ready-for-anything” firearms manufacturer, you can build a real brand value asset.
6. EARN YOUR CUSTOMERS’ TRUST (AND NEVER VIOLATE THAT TRUST)
Consider the Disney example. In an age of ever-coarsening popular culture, when parents are more concerned than ever about exposing their children to entertainment content, Disney stands alone as the go-to brand for safe, age-appropriate fare.
This helps explain why in 2018 Forbes ranked Disney as the eighth most valuable brand in the world, with brand value worth an estimated $47.5 billion.2(Keep in mind, that’s Forbes’s estimated value only of the Disney name and all of the goodwill and trust it carries with consumers. It doesn’t include any of the company’s physical or intellectual property assets.)
What promises can you make to your customers about engaging with your brand? To the extent you can create those promises—and keep them—you can increase your brand value.
7. BE HIGHLY SELECTIVE ABOUT WHICH COMPANIES YOU ALLOW TO REPRESENT YOUR BRAND
Limiting the businesses you allow to sell your products helps you control your customers’ experiences with your brand, and that over time will help you protect and increase your brand value.
Think about it this way. If you were going to hire an actor to endorse your products in a TV commercial, you would obviously want to limit your search only to actors who have led honorable personal lives—or at least haven’t been in the news for misbehavior. You wouldn’t want your company’s brand associated with someone whose personal behavior could suggest he doesn’t share the values as many of your customers.
A similar principle applies to your products if you sell through a resale channel. Those retail companies are representing your company, and the experience they create for customers is part of your products’ overall buying experience—which means it can affect your brand (for better or worse).
Which is why it’s a good idea to develop an authorized-dealer program that would-be resellers have to apply to join. This will allow you to vet all potential retailers, and make sure only those that have demonstrated a commitment to quality service— or, if you’re positioning your products as high-end, only retailers that exclusively sell luxury items—can represent your brand.
8. GIVE YOUR BRAND MEANING AND PURPOSE BEYOND THE PRODUCTS THEMSELVES
Have you heard of TOMS Shoes? The company has achieved success, international attention, and enormous brand value with a simple promise: You buy a pair of shoes from us, and we’ll donate a pair to someone in need.
TOMS has since built a number of other businesses with similar promises. TOMS Eyewear, for example, donates a pair of glasses every time a customer purchases one for herself.
The message is so simple—One for One® is how the company describes it—that it’s easy to spread. And, as you can imagine, TOMS customers love telling their friends that they just helped bring a pair of shoes or eyeglasses to someone who truly needs them.
With this strategy, TOMS has built strong value in large part by tapping into our desire to help others.
9. CHARGE MORE FOR YOUR PRODUCTS
Would Tiffany, the high-end jeweler, ever carry $5 costume-jewelry items in its retail stores? Would Apple ever sell a barebones, plastic-screen version of the iPhone for $75 to capture a broader segment of the smartphone market? Would Rolls Royce ever develop an economy sedan for $20,000? Of course they wouldn’t.
One trait that all of these companies have in common is that the public views them as premium brands. If they started offering cheap versions of their products—under their own brands’ names—they’d risk undermining their high-end reputation.
People are willing to pay a premium for premium brands because they feel good about the narrative that paying extra for a high-end product enables them to tell themselves.
If you want to build brand value and be seen as a high-end brand, charge more than your competitors. Build the luxury-brand narrative into your story. Expensive pen manufacturers tell that story, for example, by referring to their products as “fine writing instruments.”
If you want to develop a reputation as a premium brand, and you’re willing to go against much of the conventional wisdom—which would suggest you try to compete on price—one powerful way is to make your products more expensive.
It’s counterintuitive, but it works. Ask Apple.
10. HUMANIZE YOUR BRAND
Speaking of Apple, one of the main drivers in cementing the company’s public perception as the cool technology brand was the “Hi, I’m a Mac”TV ad campaign.
The ads, which ran for many years, featured a cool, casual guy representing the Mac computer and a stuffy, uptight-looking man representing the PC. (The PC guy was always sneezing and blowing his nose, because—ha, ha—he always had a virus.)
The genius of these ads was that they took a technical, abstract and potentially very boring subject—comparing the respective features and specifications of different computers—and made the topic fun and accessible.
In short, those ads humanized Apple for consumers. They allowed us to envision ourselves as a little cooler, a little funnier, a little more fun than our colleagues. All we had to do was buy a Mac.
Another example: Decades ago, Maytag, the makers of washing machines and dryers, ran a brilliant campaign called “The Lonely Maytag Repairman.” Maytag appliances were so sturdy and reliable, the ads explained, that its repairmen had to just sit there, day after day, bored out of their minds because nobody ever called them for help.
So instead of having us read a boring list of washing-machine features, warranty clauses and other details (which is how most appliance makers advertised), Maytag introduced us to a person we could visualize and sympathize with—a totally ignored Maytag repairman trying not to fall asleep on the job—which made the Maytag brand more interesting, trustworthy, and memorable.
People buy from people, and to the extent you can make your brand feel less business-like, and instead more human, you can make an emotional connection with your customers, and grow your brand value in the process.
References
- The Economist: What Are Brands for?
- Forbes: The World’s Most Valuable Brands