How To Measure Brand Equity Like Apple
When it comes to measuring sources of brand equity, why Apple?
As one of a few companies with a cult-like following, Apple’s brand identity dominates. Customers pay a small fortune to invest in their electronics devices. Not once, but every year, without fail.
Valuable brands such as Apple, known for its apple brand identity, McDonald’s, and Ferrari are so beloved that they have an abundance of brand equity measurement. This elusive quality is what most companies can only dream about.
So, how do you measure brand equity? And how do you build your own? The long answer starts by defining the term.
What’s Brand Equity?
Brand equity is like adding a layer of icing to an already decorated cake.
The term refers to the value generated by a premium brand compared to the value generated by generic competitors.
Companies produce brand equity by offering products that are positively memorable, easy to spot, and superior in both quality and long lasting durability. The Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max showcases this.
One look at the iconic Apple logo, as well as the iPhone 11 Pro Max engraving, and you know right away that you are staring at a superior smartphone.
A company like Apple, which has a strong brand image, leverages its measurement of brand equity on its products, and customers gladly pay more for it. Then the easy to recognize name and high-quality performance is all it takes for wallets to open and credit cards to swipe.
Customers pay what is referred to as a premium for a product. Although they have the opportunity to pay less for other products in the same niche, Apple’s already won. The premium not only covers the superior product, it also includes paying extra to do business with a company that customers admire.
Knowing how to measure brand equity is important because it tracks how much additional profit it can make per sale.
The premium paid for a product can be tangible or intangible. Tangible premiums cover the profit margin earned because of the sale of a superior product. An intangible premium concerns the goodwill built up by selling a product that customers highly desire.
Both are highly coveted.
Brand Case Study: Apple
If you want to understand measuring brand equity that is intangible, drive by an Apple store the next time the company releases a long anticipated product.
Lines form out the door not just to the curb, but around the block and back again. People will camp out in tents and bring lawn chairs to pass the time. Apple’s products can sell out in minutes, sometimes seconds.
In fact, the company’s brand premium has reached the tipping point where customers place pre-orders simply to get in line to purchase a new product. There’s demand on top of demand.
A more tangible contributor to Apple’s brand equity is the incredibly high conversion optimization rate the company experiences on its website.
A vast majority of visitors to Apple’s website are not there to learn more about the company’s products and services. They visit Apple’s website to make purchases, thanks to brand.
Apple’s powerful tangible brand equity helps the company skip a few of the steps that form the digital marketing sales funnel.
Brand Value
Here is a mind boggling statistic. One-third of Apple’s value comes from the company’s numerous brands. Wild, right!?
As of July 2020, Apple was worth an estimated $704 billion, which makes the value of all its brands around $234 billion.
If Apple were to lose a strange trademark lawsuit that prohibits the company from using its iconic logo, the company would bleed one-third of its value overnight.
The $234 billion Apple has generated in brand equity theoretically could allow the company to sell all of its brands to cash-rich Facebook or Microsoft.
Measuring brand equity for Apple is unlike measuring it for virtually every other company.
Apple, with its iconic apple brand image, is The Beatles of the electronics device niche. All the company has to do, besides continue to develop superior products, is to announce the unveiling of the next newest gadget.
One more note about Apple and measuring brand equity. Apple spends around $2 billion each year in advertising, which is a mere 0.9% of the company’s $234 in brand equity.
Let’s compare Apple to the companies that have built the highest brand equity.
The data used for this list comes from the Interbrand 2019 report.
Remember Apple did not create one product overnight to reap $234 billion in brand equity.
No, the forward thinking executives at the pioneering electronics company worked tirelessly to improve production process and service delivery times to optimize its brand equity.
To achieve incredible brand equity, Apple executives made measuring brand equity a top business priority.
Let’s review the metrics that define the measuring brand equity process.
Brand Awareness
Measuring brand equity first starts by determining how aware consumers are of your products and services.
For Apple, brand awareness is off the charts. It sets the table for a company to develop brand loyalty, which starts the process of building brand equity.
Your company should measure how aware consumers are of your products and services.
- Mail and hand out surveys
- Closely monitor website metrics
- Invite consumers to focus groups
- Keep track of likes and mentions on social media sites
- Discover how consumers find your company through online searches
Here is a good rule of thumb: The more times your company organically comes up in an online conversation that discusses your products and services, the more awareness consumers have for your brand.
Understanding brand awareness is the key that unlocks the other elements that help build brand equity.
Brand Loyalty
The next step for measuring brand equity involves determining the amount of brand loyalty. Two critically important factors help your company measure brand loyalty.
- Behavioral
- Attitudinal
Behavioral factors typically come from determining buying habits. Attitudinal factors are based on how customers perceive your company, as well as how they interact with your team members.
Conduct a thorough analysis that cross compares the two brand loyalty factors, with the goal to discover similar data that overlaps.
Implementing data automation and artificial intelligence (AI) resources should explain what all the data means. Both AI and data automation platforms churn out results in real time to help your company change brand loyalty strategies on the fly.
Customer Preferences
Each of your customers shops with a unique set of preferences. Consumer behavior is often based on the “creature of habit” principle.
Meaning once your business identifies a customer’s buying preferences, you can fine-tune promotional campaigns to appeal to those preferences.
Most consumers interact with businesses that feature a product that matches their buying preferences. Once you identify the preferences of potential customers, you can turn the customers into loyal patrons of your business. It’s a smooth ride after the public has established an emotional attachment to your brand.
Financial Data
When you boil measuring brand equity down to its core, it comes down to the famous line uttered in Jerry Maguire: “Show me the money.” The financial numbers tell an accurate story about the power of your brand equity.
Review the following financial metrics to determine where your company’s brands stand:
- Financial value of brand
- Individual product sales
- Customer growth rate
- Price premium of products
Output Metrics
Output is simply measuring brand equity through your company’s marketing efforts. It is important to measure the return on your marketing dollars, especially the online traffic generated by digital marketing tactics.
Effective marketing programs shine the light on businesses, and in turn, more consumers become aware of their brands.
Apple set the tone for its brand equity strategy in numerous memorable commercials highlighting the company’s uniqueness, and popular electronic devices.
Final thought: Measuring brand equity impacts your company for the long term. Understand your customers, make them aware of what you have to offer, and deliver the products and services that drive repeat visits by the same customers.
15 Tips to Improve Branding
Branding represents one of the most important parts of your company. Building a powerful brand keeps you connected to current customers, as well as attracts potential customers to your business. The key is to develop a consistent brand message that implements one or more of the following branding strategies.
1. Spread the Word
Customers enthusiastically promote your company when they find out there is a little something in it for them to do so. Dropbox represents one of the models for implementing a brand-building customer referral program. The company rewards customers that provide referrals by giving them an additional 500 MB of storage space.
2. Credible Website Content
To build a powerful brand, your company has to become an authority in your space using content.
For example, a restaurant should upload video content and recipes that help people learn how to prepare special dishes. Make it phenomenal content. Otherwise, ordinary website content does nothing to motivate consumers to visit your business website.
The website design should also be easy to use, flawless, and optimized to convert.
3. Virtual Word of Mouth Advertising
Nothing ignites a branding campaign faster and more effectively that customer reviews. Google and Yelp provide the ideal online platforms for customers to leave feedback about your company. Encourage customers to leave reviews online by offering a small perk, though ensure it’s legal. The payoff is increasing brand equity.
4. Keep Your Promises
Measuring brand equity depends on building trust with your customers. And building trust involves backing up claims about products, as well as delivering customer service that your business promised.
Despite the move to digital transactions, customers trust brands that keep their word. Amazon’s brand promise is the single greatest factor of their growth.
5. Get Social
The rapid growth of social media networks makes it difficult for your business to make waves on each one.
However, your company should implement a social media marketing campaign on one platform to build brand equity. Which of the prominent social media sites should you focus your brand equity strategy?
6. Design a Head Turning Logo
Well, maybe not a logo that turns heads. But a logo that lingers in the minds of customers for days to come. The Apple logo is iconic. It’s marvelous. Knowing this, does your logo powerfully promote your company’s brand message?
7. Customer-friendly Support
Measuring brand equity used to entail analyzing just product-related metrics. Think sales and customer feedback.
In 2020, customer support says as much about your brand as the quality of your products. Apple did not generate brand equity of $234 billion by relying only on introducing high-quality products. The company achieved its lofty brand status by also delivering the best customer service.
8. Partnering Locally
Despite a globalized economy, developing relationships with local vendors is an important element of measuring brand equity. You should also focus on developing partnerships with local business when your company participates in festivals and seminars.
9. Promote a Unique Personality
Inject a little humor into your marketing message to make your brand stand out in a crowded field of competitors. Look at how a fun approach to doing business has helped Dollar Shave Club.
10. Connect with Local Media
One interview on national radio or television will boost your brand above the competition. Consumers associate media interviews with credibility for businesses. Take advantage of the opportunities that come your way.
11. SEO
Does your business rank at the top of Google for your main products or services? Doing so quickly increases brand equity.
For example, ever since Robben Media started ranking 1st for keywords like SEO agency, our brand (and sales volume) has exponentially grown.
12. Podcasts
Traditional media outlets face a rising star in the form of podcasts. As a result, featuring your brand on podcasts will get the attention of Millennials and Gen Z.
13. PPC
A well-conceived SEO strategy might not be enough for measuring brand equity. You should also consider implementing a pay-per-click campaign (PPC). Not only will this increase brand awareness, it will drive prospects and customers.
Here’s an example of PPC ads where Quicken Loans is winning:
14. Influencer Marketing
Influential people promoting your business is another tip. Your marketing influencers can be vendors, unrelated businesses, and even customers. This is effective because followers who trust the influencers sponsoring your content, will transfer that trust to your company.
15. Deliver Consistent Results
The last thing you want is for customers to think you’re an inconsistent brand.
Good one day, bad the next, turns off customers fast. It’s like delivering consistently poor products and customer service. Be consistent in performance to ensure your brand is always in top shape.
Conclusion
Measuring brand equity should be one of your top business priorities.
Look at how brand equity has helped Apple generate a $234 billion premium in company value.
Now the same brand building strategies do not work identically for all companies. You can expect to approach increasing brand equity as a trial and error process. Some attempts will be an utter failure, others a grand slam.
If you need assistance with this, let’s talk about taking your brand to the moon.
P.S. I wrote this content on an Apple MacBook Air. Branding works!
