Brand awareness is like a cognitive shortcut. When you hear a jingle, see a logo, or notice a color, a brand instantly comes to mind. But how do you gauge your brand’s impact on people?
This is where metrics come in. They help you track the subtle yet important impressions your brand makes. From searches to mentions, these metrics help show the reach and influence of your brand.
This article will explain nine metrics you need to know to measure brand awareness and more.
What is brand awareness?
Ever wonder why some brands stick in your mind while others don’t? It’s all about brand awareness.
But what is it exactly?
Brand awareness means how well consumers recognize a product or brand by its name. Also, it means they have positive feelings about the product or brand compared to its competitors.
According to a report, consumers tend to focus more on products with a strong brand awareness.
Before we learn the metrics to measure brand awareness, let’s find out how to create brand awareness.
How to create brand awareness: 4 actionable tips
Building brand awareness takes time – it’s not something that happens with just one ad or a campaign. In fact, strong brand awareness comes from various simultaneous efforts –not just trying to make sales.
If you think a few Meta (formerly Facebook) ads will help build your brand, think again. Customers will not only focus more on a product (than your brand), but the ad’s impact won’t last beyond a quick sale.
Let’s look at a few methods to create a strong brand awareness base and leave a long-lasting impression on your target market.
Be a person instead of a company
What would you like to learn about a new friend when you meet them? You may ask about their hobbies, likes, dislikes, and passions. You may also observe how they speak, their favorite topics, and what excites them.
Your brand should do the same. To connect with your audience, define your brand as more than just a company that offers goods or services. Think about how you’d introduce it to a friend.
Pro tip: If your brand has many employees, they can help shape how your audience sees your brand. According to a report, 87% of marketers find this practice, called social selling, highly effective.
Start socializing
Whether you’re an extrovert or introvert, quiet or outgoing, every individual benefits from social interaction and spending time together. It helps you connect, learn, and be known by others. The same applies to your brand.
If you only reach out when you need a sale or support, people will see your brand as another business with one goal.
To increase brand awareness, get social. According to one report, 77% of companies use social media to reach consumers, including Meta and Instagram.
Post on social media about topics beyond your products or services. Engage with your target audience through questions, comments, sharing, or retweeting content you enjoy.
If possible, consider your social media accounts as a way to make friends – not just money.
Tip: If you’re a founder, take the lead on socializing. Founders who stay active on social media improve branding.
Tell a story or narrative
Storytelling is a powerful way to market your products or brand. It connects with your audience on a personal level.
Don’t believe us, believe the stats:
- Over 90% of consumers prefer ads that tell stories rather than simply presenting their service or product.
- People remember stories 22 times better than facts.
- 64% of consumers worldwide say they remember brand stories when making a purchase.
Creating a story around your brand makes it feel more human and adds depth. When you include a story in your marketing, it helps promote both your brand and your services or products.
But what should your story be about?
Anything, provided it’s true! It could be about your founder, how your first product idea came about, or how your business succeeded.
People love hearing stories, especially when they’re authentic. This can greatly increase your brand awareness.
Pro tip: Make sure your stories are truthful and fair, build goodwill, and are beneficial to your target audience.
Make your content more shareable
No matter what industry you’re in or what products you offer, make your content creation efforts easy so your audience can share it. This could be a social media post, blog post, product page, or sponsored content.
Word-of-mouth marketing is powerful for building trust. When people see a recommendation from friends or family, they’re more likely to notice the product and brand.
According to a survey, 92% of people trust recommendations from family and friends over other ads.
They start to wonder: Is this brand worth checking out? Do they have other reliable products? What are their social media accounts like?
When you simplify sharing, consumers will naturally boost your brand awareness by clicking “share”.
Remember, building solid brand awareness is all about making an impact without being pushy.
Think about meeting someone new who wants to be your friend. If they immediately ask for your money or loyalty, you’d probably walk away. Right?
This approach doesn’t leave a lasting impression. The same is true for building brand awareness.
Now that you know how to create strong brand awareness, let’s move on to how to measure it.
How to measure brand awareness: 9 metrics you should use
Brand awareness starts early in the customer’s journey and can often affect your business indirectly. That’s why businesses often experience challenges in accurately measuring brand awareness.
To get a clear view of your brand’s health and impact, these social media metrics provide different insights into how well consumers remember your brand.
Brand mentions
Tracking brand mentions can be a good option if you want to get your content noticed and your brand name recognized. A brand mention happens when someone talks about your brand online. It could be through a link, a social media tag, or just text in an article or post, even if they don’t tag you.
Keeping track of all this on your own is tough, so it’s helpful to use a brand monitoring tool. There are numerous tools available that you can leverage.
For instance, Radian6 is expensive but comprehensive, while Mention is more affordable but less robust. These tools will alert you whenever someone mentions your brand.
Social engagement
Another efficient way to determine brand awareness is to review the analytics of your social engagement.
It can include followers, shares, likes, and comments. These help show how many people know about and interact with your brand and how effective your content is.
Many social media platforms offer tools to help you track:
- Your follower count
- Your page visits
- Your likes
- Your shared posts
Social listening
Social listening helps you monitor social media management tools for engagement and organic mentions. For example, who tags your brand, mentions it within the comment section, or uses your hashtags in their social posts?
The more people mention your brand, the more they know about it. This can also help you understand customer sentiment.
When employing social listening, here are a few metrics to focus on:
- Total brand mentions
- Positive mentions
- Negative mentions
- Neutral mentions
Referral traffic and links
Referral traffic and links are about how people visit your site using external links from other websites.
Monitoring your referral traffic will show you which external sources – such as social media channels, news sites, or blog posts – send users to your website.
Good referral traffic (provided they come from reputable sources) helps boost your brand awareness and credibility. Plus, if popular industry thought leaders and influencers link to you, it shows your brand authority.
Direct traffic
Direct traffic happens when people type your URL directly into their browser. This shows how well your marketing drives people to your website.
It’s a crucial metric because it shows that people already know about your brand. In this digital age, many discover brands using social media, ads, or searching for related keywords.
Pro tip: To estimate your direct traffic, try entering your brand name into a keyword research tool such as Ahrefs or Google Trends. The ‘volume’ will display the average monthly searches for your brand name.
Brand recall
One of your goals might be to ensure that people remember your brand. Traditional marketing techniques, such as surveys, can help you measure this.
Ask questions like “What comes to mind when you consider X product?” and see if they mention your brand. Use the survey results as a benchmark, then run the survey again later to check if more people recall your brand.
This method involves obtaining firsthand opinions from your customers and followers, and it can be extremely beneficial in identifying who is aware of your brand and their perception of it.
You can distribute surveys through Typeform or SurveyMonkey, share them on your social media platforms, or send them directly to customers.
Share of voice (SoV)
Share of voice (SoV) helps you understand how much of the market your brand owns and gauges your level of influence in your industry.
A larger market share increases your brand’s power and credibility among current and potential customers.
Also, SoV shows your position compared to competitors and ways to enhance your visibility. Imagine you excel in social media interaction but lack press coverage.
Understanding this improves your strategy and sets you up for a larger portion of the conversation.
Conversions
Conversions show when someone takes action after showing interest – such as when a visitor buys something or a follower becomes a customer. Monitor conversions to identify how many people know about your brand and how many engage with it.
High brand awareness usually leads to more conversions. When users recognize (and trust) your brand, they’re more inclined to buy from you.
Conversions may come from:
- Pay-per-click (PPC) Ads: Companies pay for digital advertising based on the number of times their ads are clicked.
- Paid social advertisements: Content on social media that you pay for in order to reach a wider audience than just your followers.
- Content marketing: It involves content creation efforts such as blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, or webinars to captivate your specific audience.
- Email marketing: Email marketing involves sending emails to specific groups of subscribers who are targeted or segmented.
This also helps you measure your team’s performance across different social channels, track trends, and figure out what works or where improvements are needed.
Impressions
Last on the list is impressions.
Teams like advertising and PR often use impressions to measure brand awareness. It simply represents the number of people who have seen your content.
While impressions suggest visibility, you don’t know how many people noticed your content.
With the prevalence of “ad blindness,” where users are bombarded with ads and content, relying solely on impressions can be misleading.
If your team or PR agency uses impressions as the only measure of brand awareness, we recommend exploring additional metrics to gauge your content’s success truly.
Conclusion
Brand awareness can greatly influence your marketing, consumer perception, and revenue – even if it feels vague.
Following these tips and tracking the right metrics will build a loyal audience that recognizes your brand (even among competitors), chooses your services or products repeatedly, and recommends them to others.
