In the 70 years since its humble beginnings as a post-Thanksgiving, Main Street sales event, Black Friday has evolved into a multi-week, global retail blitz. Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) has become a season in its own right, starting around early November, peaking on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and gradually tapering off right up until Christmas Eve. Pre-sale invitations, heavy discounts, huge brand engagements on social media, and festive traditional ads—it’s all part and parcel of the modern holiday shopping season.

According to Shopify data, 2024 BFCM sales were up 24% over 2023, totaling $11.5 billion in global sales from Shopify merchants alone. More than 67,000 merchants had their highest-selling day ever on Shopify over that weekend, which makes sense given that the past two years saw the highest-ever number of BFCM shoppers, according to a 2024 survey from the National Retail Federation.

With consumers almost universally in a spending mindset, the BFCM season is a can’t-miss opportunity for businesses large and small—which means planning often takes place year-round. Below, brands share their BFCM preparation strategies to boost revenue, brand awareness, and customer loyalty. Borrow from their playbooks to make this and future holiday sales seasons the best yet.

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Table of contents

Start customer acquisition efforts early

For Jones Road Beauty, BFCM efforts start in the summer, with customer-facing strategies kicking off in September. “Generally, from the beginning of September through the end of October, we have about three launches that go on, each catering toward different demographics,” says Payal Plofker, senior director of brand marketing at Jones Road Beauty. “We’re trying to get as many people interested in our brand during that time by casting as wide of a net as possible.”

Once those new leads and customers are in the brand ecosystem, Jones Road Beauty is primed for its BFCM sale, which focuses on promoting its customers’ favorite product, mini Miracle Balms, in a custom set. “We basically took our most recognizable product, the product everybody comes to us for, and made it into a more digestible form, something that people could feel pretty comfortable acquiring, as their first purchase,” Payal says.

The team at skin care brand Beekman 1802 also starts planning early. “We always choose a theme for the holiday, and we start building that story really by the end of the summer,” says cofounder Dr. Brent Ridge. “We try to lead with the storytelling and get people engaged throughout the holiday season, so that when it comes time for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, they’re really primed for a deal because we’ve gotten them excited with the storytelling for several months.”

Choose the right discount

Historically, major retailers have used Black Friday as an opportunity to clear out excessive inventory, slashing prices during years when products are heavily overstocked, and minimizing discounts when inventory levels are moderate. Recent research shows that brands may not need to significantly slash prices to entice shoppers. According to email platform Klaviyo, “Discounts in the 10–15% and 20–25% ranges performed better than steep price cuts, underscoring a shift toward value-driven purchasing.”

Another factor in the discount puzzle is brand image: Setting discounts too high may offend loyalists who’ve been spending full price all year, or dilute customer perception of your brand’s value. To strike the right balance, brands calculate an appropriate discount level supported by their brand messaging and sales creative.

For example, luxury hair care brand Crown Affair’s strategy for threading this needle is offering bundled, rather than sitewide, discounts. While its “Build your ritual” bundle is discounted by 15% year-round, during BFCM, it doubles the discount to 30%. This approach allows it to focus on strategic storytelling about the product bundle while also driving sales with promotional pricing.

At the same time, the brand ensures that every part of the sales messaging is as tasteful and stunning as the rest of the brand aesthetic, says Jordyn Casaus, Crown Affair’s director of marketing. “You won’t find prices slashed by 50% and flashing red across the site,” she says.

Time sales to support brand goals

Brands see success with varying approaches to sale timing and duration. What’s important is aligning the sale’s narrative with your brand ethos and goals. Olive oil brand Graza opts for a month-long Friendsgiving sale in October instead of a traditional BFCM sale. “It’s a really impactful strategy for us to have a sale that’s outside of a standard sale period where there are tons of brands kind of fighting for attention in your inbox,” says Kali Shulklapper, director of brand marketing at Graza. “This will be our third year doing it.”

Cookware brand Our Place takes a different approach, choosing to keep its BFCM sale more limited in time to preserve the integrity of its pricing strategy. “[We] keep it limited because it is intended to be a special offer for a moment in time,” says cofounder and co-CEO Shiza Shahid. “If it drags on too long, then it can undermine your overall pricing as well.”

When apparel brand Set Active plans its sales, it focuses on standing out against its competitors by offering an additional sale after BFCM. “We made our own Black Friday in December, and we call it Setmas,” says founder Lindsey Carter. “We’re just trying little creative things here and there that get people wanting to come back to us rather than go to a different deal or sale that goes on during that time.”

Plan for the demand

The BFCM shopping spree can be unpredictable, which makes inventory management critical. Identifying seasonal trends in past sales data can help businesses predict how big a sales boost they can reasonably expect. Every year, Jordyn and her product and operations teams at Crown Affair ask, “What did we do last year? What was the demand? What was the product sell-through based off of all of our SKUs? We essentially take that, apply it to this year’s revenue goals that we need to hit, and buy and plan based on that,” she says.

Sales projections are half the battle. Businesses also need contingency plans to handle unforeseen shifts in demand. Purchase safety stock, set up low-stock alerts, and configure automated reorder points for popular products. Tools like the Stocky app for Shopify POS allow you to set minimum stock levels based on supplier lead times and anticipated demand; they then automatically generate a purchase order for the relevant supplier when supply falls below the threshold.

In addition to increasing its inventory, protein snack brand Elavi is also ensuring its website can meet BFCM demand. “We’re testing everything on the site,” says cofounder Michelle Razavi. “We’re going to be updating our website, updating our pop-ups, and when you do that, you want to make sure that you’re running through everything to make sure you’re not breaking anything. So we do a lot of testing behind the scenes to make sure, ‘OK, does this work?’ especially for new products and bundles.”

Keep people engaged after the sale

A good BFCM strategy doesn’t end once the weekend comes to a close. This is an opportunity to nurture new customers and reward those who’ve purchased from your brand year-round.

Crown Affair tackles this in two ways. First, the brand rewards loyal customers with extra deals after the main BFCM sales event. They’re typically short, single-day deals that target single products. And the deals aren’t widely advertised. “It depends every year based on behavior,” Jordyn says, “but we extend that offer to our VIP and our loyal customers via email and SMS to offer an additional thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for loving us. Here’s something extra for you.” That way, if their loyal fans wanted to stock up on a product that wasn’t on sale during BFCM, they’ll get the chance through a direct message.

Second, the team plans new product launches and tailored marketing moments in January through March to nurture and engage new customers who came in from the sale. “When bringing in new customers at a discount, you’ll need a strategy for keeping them engaged post-discount,” Jordyn says.

Generate insights year-round

For Our Place, BFCM success is all about testing new strategies early in the year so they have a handle on what will resonate best with their customers by the time November rolls around. “January is a time of experimentation,” Shiza says. “We can try new things. We can launch new channels. We can A/B test.” She says they focus on taking “those big swings early in the year so that we can then implement and build them and reap the benefits of that in Q4. It really is a full-year process.”

The team at Beekman 1802 echoes the importance of generating insights year-round. “We also really take in feedback from our consumers throughout the year of what they really want to see,” says David Baker, the brand’s chief digital officer.

Consider sale alternatives

While BFCM most often is associated with sales, brands also use the season to promote other business goals. REI famously gained brand attention with its antithetical Opt Outside campaign, which debuted for Black Friday in 2015. Every year since, REI closes its stores for the day to reinforce the organization’s belief that a “life outdoors is a life well lived.” The event was an earned media home run for the brand and led to partnerships with hundreds of other brands and nonprofits.

Since then, more sustainability-minded brands have found ways to leverage BFCM to support their missions. Tentree, an environmentally conscious apparel company, launched a Green Friday initiative to offer discounts on sustainable products and, ultimately, help the brand reach its tree-planting goals while building buy-in and brand loyalty. For each item sold, the brand plants 10 trees. Members gained perks like a map showing where their trees were planted and double rewards points on orders.

You can also tie your BFCM sale to a fundraising goal. Sustainable fashion brand and certified B Corp Poppy Barley pledged 100% of its net BFCM profits (up to $15,000) in 2024 to KidSport Canada, an organization that covers sports registration fees for youth athletes.

","excerpt","The BFCM season is a can’t-miss opportunity for businesses large and small, but it takes planning to pull off a seamless operation for your customers and business alike.","excerptHtml","

$\"A$ The BFCM season is a can’t-miss opportunity for businesses large and small, but it takes planning to pull off a seamless operation for your customers and business alike.

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In business, as in life, viewpoints are constantly shifting, and business owners have to adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Cultivating a successful brand and staying relevant with your target audience isn’t a one-time effort. This process is known as brand development.

Although brand development often starts with a dedicated period of effort, it’s ideally an ongoing, iterative process. Developing your brand will be part of your ecommerce business journey well beyond your launch.

Table of contents

What is brand development?

The brand development process is the work you do to build a brand. It’s the series of decisions you make to position what you sell as more appealing than what your competitors sell. Brand development can include tweaking your brand’s identity, messaging, or visual marketing materials to appeal to potential customers or shifting the majority of your brand’s efforts from one social platform to another.

These actions are an attempt to grow your brand. The hope is that the more good decisions you make over time to develop and maintain brand consistency, the stronger it becomes.

Brand development vs. branding: What’s the difference?

It’s easy to confuse brand development and branding since they are closely connected concepts. The brand development process is the ongoing journey of defining and strengthening your brand over time. Branding refers to a collection of cues (such as your brand’s logo and visual identity) that distinguish you from other brands, particularly within your specific niche.

To illustrate the difference between brand development and branding, consider Chomps. As founders Peter Maldonado and Rashid Ali developed their product—a meat snack in the jerky space—they spent time figuring out how it would stand out on a shelf. Noticing that their competitors all used similar color schemes and masculine positioning, Peter and Rashid realized they needed to take a different approach.

Using customer feedback and panel data, they opted for a more colorful look for their packaging that stands out and is gender-neutral, therefore appealing to a wider audience.

In this example, the brand development process involved researching competitors, collecting and assessing feedback, and revising their logo and color scheme to catch the eye of their target customers. Their branding encompasses their final logo and packaging (colors, fonts, and how they are arranged).

Factors that drive brand development strategy

To develop your brand, consider what you offer your target audience and why it matters to them. Then you can start thinking about how you want to show up as a brand and define your brand identity. Here are the main factors that influence a brand development strategy:

A clear value proposition

Articulate what unique value your brand offers to customers and where that fits within your market or niche. What does your brand promise people? Your value proposition should inform your marketing campaigns (how you’ll communicate your value) as well as the nuts and bolts of things like your product listings (how you’ll describe what makes your products or services appealing or distinct).

Distinct brand positioning

How is your brand different from the competition? These differences can be based on unique features of your product, price, quality, sustainability practices, or exceptional customer service. Nailing down your brand positioning within your industry means you’ll know what’s fixed and what’s flexible, making it easier to evolve your brand in response to any larger strategy or market changes.

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A compelling brand story

A clear brand story—whether it’s about a founder’s initial inspiration, the passion driving a brand’s mission, or the values guiding a business—provides a narrative that resonates with your target audience and differentiates an ecommerce brand in a crowded market. It allows customers to connect with a brand on a deeper level than just the products being sold. Whatever your story, be authentic, clear, and concise. Test your story and brand voice on family and friends to get feedback, and workshop it with staff and business partners until it feels right.

Tips for developing and maintaining your brand

Drawing from the experience of Chomps’ founders Peter and Rashid, here are some tips that your ecommerce brand can use no matter how far you’ve progressed in your brand development strategy:

Get to know your target customers

Chomps initially marketed its product to CrossFit enthusiasts, based on Rashid’s involvement in that community. And while it saw some initial positive movement, investing in true market research a few years later revealed a surprising customer insight. Its customer base was about 70% female, which entirely differed from the founders’ assumptions.

This example highlights the crucial role of investing in market research to gain an accurate understanding of who is actually buying your product to support brand growth. While it’s great to start with an idea that fills a gap or fulfills your passion, your business’s longevity relies on customers and their brand loyalty. To reach your target market, you have to know their beliefs and motivations.

You can ask customers directly for feedback about your products and their experience with your company. To be more rigorous with your market research, there are plenty of free and paid branding tools and market research tools to explore.

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Directly engage with customers

Before expanding into retail, Chomps spent years building a brand on Shopify and social media, directly engaging with customers by responding to emails, comments, and DMs, and fostering relationships with repeat customers. This community-first approach provided a significant advantage when it eventually entered retail spaces; it could easily direct customers to those stores while also reaching new customers within its target audience through word of mouth and easy access to its products.

For ecommerce brands, actively engaging with your audience can create a loyal customer base and contribute to long-term success. Acknowledge your supporters by encouraging them to tag you in photos and reviews that you repost, responding to comments, hosting Q&A sessions, and sharing behind-the-scenes content. Not only does this increase your credibility, but it also further develops your brand personality and can encourage a sense of community.

To further encourage customer loyalty, consider implementing a rewards or customer loyalty program for repeat purchases, referrals, or social media engagement. Incentives can be points that accumulate toward future purchases, discounts, or exclusive access to new products or experiences.

Evolve your brand messaging

For ecommerce brands, content (blog posts, social media posts, videos, infographics, etc.) plays a vital role in brand building. Through your content, you can deepen people’s understanding of your brand identity, flex your expertise in your industry, and create a community.

When it comes to brand strategy for social media, answer a few key questions to get started. Do you want to educate, entertain, engage, or all of the above? Maybe TikTok and Reddit are where you want to attract new customers, while YouTube is where you want to talk to existing ones. Perhaps there’s a seasonality to your business, so you should plan your content calendar around the peaks and valleys of your sales season. Set clear objectives for your content on specific platforms.

You can also use social listening tools to learn how people view and talk about your brand online. These critical insights can guide your content strategy to drive business growth. For example, if an element of your product or service is perceived negatively, you can focus on that area internally before sharing improvements or a clearer explanation of the element in question online.

Brand development FAQ

What is a brand development strategy?

A brand development strategy is how you strengthen and grow your brand over time. Once you know where your brand is now and where you want it to go, a brand development strategy maps out how you get there.

What is the most important step in brand development?

Articulating your value proposition and brand positioning is key to developing a brand. Define what makes you different from and better than the competition. This will help you make initial decisions while creating a stable foundation for any future market or strategy pivots.

What is an example of brand development?

One example of brand development is refreshing your current packaging and marketing communications to better reach the people who buy your product, using updated information about their demographics.

","Brand development is the work you do to build a brand, or the series of decisions you make to strengthen your brand equity and drive business growth.","

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Brand development is the work you do to build a brand, or the series of decisions you make to strengthen your brand equity and drive business growth.

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Simply put, your brand’s purpose is the reason it exists beyond just making money. Aside from generating a profit, why is it important or necessary for your brand to be in this world? It’s an easy question to ask but can be a very difficult one to answer. However, brands that can clearly and confidently articulate their “why” have a better chance of attracting like-minded consumers to their business. In fact, “purpose-driven brands” put their purpose front and center in their messaging for that exact reason.

Sometimes, a company that had a well-defined brand purpose when it started will lose its way over time. Maybe the founder steps aside and those making decisions don’t have the same vision. Or maybe a founder is unable to accept and adjust to the reality that what worked in the past won’t work in the face of changing consumer preferences and cultural norms. Regardless, having a clearly defined purpose and leaders who wholeheartedly carry the torch enables a brand to find its way.

Starting a business is no easy feat, and being personally invested in a mission can make the early, scrappy days feel a lot more rewarding. Learn how to clearly define your brand’s purpose so you can share that sense of meaning with the world.

Table of contents

What is brand purpose?

Brand purpose is the idea that a brand should have a reason for operating beyond just making a profit. For a clearly defined brand purpose, look to Ben & Jerry’s website, where the copy reads, “We love making ice cream, but using our business to make the world a better place gives our work its meaning.” It’s what your brand stands for that creates the foundation for articulating your brand vision, i.e., the future state you want to create in the course of running your business.

That said, not every brand needs to have a big, powerful cause. In fact, it may come off as disingenuous if your brand wants to be seen as doing something meaningful (like accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy) when the founder’s actions or the business model run counter to that (like rubbing elbows with big oil). Point being, purpose-driven brands should shout their reason for being from the rooftops, but there’s no sense in forcing a purpose if you can’t walk the walk.

Brand purpose vs. mission vs. values: What’s the difference?

Your brand purpose, mission, and values all play important roles, but there are subtle differences between the concepts:

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Brand purpose. Your purpose is the reason you keep your business going beyond just wanting to make money. For example, an organic t-shirt brand’s purpose may be to champion ethical consumption. Thus, the company’s products (organic t-shirts) and practices (sustainable sourcing, paying its farmers in India an equitable wage, and working with women farmers) are informed by the belief that the world needs alternatives to mindless consumerism.
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Brand mission. Your mission is the specific goal your company strives for every day to achieve your vision, a future state you have in mind, or an achievement you’d like to accomplish in running your business. The same t-shirt company’s mission may be to empower its employees to advocate for fair practices and find new ways every day to reduce waste.
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Brand values. Your brand values guide how you pursue your purpose and achieve your mission. What standards do you insist on maintaining? The values guiding the t-shirt company may include equity, sustainability, and female empowerment.
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How to showcase your brand purpose

Having a strong brand purpose statement isn’t enough—you have to live your values. Your brand purpose can guide the products you make, your leadership model, and your messaging. The latter is crucial in helping your audience understand your brand purpose, too. To do this, you can:

Align with like-minded partners

Creating meaningful partnerships can be mutually beneficial and reaffirm your brand purpose. Choose suppliers and shipping firms who live your values to create a pipeline that supports your mission. You can also partner with nonprofit organizations that have grassroots expertise with your stated purpose and can help channel your funding and provide guidance.

Use storytelling to communicate your message

Your brand purpose statement may be a few sentences long and designed for internal stakeholders, but you can share your ethos across your website, social media, and packaging. Tell customers the why behind your brand—what motivated you to start your company and what keeps you going. You can use an Our Story page on your website to expand on your journey and share honest takes on social media or in email newsletters.

You can also share stories about your partners—the artisans who create your product, the farmers who grow your ingredients, or the designers and office workers behind the scenes. This long-form content allows customers to understand who you are and what you stand for in a way that a pithy one-liner may not communicate.

Get your customers involved

If your customers choose your brand because your brand purpose aligns with their values, they may want to get involved in ways that go beyond buying your products. You can ask them to support a charitable cause of your choice by using a donation app to collect funds or suggest partner nonprofits in their area for volunteering opportunities. You can also recommend that customers reuse and recycle your products to promote sustainability. You can make this as easy as possible by having drop-off centers or easy mailing for products that have reached the end of their life, offering free repairs, or incentivizing exchanges (so you can safely dispose of old goods).

3 brand purpose examples

These brands are great examples of companies with strong brand purpose:

Patagonia

Patagonia is a textbook example of a brand that leads and lives by its purpose. When Yvon Chouinard started the company, he was a passionate climber who wanted to stop damaging rock surfaces with his equipment. His purpose—with his life and business—was to explore wild places. As the business grew and the discourse around environmentalism and sustainability evolved, so did the brand’s purpose—from exploring wild places to protecting them. While the company’s original purpose statement spoke of harm reduction and environmental solutions, it now is a clear statement of its unwavering purpose: “Patagonia is in business to save our home planet.”

In 2022 Yvon Chouinard transferred ownership of the company to a trust and nonprofit, ensuring that all future profits go toward fighting climate change. In addition, the company has pledged 1% of sales to environmental causes, pioneered the use of recycled materials, and has a repair and resale program to extend the life of its products.

The Cleanest Lab

Samantha Kent had years of experience in beauty product manufacturing, thanks to her role as chief growth officer at the family-run LaDove. However, it wasn’t until her sister was diagnosed with Leukemia that Samantha became aware of the challenges facing people with extremely sensitive skin. “A lot of preservatives get a bad rep. However, it’s more dangerous to somebody with a disease to have a potential exposure to a bacteria than an exposure to that preservative,” she says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast.

In starting The Cleanest Lab, her company’s brand purpose was to create high-quality, irritant-free products backed by science. That purpose is loud and clear on its Our Story page, where the copy reads, “The Cleanest Lab was created out of Pureness. Pure love, pure performance, and pure intent.” You can also see this brand purpose in play when you look at the products; to be transparent about what it uses, The Cleanest Lab lists all fragrance allergens so customers know exactly what to expect.

Samantha says there’s an added benefit to making products with a clear purpose: It can help land crucial partnerships. “It takes just as much effort to create something that you’ll produce once as it does to create something that will be around for years to come,” Samantha says. Reputable manufacturers are more likely to want to work with you if you believe in what you’re making and that it’ll solve a real need in the market.

Who Gives a Crap

Who Gives a Crap is a sustainable toilet paper company that produces eco-friendly, bamboo toilet paper, tissues, and paper towels. Beyond sustainability, the brand’s core purpose is to improve global sanitation, and it donates 50% of its profits to organizations building toilets in underserved communities worldwide. As you can tell from the brand name, though, this company isn’t afraid to let loose in the name of environmentalism. Who Gives a Crap blends purpose with an irreverent, wry tone and a colorful, playful brand identity.

The brand’s purpose is evident across its website, starting with the homepage banner that reads “Good for the planet.” You can see this sentiment displayed all over the branding and marketing—even in corporate communications. It also guides the brand’s growth and expansion efforts.

When Shopify talked to cofounder Jehan Ratnatunga about Who Gives a Crap’s market expansion, he said, “If our mission is to give people access to clean water and sanitation, which is a huge problem, we need more bums to wipe than just in Australia. We always knew we couldn’t do this with just one market. It’s been in our thinking from Day One.” The fun, irreverent tone helps keep the brand on message without sounding overly lofty for what the product is—a product you use on your bum.

Brand purpose FAQ

How do you define your brand purpose?

Brand purpose is the idea that a brand can have a reason for existing beyond just making a profit. A brand purpose effectively keeps you focused on meaningful goals so you can stay aligned with your brand values even when the going gets tough.

Do you need a brand purpose?

You don’t necessarily need to market your brand purpose, but you should take the time to articulate for yourself and your team why your brand exists beyond making a profit.

What makes a brand purpose effective?

A compelling brand purpose is genuine, clear, and aligned with the brand’s products or services.

","Brands that can clearly and confidently articulate their “why” have a better chance of attracting like-minded consumers to their business.","

$\"A$

Brands that can clearly and confidently articulate their “why” have a better chance of attracting like-minded consumers to their business.

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Think about what makes the people in your life authentic. Do they maintain their sardonic sense of humor, no matter the situation? Have they cultivated a unique sense of style? Do they hold strong convictions that rarely waver? However authentic people show up, you can rely on them to be true to themselves.

The same is true for authentic brands. Learn what brand authenticity is, why it’s important, and how to build it to promote customer loyalty.

Table of contents

What is brand authenticity?

Brand authenticity is the perception that a brand’s actions and messages align with its mission and beliefs. Authentic brands consistently act in alignment with their core values, whether in launching a new product, providing customer service, crafting a social media post, sending a newsletter, or partnering with another business.

Why is brand authenticity important for ecommerce brands?

Perceived brand authenticity helps customers understand your brand and what to expect from it. This clarity of purpose and consistency of action helps build trust and brand loyalty. That trust can dramatically influence purchase decisions: In a 2023 survey, 79% of Gen Z—whose spending power will top $12 trillion by 2030—said it’s more important than ever to trust the brands they buy from.

The ecommerce space is highly competitive, with over 28 million global ecommerce sites. Brand authenticity can help your business stand out from the competition and build a personal connection with your target audience.

Purchasing from an authentic brand with a strong brand identity can even help reinforce a customer’s sense of self and identity, making them feel part of something bigger than themselves. When this happens, the customer can generate value for your company beyond their purchases. For example, if they recommend your brand to friends and family, they contribute to a powerful word-of-mouth marketing flywheel.

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Elements of brand authenticity

Four key elements contribute to your brand’s authenticity:

1. Purpose

Brand purpose is the reason your brand exists beyond pure monetary gain. Patagonia's purpose, for example, is “to save our home planet” by promoting sustainable products and practices, while Columbia Sportswear aims “to relentlessly push the limits of innovation to help you explore the outdoors in comfort.”

A brand’s purpose can help employees and consumers connect and feel aligned to its goal. To determine your brand purpose, identify your overarching goals and the long-term impact you aim to have on the world (e.g., protecting the environment or empowering your farmers and producers).

Write a brand manifesto that clearly and succinctly communicates why your brand exists and a vision statement that paints a picture of the world you want to create. From there, develop your purpose by using storytelling to create a clear narrative about your ambitions and what inspired them. Share the passion or problem that inspired you to found the business.

2. Beliefs

Beliefs are the values and principles that guide your brand’s actions (e.g., sustainability, innovation, equality). Ideally, these are more than words on a poster in the office. Eighty-two percent of shoppers want a brand’s values to align with their own—and 75% will stop purchasing from a brand over a conflict in values.

For example, BMW believes in “the joy of driving,” focusing on performance, agility, and a sporty driving experience. Mercedes-Benz believes in “luxury and innovation,” emphasizing comfort, elegance, and cutting-edge technology. Both are German luxury cars, but each has a unique belief about the driving experience.

When your brand genuinely lives and breathes its beliefs and values, they become a North Star for decisions during times of uncertainty. First step: Draft an action-oriented mission statement by analyzing what your company does, how it does it, and (most importantly) why it does it. From there, you can put those beliefs into action in several ways. You might:

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Use values to guide decisions, including product development and operations
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Add values guidelines to employee onboarding, annual reports, and training documents
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Get certified as a B Corporation to show accountability for your beliefs
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Try social impact marketing by sharing stories that align with your beliefs and donating to related charities
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There’s no one way to do it, but when you nail down your core beliefs and let them guide your decisions, you’re practicing brand authenticity.

3. Personality

Your brand personality is the personified impression your brand leaves on people. It’s a set of traits, similar to the character traits you see in people. It encompasses your:

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Brand voice. How you speak to your customers and the world. Is your brand serious or light-hearted? Does it have mass appeal or exude exclusivity?
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Visual style. What do your color palettes, photography styles, and typography choices say about your brand?
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Marketing approach. How do you plan on reaching your customers?
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Your brand personality will help set you apart from competitors. For example, Geico and State Farm have similar insurance offerings, but Geico’s brand personality is relatable and entertaining, while State Farm’s emphasizes reliability and integrity. This distinction helps them attract different consumer bases and stand out from more generic competitors.

As you hone your brand personality, distill the most important elements into a set of brand guidelines. These will help ensure your personality is conveyed consistently across channels.

4. Consistency

Authentic brands put their money where their mouths are over and over—whether it aligns with trends or not. Brand consistency means customers have a reliable and cohesive experience no matter where, when, or how they interact with your brand.

To reap the benefits of brand consistency, both your product quality and your brand expression need to be consistent. On the product side, implement and improve quality assurance and control standards to ensure that everything you sell meets the standard you promise and that your customers expect. On the brand expression side, enforce your brand guidelines across channels and communicate with customers on a predictable schedule, whether on social media, email, or elsewhere.

Examples of ecommerce brand authenticity

Successful brands build brand authenticity by acting consistently, reliably, and predictably. These three ecommerce brands bring across all four key elements of authenticity to the forefront:

My Skin Feels

My Skin Feels makes skin care products that are sustainable and easy to understand. After 15 years working in beauty and wellness, founder Danielle Close realized the industry wasn’t making enough progress on sustainability—and decided to do something about it herself. “If no one’s doing anything, I have to do something to prove that it can be done,” she says on Shopify Masters. “If I can do it, everyone else can do it too.”

This decision led to products that are better for the environment: the brand’s products are 99% natural, vegan, and made with organic ingredients rescued from the food and drink industry that would otherwise go to waste.

To break through the noise of skin care jargon, My Skin Feels opts for simple, straightforward names. The moisturizer is called “Moisturized,” so when shoppers see the tube, they know exactly what they’re going to get: “My Skin Feels Moisturized.”

My Skin Feels reflects this accessible, passion-led authenticity throughout the brand:

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Purpose. The brand’s stated purpose is: “To make products that focus on how they make you feel, all the while being as planet-friendly, people-friendly, and skin-friendly as possible.”
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Belief. “We believe skin care should make you feel good without any cost to the planet.”
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Personality. My Skin Feels is optimistic, approachable, encouraging, and down-to-earth with an abstract illustration style that evokes the ocean and natural ingredients.
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Consistency. Danielle embodies the brand’s accessible tone by personally promoting her product and speaking with customers at in-person pop-ups and markets.
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Sugardoh

Aliyah Marandiz founded the beauty company Sugardoh to sell hair removal products that use sugaring, a gentle and natural alternative to waxing. She uses her personal story to make her brand feel intimate and accessible.

She explains on the brand’s website: “As a hairy brown girl with very sensitive skin, I felt like everything on the market was promoting hair removal at all costs and my skin was collateral damage.” After discovering sugaring, she made it her mission “to replace your at-home hair removal method with compostable sugaring paste.”

Aliyah works on building brand authenticity across her business:

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Purpose. The brand’s stated purpose is to provide “a gentle and natural alternative to waxing.” The implied purpose is also to remove some of the taboos around body hair and hair removal.
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Belief. Sugardoh believes hair removal doesn’t have to come at the expense of your skin health.
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Personality. The brand is honest, encouraging, informative, and personal. With CTAs like, “Join our happy, hairy family,” the brand provides a wealth of tutorials and FAQs to bring a sense of openness and relatability to hair removal—all while having fun.
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Consistency. Sugardoh has cultivated a loyal following on TikTok by consistently engaging and responding to feedback from its community, involving followers in product development, pricing, and other brand decisions. In all of this messaging, Aliyah has also never shied away from sharing her personal story at the root of the brand.
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@burnttoasthah
♬ original sound - Equestrian audios:heart_hands::skin-tone-2:

Kloo

Claudia Snoh and her mother, Mariella Cho, a licensed coffee sommelier, founded the coffee concentrate brand Kloo. They aim to provide a simple “pour and enjoy” coffee experience so people “can spend less time worrying about techniques and equipment and more time finding flavors you love.”

When Kloo first launched, Claudia and Mariella discovered that a lot of people thought the brand was about aesthetics. They thought the product was just another concentrated coffee product in a cool bottle, completely missing the entirely new expertise and craft that went into the beverage. After sourcing lots of consistent feedback, they leaned into their brand story and decided to highlight the credentials that underpin their production process.

“Prioritize one thing [about your brand] and repeat that story everywhere,” Claudia says on Shopify Masters. “On your website, on social email, SMS, in your elevator pitch—repeat that story everywhere you go.”

Claudia and Mariella keep the brand authentic by focusing on:

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Purpose. Kloo’s stated purpose is, “Bringing sommelier-grade coffee to the world, one sip at a time.”
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Belief. You don’t have to be a coffee sommelier to experience the magic of coffee. Instead, you can simply open a bottle of Kloo and appreciate the craft that went into it.
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Personality. Kloo aims to be premium, elevated, and personal with a modern minimal aesthetic that helps reinforce the newness and expertise behind the product.
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Consistency. Kloo consistently showcases the founders’ expertise and the quality of their products on their website and in marketing content. It produced a video highlighting Mariella's journey to becoming a coffee sommelier and redesigned its website to focus on the quality and origins of the beans.
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xxx FAQ

What is an example of brand authenticity?

Brand authenticity refers to the perception that a brand’s actions and messages align with its purpose and beliefs. A good example of brand authenticity is a customer support team responding to customer complaints in a voice and tone consistent with the brand’s values, or a personable company sourcing and featuring user-generated content on its website.

How do you measure brand authenticity?

You can measure brand authenticity with social listening and customer sentiment tools, your Net Promoter Score, and product reviews, which let you know if your brand promise is meeting expectations.

How do you maintain brand authenticity?

With every big move you make—launching a new product or an ad campaign—ask yourself whether you can deliver on your promise, stay consistent, and reinforce brand values.

","You can build brand authenticity by putting your target audience first, sticking to your brand values, and staying consistent.","

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You can build brand authenticity by putting your target audience first, sticking to your brand values, and staying consistent.

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The “essence” of something is that thing’s most significant quality. Sounds simple, right? If you try to describe your best friend’s essence, you might instinctively say they’re fun, outgoing, or quick-witted. That’s accurate, but they’re also so much more than that. They’re the life of every outing without hogging all of the attention—“a welcoming, charismatic party starter” if you will. With a handful of words, you can picture that person and understand their personality a bit better.

Crafting a brand essence is similar. Beyond a few helpful adjectives, it’s an exercise in cutting to the core of what your brand is all about in just a few words. A brand that knows who it is will have a consistent presence that builds brand equity over time.

Table of contents

What is brand essence?

Brand essence is the distillation of your brand’s core identity, synthesizing its key elements (purpose, promise, personality, benefits to the consumer, etc.) in just a few words. It’s your North Star, a guiding light that can help a brand find a path forward, regardless of product iterations, shifting consumer preferences, challenging market dynamics, or even leadership changes. Generally speaking, a brand’s essence is designed for internal use, although in some cases, it can double as a public-facing slogan, brand promise, or mission statement.

For ecommerce companies, crafting an authentic and specific brand essence is helpful. It guides brand stewards to ensure that the brand’s presence aligns with its intended identity. In the same way you’re more likely to trust a confident person, consumers are more likely to trust a brand that knows itself. Plus, when your brand essence is precise and accurate, it helps attract the right audience. A strong brand essence is like an internal compass. At its best, it can guide a host of decisions a brand needs to make from product development, messaging, visual identity, hiring and training, and customer service interactions.

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Brand essence vs. brand identity: What’s the difference?

A brand’s essence is a concise collection of words that captures the heart and soul of a brand to help inform internal decisions. A brand identity is a system, a toolbox of principles and assets a brand uses to express itself outwardly.

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Brand essence. Brand essence captures what your brand stands for at a foundational level, its purpose, and the promise it makes to consumers. In just a few words, it communicates the core of what your brand is all about.
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Brand identity. Your brand’s identity includes the tangible things it uses to express itself—your logo, colors, typography, messaging, design principles, and more. Described at length in your brand guidelines, it captures all the details that go into building your brand into something people can recognize.
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Brand essence is the “what,” while brand identity is the “how.”

Elements of a strong brand essence

A strong brand essence helps a company identify what is and is not “on brand” and maintain a consistent portrayal across touchpoints such as marketing materials, product design, customer service, and digital presence. This is especially valuable when decision-making becomes decentralized, with multiple people or business units needing to make decisions on behalf of your brand. To facilitate, a brand essence should be:

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Concise. It quickly and clearly communicates what the brand represents in its idealized form.
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Aspirational. It represents your brand at its best and sets a high standard.
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Authentic. It must be true to your brand’s values, personality, purpose, and benefits.
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How to identify your brand essence

When you’re ready to articulate your company’s brand essence, begin by organizing your thoughts to determine if you have the ingredients for a clear and differentiated brand. Then craft an authentic brand essence based on the following steps:

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Paint a picture of your brand. Before you articulate your brand essence, clearly define your brand personality and brand values. This helps you understand how your audience will perceive your brand and its mission.
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Consider your competition. If you’ve written a positioning statement, you already know exactly how your brand stands out in the market. If not, perform a competitive analysis to assess how similar companies present themselves to their audiences. You’ll use your brand essence statement as a differentiator.
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Define your desired impact. What are the functional and emotional benefits your brand delivers to its customers? You can reference your unique value proposition at this point.
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Seek supporting evidence. Although it won’t be part of the brand essence statement itself, concrete evidence of your brand’s benefits helps you understand your mission’s impact.
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Draft your brand essence statement. Jot down a list of short sentences or phrases that capture the essence of your brand. Your brand essence represents the image you want your audience to think of when your brand is mentioned. Consider the perceptions that your audiences will have from your various drafts.
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Brand essence examples

It’s rare to find companies explicitly labeling and posting their brand essence statements. Still, we can find them in taglines, mission statements, and slogans. Here are a few examples:

BMW

BMW’s brand essence comes through in its slogan, “Sheer Driving Pleasure.” This phrase communicates the brand’s promise to innovate in service of a better driving experience. Cars, according to BMW, are about more than getting from point A to point B. They’re about finding joy in the journey and making travel an end in itself. This brand essence distinguishes BMW from other luxury carmakers by focusing on the experience rather than the design alone.

Starbucks

Starbucks’ brand essence of everyday connection is connected to its mission: “To be the premier purveyor of the finest coffee in the world, inspiring and nurturing the human spirit—one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time.” Starbucks’ promise over the decades has been to provide not just a good cup of coffee but a place where people can feel comfortable meeting with friends or colleagues, reading a book, or getting some work done.

LEGO

LEGO’s brand essence of creative play enables it to transcend its physical product to represent the belief that creative play unleashes human potential. LEGO isn’t just selling colorful, interlocking plastic bricks, it’s selling inspiration and imagination for the young and young at heart. LEGO has produced licensed kits with iconic movie and video game franchises, theme parks, and more—and throughout all of these brand extensions, it has been able to be true to its essence.

Artisaire

A family-run business, Artisaire sells “gorgeous stationery for every moment” along with customizable wax seals made in its Canadian factory. You could say Artisaire offers classically sophisticated correspondence for people who want their messages to convey an elevated sense of thoughtfulness.

Healthy Roots Dolls

Healthy Roots Dolls sells dolls designed to empower young girls with curly hair, and represent the beauty of diversity. The dolls feature natural hairstyles and come with accessories that encourage creativity and learning about hair care. Ultimately, the brand provides representation and pride through play.

Brand essence FAQ

What is an example of a brand essence?

An example of brand essence is BMW’s “sheer driving pleasure.” It guides all aspects of BMW’s approach—from engineering decisions to marketing communications to dealership experiences. It informs the brand promise BMW makes to consumers.

How do you create a brand essence?

Create a brand essence by identifying the most critical aspects of your brand personality, what your core offerings are, and the feelings you want to inspire in your target audience. Sum that up in a few words, and you have your brand essence.

How do brands use their brand essence?

Brands use their brand essence statements to guide internal decision-making and stay focused on the company’s core values over time. Businesses may also use their brand essence as their company’s tagline, mantra, and/or messaging for marketing campaigns.

","Brand essence is the distillation of your brand’s core identity, synthesizing its key elements like purpose, promise, personality, and benefits to the consumer.","

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Brand essence is the distillation of your brand’s core identity, synthesizing its key elements like purpose, promise, personality, and benefits to the consumer.

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A brand is a collection of perceptions associated with a business, organization, or individual. From storytelling to messaging to packaging, a brand’s actions influence perceptions and emotional connections.

Essentially, your brand lives in other people’s minds, and you can’t fully control how they perceive it. But if you’re thoughtful and thorough in your branding efforts, you can shape a clear, positive identity that sets you apart from competitors.

You can spend a lot of time and money perfecting your branding strategy—most big brands do—but if you’re just starting out and looking for the right branding tools, this guide is for you.

What are branding tools?

Branding tools are the software platforms and guides you use to shape and communicate your brand values and personality and nurture brand recognition and awareness. These tools help you craft your brand’s look and feel, monitor your competition, and track brand performance and health. The brand guidelines you create keep stakeholders on the same page and ensure a consistent, unified brand presence. Together, these tools coordinate to build cohesion and customer trust.

Branding tools to help you get started

Consider these top branding tools for building your brand foundation and sharing your brand story:

Market research: Statista and Voxpopme

To distinguish your brand from competitors, you must identify and monitor them. Fortunately, a simple Google search and some research with generative AI tools like Perplexity can go a long way to comparing your strengths to those of your competitors—particularly if you’re starting a small, local business or self-funding your venture.

For a deeper dive into your category or consumer insights, consider Statista and Voxpopme:

Statista

Statista is a global data and business intelligence platform that provides access to statistics, reports, and insights on a wide range of topics. Depending on your account type, you can access thousands of industry and consumer trend reports, industry forecasts, demographic insights, and competitor analyses. Statista also provides high-quality infographics and projections you can use for investor pitch decks. The platform’s Research AI tool responds to complex questions with summaries of relevant statistics.

\nFeatures: Statistics across 170 industries in more than 150 countries and AI search function.
\nPricing: Create a free account to access more than 220,000 statistics and a wealth of infographics; pay $200 monthly for more than a million stats and the most recent data; or pay $600 to $1,300 for additional features such as reports and forecasts.

Voxpopme

Voxpopme specializes in video feedback and qualitative market research, allowing you to capture authentic, unfiltered feedback. In contrast with text-based surveys, respondents record video responses so you can hear directly from your target audience. (The name “Voxpopme” comes from the Latin phrase vox populi, meaning “voice of the people.”)

\nFeatures: Video feedback, capacity for custom questions, dashboards and reporting, and integrations with other market research tools.
\nPricing: Voxpopme operates on a custom pricing model, depending on the project scope, number of participants, and features required.

Logo creation: Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Illustrator is the gold standard graphic design tool. Despite a learning curve, its nearly limitless customizations facilitate unique designs.

Illustrator can help with nearly all your design tasks—from creating logos and web icons to branded merch, business cards, infographics, and other brand assets featuring your brand colors and typography.

\nFeatures: 1 TB of cloud storage, 24/7 tech support, thousands of fonts, more than two million free Adobe Stock photos, and 500 monthly generative AI credits.
\nPricing: Subscriptions start at $38 per month per license.
\nFree alternative: Shopify’s free logo maker offers hundreds of templates to customize a unique logo, which you can add to business cards using Shopify’s free business card maker.

Brand monitoring: Brandwatch

Brandwatch is a consumer intelligence and social listening platform that monitors conversations related to your business so you can track customer sentiment. Keep tabs on brand logo uses and online conversations influencing how people perceive your brand.

\nFeatures: Custom dashboards, industry insights, word clouds, and more.
\nPricing: Request a free demo for a quote.
\nFree alternative: Google Alerts can help you stay on top of brand mentions, but you won’t get any analysis.

Brand consistency: Brand guidelines

Brand guidelines are the rules you develop to dictate how your brand looks and feels. They prescribe how internal and external partners use your brand logo, fonts, colors, illustrations, social media graphics and photography, and your brand’s voice and tone.

Thorough brand guidelines serve as a reference point to guide employees and agency partners throughout your business. When a photographer needs to choose between a bright studio shoot or a naturally lit outdoor session, or a writer wants to know if they should be casual or formal, brand guidelines have the answers.

\nFeatures: Basic brand guidelines cover logos, brand colors and fonts, and voice and tone.
\nPricing: Pricing varies dramatically, starting in the low thousands and ranging as high as six figures or more. Developing guidelines with internal staff or independent contractors generally costs less than hiring a large, experienced branding agency. Other factors that affect price include scope: Do you want a basic package, or do you need to include guidance on packaging and product design? What about comprehensive spelling and grammar rules (and brand complexity)? Are you a regional or global brand? How many countries do you operate in? Do you have sub-brands?

Asset management: Frontify

Once you’ve developed assets that adhere to your strict brand guidelines, you need to manage them. Frontify is a digital asset management (DAM) system designed to keep brand files organized and accessible.

\nFeatures: Customization tools, collaborative workflows, template creation, drag-and-drop interface, user-friendly asset libraries, and integrations with creative tools such as Figma.
\nPricing: Schedule a demo with Frontify for a quote.
\nFree alternative: Store up to 15 GB of content, visual assets, pitch decks, videos, and more on Google Drive.

Correspondence: HubSpot email signature generator

Ending emails with a branded signature reinforces your brand identity with every company email. HubSpot’s free email signature generator can help you design and share a signature with your team. It may seem like a small detail, but professional cohesion can help foster a positive brand reputation.

\nFeatures: Signature templates can include contact information, web and social media links, custom color palettes, logos, and headshots.
\nPricing: Free.

Branding tools FAQ

What are the 4 Cs of branding?

The four Cs of branding are:

Consumer or customer (What are consumers looking for?)

1. Category (What are your competitors doing?)

2. Company (What’s special about your company?)

3. Culture (What’s happening in culture?)

Considering these elements can help you home in on a brand identity.

What are branding tools?

Branding tools are the software platforms and guides you use to build and communicate your brand’s values and personality. They help ensure you share a well-developed point of view consistently.

Why do companies use branding tools?

Companies use branding tools to focus their efforts and consistently communicate the most important elements—brand values, personality, mission, and value proposition.

","The right branding tools help you craft your brand’s look and feel, monitor your competition, and track brand performance and health.","

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The right branding tools help you craft your brand’s look and feel, monitor your competition, and track brand performance and health.

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To understand brand equity, imagine you’ve just bought a house. Your house’s value grows as you pay your mortgage and upgrade for functionality and aesthetics. So does your equity, which is the difference between the money you owe on the home and its market worth.

Brand equity is similar. Just as a quality renovation can grow a home’s value, a successful brand marketing strategy can build your brand’s value. The more equity your brand has, the stronger it is.

Table of contents

What is brand equity?

Brand equity is the market strength of a brand or the value it accumulates based on people’s perceptions. It can influence brand loyalty and how much customers are willing to pay for your products and services, making brand equity important to your business strategy.

Brand equity is not a fixed element; people’s thoughts and feelings toward your business can change, increasing or decreasing your brand equity. Direct associations with your brand—intentional activities like sponsorships, endorsements, and product placement—and indirect associations—unexpected and organic events like rapper Doechii naming a song “Nissan Altima”—can impact its equity.

You can accumulate brand equity over time by putting your customer first and delivering a quality experience—“time” being the operative word. New brands won’t build brand equity overnight.

The benefits of brand equity

Substantial brand equity is good for business, increasing customer trust, loyalty, and advocacy, and enabling you to charge higher prices.

Good brand equity can also help you weather market ebbs and flows to withstand competition, afford resources to launch new products and services, and even bounce back after a misstep like a disorganized product launch.

Elements of brand equity

You can break brand equity down into the following elements:

Awareness

Before customers form opinions about your brand, they have to know it exists. Brand managers build awareness by identifying their ideal target audience, which shapes their advertising and marketing strategies.

Running ads, securing press mentions, appearing as a podcast guest, partnering with influencers and creators, and improving your search engine optimization are tactics for getting your brand noticed.

Brand perceptions

Once people know your brand, it’s time to determine how they perceive it. What are their general impressions? Do they think you offer good quality products or services? Would they pay more for them? Do they desire and trust your offerings? What do they think about your customer service?

Cultivate favorable brand perceptions by offering consistently excellent products or services and great customer service. Addressing negative feedback and showcasing positive reviews can also encourage customers to perceive your brand positively.

Brand associations

Brand associations are the ideas, places, or characteristics customers connect to your brand. Think about the people who love purchasing certain brands, then ask yourself why. Does the brand convey status or an affiliation with a particular value, person, or thing?

You can increase positive brand associations by creating a clear brand identity, building a consistent marketing strategy, forming strategic partnerships, and developing a plan to combat negative associations.

Brand assets

Use brand assets to distinguish your brand from competitors. Brand assets can be visual—such as logos, colors, graphics, type treatment, or photography style—or auditory—such as jingles or sonic assets like Netflix’s “tuh dum.” They can also be conceptual—think mascots and slogans—or represent a unique feature of your product or service, like La-Z-Boy’s recline function. The more distinctive your brand assets, the more they will distinguish your brand.

How to measure brand equity

Is it possible to track something as intangible as brand equity? Actually, yes.

To measure brand equity, start with these metrics:

Brand awareness

Here are two common ways to measure brand awareness or brand recognition:

\nUnaided awareness: This is the percentage of people who can recall your brand when they hear a relevant category. For example, you might ask survey respondents: “Which brands come to mind when you think about fast food?”
\nAided awareness: The percentage of people surveyed who recognize your brand when it is named. For example, “Have you heard of Del Taco?”

Generally, you measure brand awareness by surveying your target audience. If a statistically significant amount of your audience has heard of your brand, you can extrapolate how many people know it.

Brand affinity

As the term suggests, brand affinity measures customers’ emotional connection with your brand.

You can measure brand affinity by asking people what they think about your brand and how satisfied they are with your business. Qualitative data, such as customers’ thoughts and quotes, and quantitative data, such as their ratings and rankings of survey questions, are both valuable.

Metrics such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures customer satisfaction and advocacy, and brand mentions, social media engagement, and repeat purchase rates can provide insights into customer perceptions.

Brand perceptions

You can measure brand perception through brand perception surveys, customer satisfaction surveys, brand audits, and focus groups.

Building positive associations with your brand is as much about what you focus your brand messaging on as what you don’t focus on. You can create a positive brand perception by providing a clear and consistent message and honing in on your brand purpose.

Brand loyalty and advocacy

You can measure brand loyalty—when a customer feels strongly attached to your brand—through repeat purchases, customer churn, and average customer lifetime value.

To measure brand advocacy, when customers promote your brands to others, you can use NPS, brand mentions, referral rates, and customer acquisition costs.

🌸 Success story: Tsuno's Founder Built a Brand with a Cause

Roz Campbell was moved by learning that many girls in developing countries miss schools because of lack of access to feminine hygiene.

\nRead Roz's Story\n

How to build brand equity

Brand equity develops from customers’ positive experiences with your brand, but managing brand equity takes commitment. Here are a few ways to build beneficial brand equity:

1. Deliver on your promises

A brand promise is what customers gain from using your products or services. Consistently delivering on promises establishes a strong foundation for building brand equity.

If your brand is new, focus on offering a phenomenal consumer experience. First, nail your operations and quality control, then invest in marketing. Accelerating demand before you can handle it can create a negative customer experience.

Mind your digital assets, too. Customers expect ecommerce brands to present a frictionless website with high-quality product photos and descriptions, intuitive navigation, helpful content, and a seamless checkout experience. An ecommerce platform like Shopify, which automates many technical aspects, can help you deliver a great user experience.

2. Be thoughtful about your messaging

What do you want prospective customers to take away from your messaging? Whether sponsoring posts on social media or talking on the local news, make sure you tell a coherent story.

Ask yourself these questions:

Who are you trying to reach?
What problem or need do you solve for customers?
What makes you unique? What are you bringing to the table that competitor brands aren’t?
What principles do you stand for and refuse to sacrifice?

Once you have a consistent brand story, start building brand awareness by crafting a unique social media presence, running targeted ads, partnering with influencers, pitching your brand to media outlets, sponsoring events, and showing up as a thought leader online and at networking events. With consistency, prospective customers will understand what your brand stands for, even in a crowded market.

3. Build an emotional connection

Developing a consistent, quality product or service is half the work of building brand equity. But people stick with brands over years and decades because the products become more than just products to them.

Your brand’s emotional connection to customers is a give-and-take relationship. Letting them express their thoughts or feedback and replying to them on social media helps your customers know you genuinely care.

You can also communicate your brand’s beliefs and put its values front and center to attract like-minded people. Support causes that matter to you and your brand, maintaining transparency around your contributions to build trust.

4. Lean on social proof

Once you build a small but mighty fan base, lean on their words to build you up. Highlight positive reviews on your website, showcase user-generated content (UGC) on your social profiles, and feature heartfelt testimonials in ads.

A whopping 93% of marketers say that UGC content performs better than classic branded content, with six out of 10 consumers agreeing that it’s the most authentic type of content and the type of visual content they trust most.

5. Be consistent

Consistency is key. Deliver quality products and great experiences every. Developing a brand style guide, goals and values, and brand training will help you do that.

Once you craft strong brand messaging, stick with it. Keep your brand values and purpose at the core of every marketing tactic to ensure authenticity.

Examples of positive brand equity

Here are some brands that have maintained positive brand equity:

Apple

Apple, considered one of the world’s most valuable brands, is a classic example of a brand with positive equity. The company built its positive reputation with its user-friendly Mac computers before extending the brand to iPhones, which deliver on the intuitive and innovative brand promise that Apple’s computer customers expected.

Fenty Beauty

Fenty Beauty is an excellent example of a brand that saw the positive equity of its celebrity founder, Rihanna, transfer over to the business. Rihanna’s star power gave the brand an immediate boost upon launch, one it has maintained, at least in part, because its high-quality products and diversity of foundation shades deliver on its promise of inclusivity.

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A post shared by FENTY BEAUTY BY RIHANNA (@fentybeauty)
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Stanley

The drinkware company Stanley grew its brand equity by expanding its audience—and doing it well. It went from catering to day laborers who needed sturdy thermoses to yoga enthusiasts meeting their hydration needs.

By introducing its signature 40-ounce tumbler in dozens of colors, Stanley made its jumbo-sized drinking vessel a highly covetable item. The viral TikTok of a woman whose Stanley survived a car fire (and kept her drink cold!) didn’t hurt either.

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@danimarielettering Thirsty after you catch on fire? @Stanley 1913 is like no problem i gotchu #fyp #carfire #accident #stanleycup ♬ original sound - Danielle
\n

Examples of negative brand equity

One negative incident can significantly damage a brand’s reputation and undo years of positive brand equity. For example, Volkswagen suffered a hit in 2015 with its “dieselgate” scandal, where the public learned that the company had installed software in its vehicles to cheat emissions tests. It cost the company billions in fines and missed sales. Perhaps worse, it significantly tarnished the brand and the public’s trust for years.

In other cases, the damage happens over time. For example, the investment bank Goldman Sachs lost brand value for its role in the 2008 financial crisis; it faced further backlash in the late 2010s and early 2020s because it helped clients evade taxes in various countries.

Brand equity FAQ

What is brand equity?

Brand equity is the value of a brand, determined by consumers’ perceptions of its quality and desirability. You can measure brand equity through brand recognition, customer loyalty, and customer satisfaction. Brand equity is key to a company’s success because it influences consumer decisions, marketing strategies, and potential partnerships.

What are the four elements of brand equity?

The four elements of brand equity are brand awareness, brand association, brand perception, and brand assets.

How do you build brand equity?

Build your brand’s equity by providing excellent customer experiences, encouraging loyal customers to spread the word, and maintaining consistent messaging and values.

","Brand equity is a marketing term that describes a brand’s value. Learn how consumer experiences shape brand equity and how to measure and improve yours.","

Brand equity is a marketing term that describes a brand’s value. Learn how consumer experiences shape brand equity and how to measure and improve yours.

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