In the marketing business, it is a well known fact that premium brands generate more revenue than comparable products that lack brand mystique. As a result, branding done right, and in many cases, branding done even half right, delivers a healthy return on a company’s investment.

If you want to elevate your product from hotel to The Peninsula, from mattress to Stearns & Foster, from lobby chandelier to Dale Chihuly installation, you need to develop your brand – or, in other words, purposefully create a distinctive and positive connection to your product in the minds of your customers.

In this newsletter, we’ll look to the branding gurus for real-world advice on three critical tools that can power up your business: managing the seven elements of branding, building brand equity, and evaluating brand performance.

A. The Seven Elements of Branding

In Heads in Beds: Hospitality and Tourism Marketing, author and marketer Ivo Raza describes seven elements that should be managed cohesively to successfully position a brand in the hospitality industry:

1. Product

Product is the key to any brand, but in the hospitality industry, it is especially vital. After all, resorts, hotels and vacation homes represent shelter, that basic human need. Your property is the setting in which people lay their heads, dine, play and reconnect with loved ones. It is also a measure of quality – how much your guests have achieved, what level of luxury their hard work has earned. Expectations are high, but so is the potential to create the kind of outstanding environment that engenders repeat visits.

Whether designing a project from scratch or renovating an existing property, it is crucial to establish a brand’s personality first and then ensure all the physical components fulfill that vision. For example, if you’re designing a tropical retreat, attributes such as shady spaces, ocean views, ceiling fans, natural woods and tropical plants should infuse the architecture, building materials, amenities and décor.

2. Service

This is one area in which many properties fall short. A clear understanding of the components of excellent service should be part of the company culture from the general manager through reservations, the valet, front desk, bell service, housekeeping, and activities and wait staff. According to Raza, friendliness, efficiency, accuracy and consistency are your goals.

Read through the traveler reviews on TripAdvisor, and you’ll see how the behavior of frontline staff members plays a huge role in guests’ overall impressions of a property. Warmth and extra efforts are rewarded; rudeness and poorly resolved conflicts are punished. Good or bad, the influence of guest experiences on your brand is amplified when opinions are shared with hundreds of other potential guests through online blogs and forums.

3. Primary Communication Elements

This element is easier to control than the first two. Advertising and marketing agencies understand the need for all aspects of a client’s brand to reflect the brand’s personality. From the name of your property to the logo, advertisements, sales kits, web site, public relations campaigns, hotel card jackets and more, an agency can create a targeted marketing message that consistently positions your brand.

4. Secondary Communication Elements

Secondary support materials such as stationery, invoices, forms and internal communications may not be seen by guests, but they play a role in branding a property for employees and vendors, adding another layer to the brand experience.

5. Character Elements

Borrowed from the language of literature, character elements are those details that humanize the protagonist and other characters for the reader. In hospitality branding, character elements help define your company culture and your guests. What is your company’s country of origin? Are you affiliated with a parent corporation or are you a boutique hotelier? Are your guests affluent or middle class? What are their cultural and linguistic backgrounds? Their ages and interests?

By knowing the answers to these types of questions, you can set the stage for greater authenticity in staff-guest interactions. You can also fine-tune the tone of your service to bridge the personality of your brand to the preferences of your guests – old world elegance and down-home hospitality are equally effective options.

6. Strategic Elements

What makes your project or property unique? What draws guests to your location rather than one down the street? Perhaps it’s castaway luxe – oceanfront tropical huts with no telephones and a personal concierge. Or maybe it’s ski & spa – condos steps from the best run on the mountain, plus algae facials and lomi lomi massages.

No matter what your property’s most distinctive features are, when you focus your branding on the attributes that best differentiate you from the competition you are positioning your brand and laying the groundwork for cultivating a positive reputation.

7. Price

Even among properties that share the same star classification level, there can be wide price elasticity. If you have diligently addressed elements one through six, you will hopefully be able to sell more room nights and set your rates toward the top end of the range. Ultimately, you will have heightened your property’s perceived quality because you promise something special and deliver on your promise.

B. Building Brand Equity

Brand equity is the perceived value of your brand, including assets and drawbacks. Although, as an intangible asset, brand equity is difficult to measure; it is tremendously important to your bottom line. For example, some estimates credit Apple’s brand equity for 80% of its market capitalization. David Aaker, the author of Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name, defines five components of brand equity:

Brand Loyalty

If your company enjoys strong brand loyalty, you’ll have reduced marketing expenses because your customers have already been attracted and retained – and will even tell their friends about you. Side benefits include reduced pressure from would-be competitors (not worth the effort, they figure) and greater influence in the marketplace.

Brand Awareness

When potential customers recognize your brand, they are more apt to choose your product because they assume it has at least an acceptable level of quality. People gravitate to the familiar.

Perceived Quality

When a brand is known, it has been instinctively assigned a general quality rating by consumer culture that influences its marketability and even its price point.

Brand Associations

Customers are attracted to a brand for its personality and associations. If I want to feel affluent, I might lease a Lexus; if I love avocados, a new study showing the heart benefits from eating avocados will convince me to buy them more frequently.

Proprietary Brand Assets

Trademarks, patents and ironclad distribution channel relationships can all protect a brand and build its equity.

C. Evaluating Brand Performance: Is your Brand Successful?

You’ve established your brand and worked hard to build its equity. How do you know if your brand rocks or if it just kind of…wiggles? You could arrange an in-depth brand audit by your marketing firm; or, if your budget is tight, you could follow the advice of Mark Shipley.

In his article, “Keeping the Brand Healthy: The Annual Brand Checkup,” Shipley recommends gathering an informal focus group made up of employees, customers and customers of your competitors. Ask each person what your brand stands for. If they are aware of your brand, also ask what brand features reinforce this perception. Patterns should be discernible from the group’s answers. Use the patterns to analyze the communications strategies of your company and your competitors, as well as to determine whether your budget is appropriately allocated.

Resources

Aaker, David A. Managing Brand Equity: Capitalizing on the Value of a Brand Name. New York: The Free Press, 1991.

Raza, Ivo. Heads in Beds: Hospitality and Tourism Marketing. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

Shipley, Mark. “Keeping the Brand Healthy: The Annual Brand Check Up.” Marketing Profs (March 13, 2007), http://www.marketingprofs.com/7/keeping-brands-healthy-annual-checkup-shipley.asp (free registration required)