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Posted on: 29.04.2024

How to Measure Brand Awareness (and Why It Matters)


In today’s crowded marketplace, brand awareness is more important than ever. It’s the difference between being the household name everyone recognises and the brand nobody remembers. But how do you know if your brand awareness efforts are paying off? The good news is, brand awareness is absolutely measurable, and this guide will show you exactly how.

Brand awareness isn’t just about vanity metrics. It’s about understanding how well your brand resonates with your target audience. By measuring brand awareness, you can gain valuable insights that fuel strategic marketing decisions and propel your brand to success.

Why Brand Awareness Matters

Why is brand awareness important? So much of marketing centres around improving results, and assessing the impact of your campaigns. That’s why, without a proper understanding of your brand awareness, it’s hard to interpret how well your campaigns and branding are performing.

Understand Customer Trust and Loyalty: High brand awareness often translates to stronger customer trust and loyalty. By gauging brand awareness, you can see how your brand is perceived and identify areas for improvement.

Inform Strategic Decisions: Knowing your brand awareness level can help you tailor your messaging and target the right audience. Are potential customers unfamiliar with your brand entirely, or do they need a refresher on your offerings?

Gain Competitive Insights: Understanding where you stand compared to competitors allows you to develop strategies to differentiate yourself and capture a larger market share.

Forge Strategic Partnerships: Strong brand awareness makes you a more attractive partner for other companies. Measuring brand awareness can help you identify potential partners who align with your brand image and target audience.

Is Brand Awareness Measurable?

Absolutely! While it’s not a single number, brand awareness can be effectively measured through a multi-faceted approach that combines various tools and techniques.

How To Measure Brand Awareness: A multi-faceted approach

Here are some key methods to get you started:

Surveys: Conduct targeted surveys to assess brand recall, recognition, and perception among your target audience. There are different types of brand awareness questions you can ask. For example, an “aided recall” question might provide a list of brands for the customer to choose from, while an “unaided recall” question would ask them to name any brands in a particular category without any prompts.

Social Media Analysis: Social media is a goldmine of brand awareness data. Track mentions of your brand, analyse follower growth, and measure engagement metrics across different platforms.

Website Traffic Analysis: Take a deep dive into your website traffic. Look for an increase in direct traffic, which indicates users who know your brand and typed your website address directly into their browser. You can also use Google Trends to see how search interest for your brand and relevant keywords changes over time.

Essential KPIs for Brand Awareness Measurement

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) serve as benchmarks for assessing brand awareness, and are a go-to for brand awareness metrics. 

1. Share of Voice (SOV)

Essentially, this is a measure of how much say your brand has in the market, and takes into account factors such as how often your brand is mentioned in online conversations. Share of voice can be assessed through social listening.

2. Sentiment analysis

Sentiment analysis refers to the process of analysing text and messages to better understand the emotion and meaning within it. That means all of the talk about your brand online – whether it’s through social media, commentary, or reviews – can be analysed.

Essentially, it’s all about reading and interpreting messages. Sounds simple, right?

Well, sentiment analysis takes the process a touch further. In fact, it often makes use of advanced tools and techniques such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). These help to deepen the level of analysis, making an assessment of everything that lies outside the obvious way of wording.

3. Brand recall

Brand recall refers to the probability of someone being able to remember your brand, and different aspects of your brand. There are a number of different levels to it – whether its prompted recall, partially prompted, or unaided recall. It differs from awareness in that brand recall relates to the likelihood of an audience specifically being able to remember details about your brand.

This is where factors such as brand personality, image and purpose come into play. A unique, exciting or playful brand is more likely to be recalled than a standard, run of the mill identity. Just take a look at our work for car selling service Flip It, for instance. With a refreshed, exciting identity, we managed to transform their place in a competitive market.

These are just a few examples, and there are other tools available, such as SEO tools that can help you track branded search volume.

How Brand Awareness Measurement Fuels Success

Measuring brand awareness is not just about quantifying presence; it’s about driving growth and competitiveness. With use of the right metrics and strategies, you can elevate your brand’s presence and influence.If you’re ready to enhance your brand’s visibility, you can explore our services across Branding and Creative, Social and Paid Media, or Get in touch today.

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