I’ve argued before about the importance of, at the very least, monitoring your brand image in online channels.  I addressed the following in-depth:

I wonder how many of us directly correlate it to brand equity in the monetary sense, especially with clients. This is important, so let me repeat.  New/social media and the Web 2.0 space have important effects on the monetary value of your company.

I also argued that:

Your brand image IS online right now, and it IS being affected.  And that DOES and WILL matter when determining the value of your company.  In some cases, it’s not even a matter of going where it’s hot (although that has its advantages!).  Your brand is there, you should be there too. What’s more, the Web 2.0 world is completely visible to anyone who chooses to look, including potential funders or buyers of your company.

Branding Strategy Insider had a great post up last week on the topic of how perceived quality is a critical asset for brands.  As part of the discussion

“Perceived quality is usually at the heart of what customers are buying, and in that sense, it is a bottom-line measure of the impact of a brand identity. More interesting, though, perceived quality reflects a measure of “goodness” that spreads over all elements of the brand like a thick syrup. Even when the brand identity is defined by functional benefits, most studies will show that perceptions about those benefits are closely related to perceived quality. When perceived quality improves, so generally do other elements of customers’ perception of the brand.”

This “measure of goodness” is now not only being determined by your own marketing efforts, but by customers who are talking about your product.  And they’re talking online.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to, at the very least, be monitoring and managing your brands presence online.  If a measure of your value as a company is based on the perception in the market place, you need to know what those perceptions are, and you need to have a plan in place to understand and hopefully influence how information from customers is affecting that parception.

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