By Maruf Gbadebo Salimon, PhD
To grow businesses, organizations must deliberately implement effective marketing concepts like brand equity. American Marketing Association defines brand as “a name, term, sign, symbol, or design or a combination of them intended to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competition”. A brand represents a company, what it does, says, or owns. Brand equity can be an asset or a liability which either adds value or decreases the value of a company. The brand equity represents the commercial value which the brand carries and may be viewed from all relationships and expectations that people have about an enterprise, its services and products as a result of their cumulative experiences.
When talking about brands, big, popular and global companies such as Google, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Honda and the likes do come to mind but we have other numerous small epic companies that are equally recognized as good brands. These brands have made their landmarks in the marketing arena, and there is no doubt that they are occupying important positions in the minds of their numerous customers through value addition. These companies often offer products or services that make customers to be loyal and even ready to pay premium prices. These global companies have become friends to many households because overtime, they have created brands that are reliable, and trusted with emotional connections. In short, they have built an enduring brand equity. The worth of a global brand like Google as at date is $6232 billion (six hundred thirty-two billion dollars).
How can small and medium enterprises (SMEs) build brand equity like the global brands?
SMEs are contributing to the economy development of many Nations. They create jobs, provide raw materials for big industries, serve numerous customers and improve GDP of many nations. However, majority of the SMEs, especially, In Nigeria, are struggling to survive. Many could not produce products that can stand the test of time thereby not able to attract and retain their customers. In order to tackle this challenge, SMEs need to learn how successful global companies brand their organizations and create enduring brand equity by formulating and implementing the following strategies:
Build Brand Awareness: Let your customers know your product by consciously inform them of what you do or offer and how your product can benefit them. This is a basic strategy as you must let them see the product from your lens or perspectives. In essence, with the awareness, a perception is formed, your product is liked (esteem) or disliked and known for something. For instance, when you think about Toyota, what comes to your mind? Creating awareness in this technology era is more important as you can employ various internet-based tools and social media platforms to achieve this purpose.
Create Brand Association: Brand association is about differentiation and relevance. Create a product that is different from others. A product that is different from others offers unique benefits that can hardly be gotten from your competitors. The differentiation can be in the form of quality, design, delivery, responsiveness, cost, and etc. Relevance talks about your capability to offer what the customers want. Your ability to give the products they want makes you unique as most companies offer what they want to sell and not necessarily what the markets want. When you create an excellent brand association, customers responses: judgments, and feelings about your company will be sound and enduring. Global brands like Coca-Cola, Google and similar are very adept at creating the brand association.
Build Brand Relationship: You must build a deeper bond with your customers. Building relationship means that your customers are psychologically and emotionally attached to you; they love your products. Like in a normal human relationship, every rational being finds it difficult to jilt his partner due to honest commitment as commitment implies that you are willing to sacrifice, endure and contribute to the growth of the relationship. This is equally applicable in brand customer relationship. However, this is not easily achieved because it indicates resonance but when attained, your customers got engaged with other customers, become your advocates and ambassadors, and begin to defend your brands. Since creating the brand relationship belongs to the top of the pyramid, you have herculean and cumulative tasks to perform excellently to reach this tower.
Offer Brand Premium: Creating brand equity importantly involves the price you offer. It centers on your worth comparatively with other organizations that are in the same market segment with you. It has to do with what the customers think. If the customers think your products are unique, differentiated and offer outstanding benefits and features, then, you will be able to command high price which eventually brings you huge revenue and profit. So, to offer a premium price that guarantees brand equity, you must be unique, focus on unique design, don’t disappoint your customers, give more than they asked for and build solid and good reputation.
Conclusion:
Brand equity is essential for SMEs growth. In today’s competitive business environment, it is a must that SMEs build a strong brand equity in order to survive. And to survive means you have to create a brand that is known, differentiated, loved and trusted by the customers. Such SMEs offer premium and good price, make more revenues and profit and stand tall in the midst of others.
Dr. Salimon is Senior lecturer, Department of Marketing, School of Business Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia. Email: salimonmg@gmail.com Instagram: maruf_salimon