Every retailer’s conversion rates could use a little push. The only question is how they can attain and surpass their desired conversion rates.
Many retailers resort to temporary ideas like discounts or free shipping to draw customers into their store, but the reality is that while these are useful to increase sales, they aren’t sustainable strategies.
“Brand” will always be a nebulous term. Arguments rage about its true value. Although recent research shows that it can be responsible for nearly 15% of your total worth (Or much, much more, if you’re J.K.Rowling) It’s still seen by many as the ultimate wooly metric.
There’s no doubt that being a household name will improve your chances of success in social, but just how far will it take you?
I’ve taken a look at the world’s top ten brands, and matched up their profiles across the biggest social media platforms.
Let’s see what’s in a name…
Over the years academics and analysts have attempted to show the value of brands (their ‘brand equity’) in terms both theoretical and monetary.
The Millward Brown BrandZ Top 100 report showed Apple to be the most valuable brand in 2013, with brand equity worth over $185bn; the other four top brands were, in order, Google, IBM, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola.
Since 2006 the BrandZ Top 100 has appreciated about twice as fast as the S&P 500.
Now J.K. Rowling, author of the “Harry Potter” series (as if anyone needed to be told), has inadvertently revealed the value of her brand.
Since Google launched Instant, there have been numerous claims that Instant has a bias towards brands. In October, for instance, Siddharth Shah of Efficient Frontier Insights observed that “of the 26 letters in the alphabet, 21 have brands as the first suggestions.“
Based on this, he suggested that Google Instant is “going to make
brand key words more expensive, increase impression volumes by 30% –
40%.“
Google loves brands. Google’s Vince update was referred to by many as
‘the brand update’ because major brands seemed to benefit most from it.
That Google would seek ways to incorporate ‘brand equity‘ into its
algorithm is not entirely surprising. After all, in many cases, there’s
an argument to be made that the websites of recognized brands are more
likely to offer Google’s users what they’re searching for when it comes
to particular queries.
There’s a lot of talk about ‘branding‘ these days. But not every company is a ‘brand‘ in the modern sense of the word.
So what’s required to turn your company into a brand? Here are 10 things that you should have.