If you increase the value of your brand the purchasing habits of your consumers will change in your favor. Leveraging your brand has several advantages: customers will choose your brand over price, purchases will be based on emotion rather than quality or price, and brand loyalty will also increase. If your brand doesn’t sell something the concept works the same for whatever type of conversion you use. Here are my five ways to increase your brand value.
Innovate
Stay innovative, its said that when Intel released the 186 processor they had the designs for the 286, 386, 486, 586, 686 and 786 processors ready to release. Staying innovative and creating an environment where you have a plan and a strategy in which your product lines, products or services increasingly become better. How excited does the world get when Apple holds a press conference to release new products? Plan your next steps, execute them with care and watch your brand value increase. No matter what you do you can do it better.
Educate
Essentially educating your customer about your products or services is really great customer care. Making it easy for them to make decisions can only help you. Caring for people allows you to connect with them. When people feel like they can connect to you this will help them feel comfortable to choose your brand over someone else in the future, thus increasing brand value. Unfortunately, most people don’t like to read long amounts of text so you might have to get creative.
Focus on Solutions
Someone once told me that you never sell products or services you always sell solutions. They were right. People justify their spending (whether they need to or not) in order to solve their problems or perceived problems.
“…you never sell products or services you always sell solutions.”
And a great brand manager is constantly on the look out for ways in which to push a solution oriented sale.
People get excited to find a solution to a problem sometimes you even find solutions to problems that people don’t know they have. Solving problems increasing brand loyalty through word of mouth, people are anxious to share how they were able to solve problems.
Be Consistent
This is probably the most difficult of the five, being and staying consistent is paramount to achieving a higher brand loyalty. In 2011 the Tsunami that struck Japan halted much of its production including several parts used in iPhones at the time. Apple had, for the previous three years, announced a new iPhone in the Summer and released it to the public in and around September. The speculated date kept getting pushed further and further and many people had cellphone plans expire and jumped ship to different brands. Being consistent is absolutely important.
Pay attention to Detail
I remember going to Disney World for the first time, it was Spring Break. I was in the monorail and I remember seeing the hedges beautifully shaped into animals and characters. The level of detail that they had constructed was incredible even to the point that they sold books on particular aspects of the grounds and facilities. Everything is in tip top shape. Steve Jobs apparently the night before he was set to release the first iPod wanted an audible click to occur when someone pushed in the headphone cord. Engineers stayed up all night correcting the issue so that there would be an audible click when Jobs presented the iPod for the first time to the public. Paying attention to detail will help your brand value to go up because its the little things that matter to people and show you care.
Increasing the value of your brand can be difficult, but in today’s economy, its what sets businesses apart. I built a website for a local heating and cooling company, I knew their service plan inside and out. When one of their sales reps came to my house and offered it to me, I quickly turned him down – even though my rental agreement at the time stated that I was responsible for that maintenance. When my furnace was on the fritz and my landlord called a competing HVAC company, the serviceman came in with cleaning supplies and cleaned the furnace before he opened it. I was won over, they went the extra mile and made me feel comfortable purchasing from them.
