Every purchase starts with a moment of awareness, yet some still have reason to perceive brand awareness as a seemingly vague concept. Because unlike other performance marketing objectives that give you clear-cut results in figures, metrics for brand awareness campaigns or its key performance indicators (KPIs) can be initially confusing and difficult to determine.
But what is brand awareness, exactly?
What Is Brand Awareness?
Brand awareness alludes to how well your target demographic is familiar with your brand. Businesses with high brand awareness are generally described as “popular.” What benefits the most from executing brand awareness campaigns are startups or brands in their early stages, which, through this type of marketing, can bring their offerings to the fore and make themselves known to consumers.
In terms of return on investment (ROI), arriving at a figure is not as straightforward since brand awareness campaigns belong to the top-of-funnel (ToFu) marketing. ToFu marketing zeroes in on the awareness phase of a buyer’s journey. Despite that, here’s why measuring brand awareness is essential.
The Importance of Measuring Brand Awareness KPIs: Why You Should Track Brand Awareness
Making your brand “popular” only scratches the surface as to why you should look into brand awareness KPIs.
- Brand awareness cultivates trust. Investing in brand awareness tools and marketing gives you a platform to confirm your brand, its personality and story, fostering consumer and brand relationships. When you’ve successfully demonstrated your brand’s ability to live up to its claims, you gain consumer trust and confidence.
- Brand awareness leads to brand recall and association. Think of the phrase “Google it,” that’s what brand awareness can do to your brand, associating your brand or offerings with actions. Branded terms, such as the example “Google it,” serves as unintended word-of-mouth marketing that only further benefits your brand.
- Brand awareness is to brand equity or value. Brand trust and association stemming from awareness only leads to profitability and, thus, high brand equity. Once you’ve established high brand equity, it creates a lucrative cycle for your business because consumers are more likely to turn to brands with such a characteristic.
However, for brand awareness campaigns to yield desirable results, the key still lies in providing top-notch services and products coupled with exceptional customer support. Now that we’ve shown why you should track brand awareness, let’s dive into the brand awareness KPIs you should be gauging.
Five Key Brand Awareness Metrics
In traditional performance marketing or pay-for-performance marketing, pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CP) campaigns are included. But today, it envelopes brand awareness surveys and campaigns where you can track brand impressions or views on a cost per mille or thousand (CPM) basis.
This gives us the first on our list of brand awareness metrics:
#1 Brand Impressions
Perhaps the most straightforward metric, brand impressions, indicates the number of times your content appears in front of users. While you won’t be able to pinpoint how many people actually viewed or consumed your content with this metric, it gives you a solid framework you can kick off with by knowing how many people were shown your content.
#2 Social Engagement
Social media platforms equip marketers with comprehensive brand awareness tools, from ads to analytics. Your social engagement metrics are not limited to likes, shares and comments but also include clicks, follows, mentions, and even hashtag uses. Such a metric allows you to determine whether your posts and campaigns are compelling in delivering your desired marketing results.
#3 Website Traffic
Web traffic offers insight into how many visitors your website gains, where the traffic originates and what they do while on your site. A steady rise in traffic over time or during a campaign period is a sure sign that your brand awareness initiatives yield results. For a more thorough web traffic analysis and brand awareness study, identify which of your links or content are driving the most traffic, but pay attention to the quality.
#4 Branded Search Volume
Branded search volume refers to the number of times people search for your brand via search engines over a period of time. Through branded search, you gain a clear illustration of interests surrounding your brand, products and services. If your business is directly tied to its employees, particularly its executives, make sure to consider that when you pull the data for this metric.
#5 Brand Awareness Surveys
Surveys stand to be effective in measuring brand awareness. After all, the results of a brand awareness study come straight from a critical source of data, consumers. Since they require participation, it’s best to conduct an incentivized survey. In your survey, only include questions that will help you track brand awareness and incorporate rating scales to assist respondents in answering.
Above are just a few crucial metrics for brand awareness you should be keeping an eye out for. Now, let’s look into how to measure brand awareness.
How To Measure Brand Awareness
Considering the brand awareness metrics mentioned, here’s a guide on how to measure brand awareness.
1. Invest in Social Listening
Social listening goes beyond gathering the number of mentions and engagements on your social presence and allows you to identify opportunities to inform your strategy.
2. Measure Your Web Traffic and Activity
As mentioned, the data you should look into when it comes to your web traffic should include where your traffic is coming from and what they are doing during the visit.
3. Utilize Brand Awareness Tools
Brand awareness tools can be native features of social media platforms like Facebook as well as Google’s products:
- Google Alerts
- Google Analytics
- Google Ads
- Google Trends
Keep in mind, however, that when you measure metrics for brand awareness, you should take into account the actual sentiment of consumers surrounding your brands. Understanding the public sentiment towards your brand, whether they are positive, negative or neutral, helps you identify both threats and opportunities.
Building brand awareness takes time and varying approaches depending on your business, but here are brand awareness campaign examples to help you get started.
Brand Awareness Campaign Examples and Ideas
Brand awareness marketing, when done right, has a cascading effect that allows you to reduce efforts over time. Here are brand awareness campaign examples to inspire your brand.
- Branded hashtags. Think of Coca-Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign; a branded hashtag is a straightforward way to make people aware of your brand.
- Guest blogging. Sponsored posts published on a highly relevant and good-standing website will do wonders for your brand in terms of awareness.
- Complementary partnerships. Partnerships can be done online through cross-promotion or offline, such as by holding an event with a non-competing brand.
- Referral programs. Have your existing customers spread the word about your brand and its offerings through referral programs and make it enticing.
- Influencer marketing. While a form of partnership, it’s fitting to reiterate influencer marketing, especially due to the efficacy or power it holds today.
Speaking of partnerships, another way to build brand awareness is by partnering with online reputation management (ORM) experts like Rize Reviews. Our team at Rize Reviews employs custom software to track every single mention of your brand online and understand the sentiment surrounding it. On top of that, our services include the following:
- Tailored white-label solutions
- Listings management
- Review response
- Online product reviews management
If you want to see our software in action, book a free demo.
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