Measuring your brand equity is one of the most effective ways to keep your campus resilient and prepared for what’s next. It evaluates the value your brand holds in the minds of your audiences so you can strengthen it over time. Brand power is the aspect of brand equity that allows your brand to lead the conversation. As your power increases, so does your ability to drive market awareness and perception.
This is part of a series that explores each aspect of the brand equity framework in depth.
Brand power indicates the strength, reach, and engagement of your brand in influencing perception. It identifies how your audience engages with you online to determine what resonates so you can align your brand strategy with their needs. Brand power is tied to your institution, not the products or services you offer, and you can’t have high brand power without high levels of awareness in the marketplace.
High brand power might decrease spending on lead generation; attract funding for research, student success, and capital improvements; recruit students and faculty; or provide a strong foundation for innovation and ongoing improvement.
Social intelligence provides insights into what drives a campus’s exposure and engagement. The data and insights assess the power of a campus’s owned content and how it impacts awareness, perception, and experience.
Strength. Review and analyze accounts the campus owns, including reach and engagement by account type to understand how your brand influences your target audience.
Salience. Examine the influence of brand messaging on conversation topics from people outside of the campus and on campus-specific content. How your brand narrative shapes content that’s reflected in your earned conversation.
Meaningfulness. The level of engagement with your audience indicates how closely your content resonates with your audience. The more closely your brand aligns with their priorities, the stronger connection and loyalty they’ll have to your brand.
A large, public campus with D1 athletics was navigating a rapidly shifting audience landscape amid influxes of new residents moving to the state. Social intelligence supported their need to adapt quickly and make data-driven decisions to effectively manage their brand.
Increased alignment between the brand and the university’s vision strengthened their brand power. Analysis of the university’s perception and experience provided insight into their impact over time and demonstrated the deep understanding of their reputation, current perception, and evolving brand narrative. They leveraged the findings to support in-the-moment decisions, inform long-term strategic planning, and continue to elevate the campus.
A medium-sized private college in the East needed to better understand their brand and how it could help them achieve their growth goals. Measuring their brand equity identified an institutional opportunity to grow their brand power.
The college’s athletics accounts drove exposure while non-athletics accounts drove engagement. Strategic recommendations included investing more time and energy into their owned channels and using their brand personality to positively shape audience perceptions. The college could leverage their core and institutional accounts to highlight the non-athletic aspects of their brand, such as student life, research excellence, campus living, and more, strengthening its influence and positive impact. Using their own content to amplify their brand would expand and enrich the power of their non-athletics conversation and grow their awareness.
Broader knowledge and understanding of your brand awareness prepares you to examine the rest of your brand equity and build a brand strategy aligned with your future vision.
Learn more about the value of measuring brand equity.