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Sponsored Brands – Increase brand awareness
Guide
Brand equity is how much your brand is worth in the eyes of consumers. It’s the sum of every interaction that customers have with your products and brand, and translates to how much they’re willing to spend purchasing from you.
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Brand equity is the intangible price tag that customers place on your products and brand. It’s formed by brand awareness, perceptions, associations, experiences, and customer loyalty.
In other words, customers will determine how much your brand is worth in their eyes depending on:
Brand equity is important because it directly impacts your bottom line. It’s the intangible asset that gets factored into your brand’s overall valuation and financial worth.
You’ve probably heard the saying “the customer is always right.” Whether or not this is true, one thing is for sure: Customers’ perception of your brand will determine whether your products and services are going to be a conscious buying decision that they’re willing to repeat in the future, or a random, one-time purchase. Most importantly, it will determine how much they’re going to spend buying from you, and whether or not they’ll tolerate price increases on your products.
Negative brand equity occurs when a brand’s associations and brand experience become unfavorable among customers. This can stem from various factors, including product or service failures, unethical business practices, poor customer experience, outdated brand positioning, or negative publicity crises.
The consequences of negative brand equity can be devastating, leading to decreased customer loyalty, difficulty attracting new customers, and diminished brand recognition. It can also hinder a brand’s ability to successfully launch new products.
Overcoming negative brand equity requires a comprehensive strategy that addresses the root causes and rebuilds positive brand associations. This may involve product improvements, enhanced customer service, rebranding efforts, effective marketing campaigns, and a strong emphasis on their social media channels to regain consumer trust and brand awareness.
Brand management teams should closely review brand equity through various marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify negative trends early and take proactive measures to mitigate potential damage.
Ultimately, maintaining positive brand equity is essential for long-term success.
While brand equity and brand awareness are closely related, they are distinct concepts. Brand awareness refers to how familiar and recognizable your brand is among consumers. It’s about recognition and recall. On the other hand, brand equity encompasses brand awareness along with other factors like perceived quality, brand loyalty, associations, and overall value of your brand. Brand equity is the tangible and intangible value your brand holds based on consumers’ perceptions and experiences.
When you achieve high equity, you can leverage your brand name to help retain customers, successfully deliver new product launch strategies, and introduce a higher price tag compared to businesses similar to yours. Measuring brand equity involves reviewing marketing metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) like social media engagement, brand management effectiveness, and customer satisfaction to quantify your brand’s worth and equity over time.
While brand awareness lays the crucial foundation, cultivating true brand equity requires a comprehensive brand-building strategy that is based on high-quality interactions with current and future customers.
The five key elements that drive brand equity are brand awareness, brand associations, perceived quality, brand loyalty, and other proprietary brand assets. Together, these factors determine a brand’s overall value and impact.
Brand awareness is the foundation—it represents how well consumers can recognize and recall your brand within a product category. High awareness makes it easier for customers to consider and choose your brand when making purchases. By employing marketing tactics like paid advertising, social media campaigns, and consistent creative assets, you can help increase brand recognition.
Brand associations refer to any tangible or intangible attributes linked to your brand name in shoppers’ minds. These could include your logo, a celebrity endorsement, or positioning around a key value like quality or innovation. Strong, favorable brand associations help shape perceptions and differentiate brands.
Perceived quality reflects customers’ subjective assessment of your brand’s overall excellence. It shapes brand equity, as customers often equate perceived quality with expected enjoyment, payoff, and value. Cultivating positive quality perceptions comes from effective marketing across channels, both digital and traditional, coupled with delivering outstanding customer experiences.
Brand loyalty is the measure of customers’ commitment to your brand, demonstrated through repeat purchases over time. Loyal brand advocates tend to be less sensitive to price changes and promotional efforts by your peers. Loyalty programs, customer engagement, and consistently meeting expectations help build brand loyalty.
Other proprietary brand assets, such as branding elements, patents, trademarks, cost structure, or manufacturing capabilities factor into your brand’s equity. These help you stand out from the crowd in ways that other brands, similar to yours, can’t easily replicate.
Strong brand equity yields numerous benefits that can positively impact your bottom line. By strategically improving the five elements of brand equity, you can help boost brand value, enjoy greater flexibility in pricing, increase the visibility of your products within your industry and category, drive new product success, and measurably improve key marketing metrics.
Strong brand equity delivers compounding value and growth opportunities. This translates into increased revenue, empowering you to invest in innovation and further brand-building activities, creating a positive reinforcing loop. As you innovate and enhance your offerings, your equity strengthens, attracting more customers and driving further growth.
Case studies
Nespresso strengthened brand equity by creating an immersive digital storefront spotlighting their quality products, sustainability values, and brand identity through curated content and visuals. Maintaining multichannel brand consistency fostered recognition while regular updates provided continued relevance, deepening emotional connections with customers.
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The Martha Stewart brand enhanced equity by launching “The World of Martha,” a dedicated digital shop focusing on branded home essentials, recipes, and lifestyle content. This centralized destination immersed customers in Martha Stewart’s taste and expertise across categories like cookware and bedding, and reinforced the iconic, aspirational brand identity.
Case studies
ClearSpace, purveyors of clutter-free living, amplified brand equity by curating a product selection aligned with their “less is more” philosophy. Highlighting their sustainable, functional designs across lifestyle imagery strengthened ClearSpace’s brand identity as a destination for mindful consumers seeking simplicity. Consistently promoting their minimalist aesthetic through inspirational content fostered deeper connections with their customers.
Case studies
Bro Glo, a men’s self-tanner brand, leveraged Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands ads to reach new customers and increase brand awareness for an underserved audience. Their strategic approach of optimizing product listings, testing campaigns, and measuring ad performance helped drive positive results and brand recognition.
Brand equity is a crucial aspect of business success, and it’s essential to continuously work on improving it. As a business owner or marketer, you can enhance brand equity by following these five steps:
Craft a compelling narrative that resonates with the audiences you want to reach, and infuse your brand story into all customer touchpoints—from marketing campaigns to product packaging. Don’t forget to use various storytelling mediums, such as videos, imagery, and immersive experiences, to amplify your story.
Create authentic content that showcases your brand’s personality and expertise, and your products’ unique selling points. This cohesive approach to branding allows consumers to effortlessly recognize your business and products amid the multitude of brand messages they encounter daily.
Engage in cause-related marketing campaigns to build emotional connections with customers. Demonstrate your commitment to ethical and sustainable practices through campaigns designed to connect you with new audiences wherever they spend their time. This will help you build positive perceptions within a wider pool of potential new customers.
Continuously innovate and enhance the customer experience across all touchpoints and in all possible ways— from the keywords you use when listing your products to your return policies. This will strengthen positive brand associations in the minds of consumers.
Monitor brand equity regularly through various methods, such as brand awareness surveys, customer satisfaction scores, and brand-related success metrics. Use these insights to not only refine your brand strategy, but also gauge interest for new product launches.
Creating a valuable and enduring brand takes time and dedication, but even small steps can lead to big results. Don’t get discouraged if you don't have all the resources right now. You can still make progress by focusing on what you can control.
Here’s what you can start doing today with help from Amazon Ads:
Sponsored ads allow us to develop brand awareness and product visibility whilst increasing sales at speed and scale across Amazon globally.
- Joe Fisher, Brandvault
Brand equity holds immense power in driving business success. With a strategic approach and the right advertising solutions, you can help elevate your brand to new heights and forge lasting connections with your customers, old and new.
If you have limited experience, contact us to request services managed by Amazon Ads. Budget minimums apply.
1Amazon internal data, WW, Jan 2021–Sept 2022. Recently launched products are products added to their inventory within last 90 days and are marked as Sponsored Products ready. Lift represents the median percentage increase of sales during the first four weeks of a Sponsored Products campaign, compared to the four preceding weeks of the campaign launch.
2Kantar, WW, 2022. 3,507 study respondents who have shopped Q4 shopping events in 2021 and planned to do so in 2022.