When it comes to strong brand equity, everyone in the organization has to have a seat at the table. Brand equity is the result of positive interactions and transactions between the consumer and brand – across all touchpoints and all communication channels. It is built over time by brands being loyal to customers by providing them with the products, services, and interactions that they expect and value.
However, building brand equity is increasingly complicated by the number of touchpoints a brand has with consumers. As consumers, we have all experienced the frustration of being over-communicated to. Our mailboxes and inboxes are flooded, sometimes with conflicting messages. Or we continuously see marketing communications for things we already purchased or do not want. And even though we may be good customers of a brand, sometimes one channel does not recognize us or treat us as a loyal customer.
All of this is due to a breakdown in sharing of data, customer insights, and marketing plans across the enterprise. The customer experience is not optimized and this negatively affects brand equity.
Brand equity is important to an organization because it means consumers trust and believe in the value of your brand over other 
brands. Brands with strong brand equity have more pricing power. They are top of mind, and are the brands that customers go to first. And they are brands that consumers are willing and happy to receive communications from, resulting in higher response rates to marketing communications. Strong brand equity increases customer retention, marketing ROI, market share, profits, and shareholder value.
And that is why leading companies invest in improvements in customer experience. An organization that desires to increase brand equity, focuses on customer experience and will leverage all available data and analytics, across the enterprise, to create positive customer perception of their brand.
Forbes survey reveals approaches for building a better brand experience
The Forbes Insights, just published a report based on findings of a survey of business leaders. In that report they state:
“Business leaders grasp the importance of enterprise-level data analytics for supporting brand and customer-focused initiatives.” It goes on to state: “Data-driven CX (Customer Experience) is key for surpassing the competition in today’s hyper-competitive global economy. It takes a combination of factors…to deliver highly interactive, consistent, and contextual customer experiences which are critical for supporting the brand. To achieve this, however, there needs to be greater alignment of people, processes and technology across enterprises—involving not only sales and marketing teams, but also other key players behind customer experience, including information technology, purchasing and production.” 
Today’s rapidly shifting consumers, competition and employee turnover make it even more important to have systems and processes in place to manage across the enterprise. Support for the customer experience need to be embedded across the organization, needs to go beyond one-time initiatives, and needs to be integrated with customer interaction channels.
In support of that, , see SAS Marketing Operations Management that provides the ability to plan, manage and visualize programs across your organization, as well as the new SAS Customer Intelligence 360 platform, which gives you the ability to put those plans into action and engage with customers.
Look for part 2 of this post where I discuss a scenario where brand equity suffered because of a fractured customer experience and how SAS can help you avoid this mistake.
