If your company has been busy crafting its corporate brand development, it may be important that, as you move forward, you are constantly checking in on your brand equity.

Brand equity is simply the value your brand brings to your business. Is it doing its job in creating an emotional connection between your clients and your business? Is it turning potential clients into purchasing clients? But how do you measure brand equity?

Brand equity is measured by how great the value of a certain product is by a consumer. Will a consumer consider a purchase based on the name and the connection they’ve made to your company? If so, that is positive brand equity. If a consumer will make a purchase based on the fact that they like other products provided by your company, that is also positive brand equity. If they will spend extra money instead of purchasing a cheaper brand because they trust your company that is truly positive brand equity.

With consumer surveys and market research a company can gauge how well their products are viewed over the years. If they are continually measuring positive results they know that they have achieved brand loyalty. A company must always remember that because they have brand loyalty and positive brand equity today, does not mean they can relax their efforts on brand development. Customers are fickle and it is crucial if you want to remain their number one choice to always listen to what they are talking about and make changes, within reason, to keep them happy. This is how your business will continue to have many loyal customers.

by Bob Grant

While B2C branding encompasses that emotional feeling consumers experience when seeing a business’ logo or slogan, there is a different way of marketing that brand when it comes to getting this reaction from business to business.

B2B branding has its own unique marketing efforts, however, with the help of social networking, well-constructed, targeted email campaigns, press releases, and new product announcements, marketing your brand to another business is yielding excellent results.

A few well thought out email messages to a smaller targeted group works well, and monthly e-news distribution to your customer base keeps you customers informed and keeps your company on top of mind. Capturing emails at trade shows or when visitors download a white paper, request a quote, or contact you from your website, are excellent ways to build your email database.

Rating high in the search engines, whether organic or paid, to generate web traffic is becoming the standard of any marketing strategy. Through SEO and SEM businesses are vying for that top spot in the search. Once there, they have the ability to drive any business looking for information to their website. Building content on your website and positioning yourself as the thought leader in your industry will help drive search engine ranking.

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are also proving to be extremely valuable in helping a business with their B2B branding. Businesses making connections with their audience whether it’s a consumer or another business can be achieved through social media marketing. Since these sites are so popular many businesses are joining and taking full advantage of this marketing tool.

No longer are businesses interested in simply spouting their message and hoping another business will bite. it takes a well formulated integrated marketing communication plan that includes offline and online digital marketing to grow and sustain a business in the b2b marketplace.