A few days ago, Apple officially passed Coca Cola to become the world’s most valuable “brand”. The Apple brand has always been synonymous with a certain level of style, of panache, of consumer driven fervor that gets people to stand in line for three days for the next iPhone or Macbook.
But it took until now for them to oust the king of all brands – the world’s most popular soda, Coca Cola.
There’s a good reason for that (other than the estimated $1billion+ per year Coke spends on ads). The Coca Cola brand developed over a century by building relationships with customers and generating loyalty most would only associate with family.
People do irrational things for loyalty, and whether it’s paying twice as much for a new computer or phone or scouring a grocery store for a particular brand of cola, they’ll go to great lengths to maintain that level of loyalty.
It’s why your brand has so much value.
It’s a reflection of who you are and what your company stands for and the people you service through that company will come to identify with it fast, sometimes before they even become customers.
How Do You Measure Brand Worth?
Brand value is determined by a number of factors – name recognition, product loyalty, recurring customer rate, and international ubiquity. The better known a brand and the more fiercely loyal its fans, the more valuable it is.
So yeah, the big brands are worth a boat load, but the exact same principles apply to smaller companies – even local ones with a limited audience.
When people recognize your name, trust it, and continue to turn to you for advice and information, you become a partner in their success. You become more than just another pest control company or lawyer – you become a member of their brand family and they’ll stick up for you through a lot.
How do you put a price tag on that?
To some degree you can’t, but to another, it’s an immensely valuable thing to have.
Inbound marketing data giant Hubspot estimates that ROI from inbound and loyalty building branding efforts are as much as 40% higher than similar investments in ads and direct marketing campaigns.
If you’re not marketing your brand, building loyalty and creating a fiercely loyal following that will keep coming back to you no matter what happens, you’re not taking full advantage of the tools the Internet offers.
If you’re interested to know more about how this works and what it can mean for you, check out our content marketing primer below:
