We’ve talked in previous blog posts about brand awareness – what it is, and why it’s vital for your business. Becoming a household brand is something almost every business aspires to at some level. But while brand awareness is important, it’s also something that’s notoriously difficult to measure. To get measurable results for your marketing, you need to be able to get data on brand awareness.
This might be a tricky endeavor, but it is feasible – and today we’ll talk about how.
Why Brand Awareness Matters
Brand awareness is building knowledge of your company’s name and products out in the marketplace. Some marketers and business owners see brand awareness as a fluffy metric – something that’s more about vanity than getting results.
But in reality, brand awareness is really important for businesses looking to grow. It’s a critical part of the buyer’s journey, and helps bring in and retain customers for years to come. Just being able to recall a product makes a consumer more likely to buy it. Staying top of mind in a crowded marketplace can make a big difference in your bottom line.
Why Brand Awareness is Hard to Measure
It doesn’t help that brand awareness means something different to everyone. You can focus on targeting a broad audience in your market, tastemakers and influencers who can expand your reach, or a very specific subset of people who are likely good leads.
That’s why it’s important to agree with your whole team on what brand awareness means for your business before you launch a campaign to build your brand. Your PR person and content marketer might have very different ideas of who to target, so get aligned early on.
Brand awareness is also hard to measure because there’s not one simple metric or formula that can calculate it for you. And building brand awareness takes time – it doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a slow, steady process with no clear end in sight, which can get frustrating for many.
But it’s still worth measuring your brand awareness – it can be done! It just needs to be done the right way to make sure you’re getting accurate results.
Measures of Brand Awareness
While there’s no one way to measure brand awareness, there are several metrics that can help you calculate the effectiveness of your campaign. Keep in mind that you don’t need to hit every single metric here for one campaign – that will just end up diluting your overall effectiveness.
Increasing brand recall and/or brand recognition by X%:
Brand recall tests how quickly customers can correctly recall the name of a brand when prompted by a general product or service. For example, when someone says soda, you likely immediately think Coca-Cola, because they have incredibly strong brand awareness.
Increasing your brand’s external media coverage by X%:
Getting mentions of your brand by journalists and media sources is the job of your PR team and it helps get your brand name out into the world.
Increasing brand conversation by X%:
The more your brand is mentioned in conversations on social media, traditional media, and reviews, the more awareness has grown. This can be negative too if you’re in the spotlight for something less positive, so be sure you’re generating positive conversations most of the time.
Increasing referral traffic by X%:
Getting increased website traffic from sources like social media sites and other web pages that mention your brand indicates you’re getting increased awareness from a broader community.
Increasing direct traffic by X%:
This means that curious prospects and customers are searching directly for your website more often – a great indicator of growing brand awareness. Search volume for your brand name increasing is also a good indicator here.
These are just a few of the possible metrics you can use to measure the success of your brand awareness campaign.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
There are several frequent mistakes business owners make when looking to measure the results of a brand awareness campaign. Avoid these and you’ll be in a strong competitive position.
Expecting Instant Results
Coca-Cola and Red Bull didn’t become enormous international brand names overnight – it took years of strategic marketing to do that. Your company won’t become a household name overnight either. Plus, marketing is costly so you probably can’t afford a full-frontal blitz all at once.
Don’t expect to see results in increasing brand awareness right away. In fact, it could take years to truly pay off. But it’s worth the wait for the business results that will follow.
Chasing Every Metric
If achieving one of the metrics of success above is good, then hitting them all at the same time must be every better, right?
But really, each of them hits a different target. It’s going to be very expensive and time-consuming to increase searches for your brand, boost your number of mentions on social media, and increase earned media coverage from journalists all at the same time. That’s because each of those goals requires different tactics.
Tackle just one at first, especially if you’re a small business with a limited marketing budget.
Not Appealing to Enough People
You’ve worked hard to build your company, so it’s natural that you’re proud of it and think everyone wants to hear all about it. But truthfully, to meet your goal of increasing brand awareness, you need to appeal to a wide range of people.
That means targeting stories and information that speak to the range of needs and interests of your customer, not just your own.
Get Measurable Results
If you’re looking to increase awareness of your brand so you get on the road to becoming a household name, that’s a great goal. But it’s a challenging one to achieve on your own. It takes a significant investment of time, money, and plenty of expertise to build brand awareness the right way.
Looking for the right partner who will create a plan for your unique business and help you get real results you can measure?
Schedule a free business review here to find out how we help businesses grow. You can use these insights for inspiration, and let us do the marketing for you.
Sources:
https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/
