As the guardians of a company’s image and narrative, PR, comms, and marketing professionals have the unique power to shape perceptions, amplify awareness, and cultivate customer loyalty. But the task of building and maintaining a lasting brand value is a tricky one. It requires careful strategy and dedicated execution. In this blog, we’ll outline clear tactics you can implement to build brand value by building stronger brand awareness, protecting your brand, and increasing your brand reputation.
Brand Awareness
In today’s digitalized age, customers have an incredible amount of options at their fingertips. It is estimated that people see nearly 10,000 ads a day. It’s challenging to capture their attention and an entirely new level of difficulty to keep it.
However, boosting brand awareness is crucial for establishing a strong brand value. It guarantees that the brand gains recognition among a broader audience. And, a widely recognized brand tends to garner more trust. Leading to more favourable opinions and a heightened perceived value for consumers and stakeholders. In fact, a reported 80% of male and 76% of female customers purchase products from brands they recognize. You can use the following three key tactics in your PR and comms strategies to increase brand awareness:
1.Consistent Brand Messaging Across Channels
Consistency is key when it comes to brand messaging. Whether it’s social media, advertising campaigns, or customer service interactions, the brand’s voice, tone, and messaging should remain cohesive. This consistent messaging reinforces the brand’s identity and helps in building a strong brand image over time. Inconsistencies can lead to confusion and actually negatively impact trust in your brand.
2.Building Brand Awareness Through Thought Leadership
Thought leadership is an effective way to establish a brand as an industry authority. You can create and share insightful content such as articles, whitepapers, and webinars that showcase your brand’s expertise in its field. This not only helps in building brand credibility but also attracts a loyal following of customers who value the brand’s insights.
And studies prove that sharing your knowledge and expertise as a brand can strengthen your customer relationships. Up to 70% of consumers reporting feeling closer to a brand because of their content marketing.
3.Engaging in Influencer Partnerships
Collaborating with influencers and industry leaders, or even other brands, can extend your reach and credibility. These partnerships can introduce your brand to new audiences and reinforce its value proposition through trusted voices. However, it’s crucial to choose influencers whose values align with the brand’s. Ensuring authenticity in the partnership and retaining that message consistency we mentioned in the first point.
With a competitor and risk analysis tool, you can easily figure out who’s best to talk to. You’ll have the ability to identify target influencers and audiences within mainstream and social media.
Protect Your Brand
To build brand value, you need to ensure you’re upholding your image and protecting it from potential negative media or controversy. Use the next three tactics to help maintain a positive brand image and protect your brand:
1.Media Monitoring
Social media has dramatically shortened the window of time organizations have to respond to reputation issues. It’s important to be proactive and always monitor brand mentions in reviews, blogs, podcasts. And, across all channels including social media, press, and radio.
With a media monitoring tool, you can track and manage your media mentions, reactions and competitor activity efficiently, across every media channel. And within a single platform! With this tool, you’re well-equipped to stay on top of what’s important and relevant. You’ll also protect your brand from unexpected news and competitor activity.
Competitor and risk analysis tools are another incredibly useful ally to ensure you stay informed about any negative mentions or trends related to your brand.
2.Tune in to Socials
News and info today are shared in the blink of an eye and misinformation can spread rapidly. Because of this, social media unfortunately holds the potential to amplify negative press. It’s important to stay tuned in to what people are saying about your brand across all social channels with a media monitoring tool. If misinformation or controversy does begin to circulate around your brand, you’ll know about it. Then you can quickly provide accurate info or respond to questions.
Swift and thoughtful responses to negative feedback can help in managing and mitigating potential reputation crises. Conversely, positive interactions with customers can further enhance your brand’s image.
3. Improve Crisis Management Processes
You always need to keep a close eye on the news, social media, and other channels to identify bad coverage early. When controversy does arise, you can address it ASAP, avoiding any further harm to your brand. But while you want to react quickly, you can’t act compulsively, which could further damage your brand.
The key is to have a pre-established and adaptive comms crisis strategy that you can apply to a multitude of scenarios. So when a stressful situation does arise, you can turn to your plan and identify the best course of action, allowing you to respond swiftly and calmly to minimize negative impacts.
Learn more about how to manage controversy in the media with an adaptive comms crisis strategy in one of our latest blogs.
Brand reputation
Lastly, to build brand value, you need to ensure your brand has a positive reputation with happy customers, values people believe in, and a name they’ve grown to trust. Use these final three tactics to help improve and maintain a positive brand reputation:
1.Embracing Sustainability and Social Responsibility
In today’s socially conscious environment, brands that actively engage in sustainable and socially responsible practices are more likely to resonate with consumers. You can highlight your brand’s commitment to environmental and social causes through campaigns and initiatives. This not only boosts brand value but also fosters a positive perception among consumers who prioritize ethical considerations.
With a reputation and brand insights tool, you can track your organization’s performance against the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
These goals will enable you to understand the volume and prominence of conversations and sentiment towards your brand in each area. We then look at how well your messages are landing in the media, helping you measure and understand your reputation for sustainability.
2.Leveraging Customer Advocacy
Satisfied customers can be a brand’s most powerful advocates. Encouraging and showcasing customer testimonials, reviews, and user-generated content can build a sense of community and trust around your brand. Engaging with customers and valuing their feedback not only enhances brand loyalty but also generates valuable word-of-mouth promotion, which is incredibly valuable with reports sharing that 90% of people are more likely to trust a recommended brand (even from strangers). On top of that, 88% of people have the highest trust in a brand when a family or friend recommends it.
In addition to using a media monitoring tool to track and manage your media mentions, leverage a reputation and brand insights tool to gain a clear picture of how your brand perception is evolving across various media channels.
3.Build a Strong Foundation of Trust
Increasing trust in your brand is a valuable tactic that will help gain customer loyalty, reach new customers, and boost profitability. In fact, a study from Adobe’s Future of Marketing Research Series shared that UK consumers show they trust a brand by:
- Making more purchases (71%)
- Recommending to friends (61%)
- Joining a loyalty programme (41%)
- Posting positive reviews or comments on social media (40%)
The study also revealed the high risk of losing customer trust, with 71% of UK consumers saying they would entirely stop purchasing from a company they lose trust in.
With a media monitoring tool, you’ll be empowered with the ability to monitor coverage from across the world, all within a single source. This will give you the valuable insights you need to build consumer trust by understanding who’s talking about your brand, what’s being said, and what the sentiment behind those conversations is.
Along with media monitoring, a reputation and brand insights tool will be a powerful resource here. As mentioned above, it’ll provide you with the analytics and insights needed to uncover the key drivers of your brand reputation so you can leverage more successful strategies.