Whether you’re a B2C or B2B company, brand equity development is crucial to its success. That’s because it provides your business with the strategies it needs to improve awareness, gain new customers, and ensure it’s continuing to deliver on your marketing and sales objectives. But there are some key elements to brand development that are important to understand before you dive in. That includes how it differs from branding and the best way to accomplish your brand equity development plan.
Why Is Brand Equity Development So Important?
Brand equity development is the strategy that companies use to improve their brand’s image, awareness, and worth itself. When you develop your brand enough so that people know it, or recognize it in passing, it helps to build authority in your industry and quickly develop relationships with your prospective clients or customers. But besides telling people what your business is and how it can benefit them, are there other pros to developing your brand’s equity?
Well, 46% of consumers say they’d pay more for a brand they trust. That means when businesses work to build relationships with their audience and develop their brand’s public credibility, it can help them increase their sales and, potentially, sell their products for what they’re worth, no matter the competition. Without brand development, there’s no way for a prospective buyer to know if they can trust you, let alone if your brand is something they’re willing to spend more money on.
Brand Development vs. Branding
Believe it or not, brand development and branding are two different things, and businesses use them in different situations:
Brand Development
Brand development is the main concept of how you plan to increase your brand awareness and tell your customers or clients about the products and services you offer. Before you attempt to improve your brand, you need a plan of action or strategy in place. This strategy allows your brand’s and business’s development to be much more effective and improve the results of your branding campaign.
Branding
Branding is the act or execution of your brand development plan. Whatever channels you use to increase brand awareness, educate your audience, and promote your products and services are all a part of your branding process. Essentially, it’s the second step of a two-step plan. First, you create your brand development strategy, then you execute it with branding tactics. It’s not easy to have one without the other. You can’t brand very effectively without a strategy in place, and you can’t enact a brand development strategy without branding channels.
What’s The Best Way To Drive Brand Equity Development?
The best way to drive brand equity development is through digital marketing. Everything is happening online, and that’s only continued to increase since the start of COVID-19. According to a survey by Stackla, 67% of consumers say their online shopping has increased since the start of the pandemic and 91% say they’ll continue purchasing online in the future.
Digital marketing provides the online channels you need to make your branding more effective and allows you to move your target audience along the buyer’s journey. In other words, give them the information they need to get them to “raise their hand” and engage.
For example, an excellent digital marketing strategy is content marketing, because it allows you to develop a relationship with your audience while promoting your brand and its products or services. And it works for both B2B and B2C companies. In fact, 86% of businesses say they use content to build brand awareness and 52% of B2B buyers say they’re more likely to buy from a brand once they’ve read its content.
Putting more of your efforts into a digital marketing campaign allows you to take advantage of these trends and drive your brand development. Looking for a way to get started? Randall Reilly currently offers data products that allow you to target specific buyers in your industry. We also provide marketing services to help you get the most out of your digital marketing campaign.
Randall Reilly can also pair your brand with a content marketing team to help you produce content at scale. This allows you to build relationships with your audience and build your brand awareness more easily.
