Are you targeting your key audience? Are you making the most of your marketing efforts? If you answered no to either of these questions, then it may be time to re-evaluate your brand equity.
Building your brand is essential when marketing your company to potential customers. Building brand equity is often the first step in achieving a successful marketing plan, so now is the time to re-think your brand equity and brand equity development so that you are reaching the masses and leaving your mark.
Here are the nuts and bolts of brand equity development:
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Find your target audience and design your brand around them.
Your primary efforts, when building your brand equity, are to think of your customers. What do they like? What are their interests? What will draw them in? From your logo to your colors, design and fonts, appealing to your target audience is the first step in building your brand equity.
For example, you clearly wouldn’t use the same colors and fonts in your logo and marketing materials to target women as you would men. Find out what makes your customer tick, and then use this information as a base for your decisions.
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Set yourself apart from others in your industry.
Becoming lost in the crowd of other like businesses is very easily accomplished. Setting yourself apart from the others, however, takes a bit more work and research on your part.
Begin by examining other like companies and ask yourself the following questions: What works for them? What doesn’t? What is missing from their marketing approaches? What are they doing right? In other words, you can’t begin building brand equity for your business without first examining the brand equity of other businesses in your field.
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Go above and beyond when it comes to customer service.
Often times, it is the customer service that attracts customers and keeps them coming back. A vital part of your brand equity development is offering your customers value in the form of service that other companies can’t, or won’t, offer their customers.
Can you process orders in a more timely fashion? Can you extend your hours to accommodate customers’ schedules? Can you offer a return policy or a guarantee that others in your industry simply don’t? All of these questions should be considered when building brand equity, as customer service is usually the factor of your business that will make or break you.
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Develop a community presence.
There is, perhaps, no better way to leave your brand equity mark on your target audience than to build a community presence. Get the word out about your business by partnering with local charities and non-profits, host luncheons and meet and greets, and attend trade show and community events. Get creative and think outside the box because there are countless ways in which to incorporate your brand equity development into community programs, events and gatherings.
Some creative ideas include advertising in local newspapers, sponsoring children’s baseball and soccer teams, and offering freebies and marketing materials during community events and gatherings.
Remember: your ability to achieve strong brand equity is only limited by your imagination and ingenuity!
