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Brand awareness is the overall level of familiarity that consumers have with your brand, and understanding that awareness is a great way to tell if your marketing efforts are effective. When making the decision to buy, does your brand rise to the top of consumers' minds? Are they quick to share the things they love about you on social media? While Apple, Amazon and Walmart have great brand awareness, startups and small businesses need to be very intentional with their advertising choices in order to effectively grow brand awareness over time and secure that top of mind position. When you are aware of the level of awareness that your target audience has about your brand, it can help you identify ways in which your current marketing efforts are succeeding and areas that can be improved. While every business is different, these five benchmarks can be applied to help you to best measure your branding.
Conduct Surveys
Conducting surveys takes a more personal approach to brand measurement because it gives your customers a chance to directly communicate their likes, dislikes and opinions with you in an anonymous way. Surveys, which are typically conducted by phone, email or website popups, allow customers to share their thoughts about your brand through a series of multiple-choice and open-ended questions.
Determining what to inquire of survey takers is almost as important as deciding to conduct a survey. Asking customers how they heard about your brand can give you a good idea of which marketing campaigns, such as social media posts or television commercials, are bringing you the most traffic. Open-ended questions that encourage customers to share what they like or dislike about your business can give you a picture of the positive impact you're making on your target audience or identify areas that need improvement. By collecting these survey answers, you are able to get more detailed insight that will inform how you move forward with your marketing plans and overall business goals.
Social Listening
Social listening is a way to remain in the know with what people are saying about your brand from a distance. Rather than directly asking the customers in a survey or on social media, this type of monitoring allows businesses to compile unfiltered information about the conversations being held about your brand. The most effective way to socially listen is by tracking specific keywords and topics associated with your business, and resisting the urge to become a part of the discussions. These details can help you identify not only what customers think of you, but possible reasons why they have their opinions about your specific products and services and your company overall. By having this knowledge, brands place themselves in an unique position to adjust their practices to meet the needs and interests of their target audiences.
Mentions, Shares, and Engagement
People are naturally inclined to talk about the brands they know and love. Studying your social media engagement can help you measure what customers think about your brand and whether or not your reach is growing steadily. Through maintaining a consistent presence across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms you can actively increase your brand awareness by engaging with those who engage with you. This is a crucial aspect of modern marketing, but taking a closer look at the type of engagement your posts are getting can be just as important.
Reading and responding to comments on your social media posts can give you insight into what your followers like or dislike about your brand, answer their questions, and simply let them know that their opinions matter to you. Conducting polls on Twitter or on your Instagram stories can give you specific feedback about your customers' favorite products, purchasing habits, or interest in new products. Also asking questions on your regular posts can encourage your followers to share their opinions. Approximately 83 percent of people appreciate when brands respond to their questions on social media, and 68 percent see engaging in other ways as a positive trait of their favorite brands. Other statistics about your social media accounts, such as growth in shares, tags, and overall followers, can give you a general idea of how well your social media marketing is increasing the reach of your brand.
Website Traffic
An increase in website traffic is one of the top ways to know that your brand awareness is increasing. Studying and understanding where your traffic is coming from can provide more information about whether or not your keywords and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) best practices are doing their job of ranking your website high during organic search. Analyzing how people are finding your website, such as clicking on a link in a marketing email or social media post, or through organic search results, can help you measure what areas of your current digital marketing strategy are bringing in the most site traffic.
Blog Traffic
An increase in blog traffic and subscriptions can also be a great indicator that your brand awareness is growing. Blogging allows brands to share in-depth information about specific topics with subscribers, and a steady increase in blog traffic can be a great indicator that your awareness is increasing. By strategically including internal links throughout your posts, you can track how your visitors are moving about your website to gauge what they are wanting to become more familiar with.
How A Media Partner Can Help
Now that you’re familiar with different ways that you can measure branding, you can keep these in mind when planning your next TV or digital campaign with your media partner. When you pay close attention to the information found in these five areas you can help to identify current strengths and areas where you may be able to improve. By carefully monitoring your analytics with your trusted media partner, you can get an overall picture of your current brand awareness and what types of advertising are bringing you the most success. Once you’ve identified the best means for advertising to your target audience, focus more on those efforts to further expand your brand’s reach and gain more awareness.
