Many confusing terms are found in the business world, especially in branding. People mix up the two terms ‘brand equity and brand value’. However, it’s not surprising as both these terms are intertwined.
Some use them mutually; there is a massive difference between them. To clarify this confusion, we will explain the difference between brand equity and brand value. Let’s get started.
What is Brand Equity?
Brand equity explains how customers distinguish your brand. It relates to the customer experience that is determined by intangible attributes like:
- Brand visibility
- Brand association
- Satisfaction of customers
- Customers loyalty
These attributes can either add or subtract the value of your brand. If you have positive brand equity, people will love to purchase products and services from your brand. On the other side, if you have negative brand equity, people will avoid shopping from your brand, and your brand reputation will decrease.
If brand equity is invisible, why is it important?
In brand equity vs brand value, the later gives your brand an additional advantage over your competitors.
- Revenues and profits increase as customers prefer your brand over competitors (even if your products and services are expensive).
- Customer loyalty is augmented as they conduct business with the brands they perceive as authentic and reliable.
Now, you can witness that despite the intangible characteristic of brand equity, it has a significant impact on your brand.
How to Build Brand Equity?
As we have gone through the general nature of brand equity, let’s discuss how you can build it.
Brand awareness improvement
The first step you should take is to enhance brand awareness. As discussed above, brand equity relates to how customers perceive your brand. If people do not know about your brand, they cannot make any perceptions.
So, how can you raise your brand awareness?
You can follow these ideas:
- Content Marketing: Create the content that your target audience wants to see and engage with. If your content attracts customers, they will connect with your brand and share it with others.
You can observe from this example how effective content marketing is in improving your brand awareness. The research found that 88 percent of marketers have successfully created brand awareness and built credibility through content marketing. If you haven’t implemented this strategy, start working on it from today.
- Influencer Marketing: Another effective strategy of marketing to boost brand awareness is influencer marketing. In a survey, it was reported that nearly 49 percent of Twitter users say that they value the recommendations from influencers. Hence, influencer marketing is a potential marketing strategy that you can’t ignore.
If the consumers are confident about influencers’ recommendations, they instantly make their purchasing decision. Moreover, the marketers are planning to increase their spending on influencer marketing to increase their brand awareness.
- Event Sponsorship: If you sponsor events that your targeted audience is interested in watching and participating in, it increases the chances of your brand getting notified and boosting brand awareness.
A study highlighted that event sponsorship has a positive impact on brand awareness. Customers are more likely to engage with brands during events where they can feel your brand presence and become more loyal customers if they like your brand products and services.
Development of Brand Identity and Personality
The brand identity reflects a brand’s visible elements that distinguish it from competitors. Examples of brand identity include brand logo, color, design, etc.
The set of human characteristics attributed to the brand is known as brand personality. These can be emotions, feelings, and attitudes your brand represents.
In brand value vs brand equity, the brand identity and personality have a significant impact on brand equity. When the target audience connects with you emotionally, the brand equity will improve.
What is Brand Value?
Now comes brand value in explaining the difference between brand equity vs. value. If brand equity relates to the perception and emotions of customers about a specific brand, what is the brand value?
Brand value refers to the financial worth of your brand. It signifies how much a brand has monetary worth in the market. It is calculated by measuring asset value.
How to Construct Brand Value?
By making your brand more desirable, you can create brand value. A few methods to do that include:
Creating a useful customer experience
Customer experience has become a vital part of improving your brand value, surpassing price and product quality. To improve customer experience, you have to provide exceptional customer service.
Nowadays, multiple advanced techniques like live chat and chatbots are used to engage with customers and answer their queries. The availability of a well-trained customer service team is also crucial.
Continue Innovation
Thousands of brands in the market are trying to target the same customers, and you should be innovative enough to stay ahead of competitors.
Customers love to buy products that include innovation. Understand your audience, provide them with the latest technological upgrades, and the result will be a solid loyal customer base.
Brand Equity vs Brand Value: Differentiation Factors
We have explored brand equity and value and can now discuss their significant differences.
- Customer-driven vs. Market Driven
Brand equity depends on the perception of customers about your brand. At the same time, brand value is impacted by market factors that define the financial worth of your business.
- Consumers’ remembrance vs. Brand performance
If it’s easy for customers to remember and identify your brand, your brand equity will be positive. If your brand performance is elevated, it will increase brand value.
- Market penetration vs. Financial success
Brand equity shows how efficacious you are in making a way into your market. Brand value shows the financial success of your brand and how effectively you have turned brand equity into profit generation.
- Emotions vs. Value addition
Brand equity is linked with the emotional relationship of customers with your brand. It means how customers feel about your brand. In contrast, brand value is constructing your business by adding additional value activities.
Concluding Remarks
Understanding the major difference between brand equity vs brand value is important for marketing and branding. It helps to construct effective marketing strategies.
The difference between these two terms will help you identify your brand health. This article will help you plan potential strategies to enhance the value of your brand and its overall branding effectiveness.
