As a business owner, nothing is more important to you than your company’s image. For building your brand’s value, you have to track brand awareness with metrics. Without brand metrics, you will not have an idea whether your brand’s marketing strategy is taking your business in the right direction or not.
Don’t know what brand metrics and where to start from? We are here to help! In this article, we will take a look at the 4 best brand metrics that will help you boost your company’s image. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Brand Metrics – The Simple Definition
What are brand metrics? Simply put, they are quantifiable variables that track your brand’s performance. Brand metrics will help you know how well your company is performing against the industry competitors and for the customers.
If you continuously monitor the key metrics, you will know whether your brand is on track to achieve the marketing goals. Moreover, if there are any ‘wobbles’, you can jump in and take the appropriate action.
You need to make brand metrics an integral and invaluable part of your advertising campaign goals and strategy. When it comes to building and sustaining brand equity, you have to remember one thing – it is a long process.
Therefore, if you have clear and measurable signs that your marketing efforts are taking the company in the right direction, it helps. Depending on your company type, the business metrics will differ for you.
However, there are four main categories of performance indicators.
Perceptual
These indicators show what people think of your services and products.
Behavioral
These will indicate how people interact with your company’s brand
Purchase
These metrics will tell how people purchase and use your products/services
Financial
You can measure the impact of your brand equity on the bottom line and budget through financial metrics.
Honestly, the list can keep on going. However, to make things easier for you, we have simplified the best metrics and how you can make them a part of your growth marketing strategy in this brief list.
Which are the BEST Brand Metrics for My Company?
1. Brand Loyalty
The first and most important metric is brand loyalty. It tells how loyal your customers and clientele are to your brand. It is the positive customer experience that a consumer attaches to a brand, regardless of the deficiencies, price, etc.
If a customer is loyal to your brand, this means that they will purchase from you regardless of how you measure up against the competitors. You can measure this in several ways.
NPS (Net Promoter Score)
Brand loyalty depicts the general perception of the consumers of your brand. There are various ways to calculate Net Promoter Score but the most popular way is with the help of customer Google consumer surveys.
Ask your loyal customers a simple question to gauge customer loyalty. For instance, you can ask them, how likely are you to recommend the brand, product, or business, to their friends and family, on a scale of 1-10?
Measure the percentages of people from 0 to 6 and 7 to 10 separately. The difference between the two percentages will give the NPS. It is an excellent baseline to figure out brand loyalty.
Brand Preference
The second way to measure brand loyalty is by determining whether the consumers prefer your items or services to your competitors or not. Select the niche you are currently in, and draw up a list of the popular brands.
Ask the consumers to tick all the brands they will prefer to use and buy. This will tell you where you stand as compared to other brands and will steer you in the right direction.
2. Brand Impact on Financials
Another business metric you have to keep an eye on is the impact your brand has on the bottom line.
Brand Purchase
Ask the consumers whether they have purchased your products or used your services. Identify the existing or potential customers and then plan your digital marketing strategy accordingly. Brand purchase works in tandem with the Net Promoter Score since it is no good having people simply saying nice things about your brand without actually making a purchase.
Ask people how likely they are to buy from you and give them options such as very likely, quite likely, not likely, etc. Sum up the no. of people who responded ‘very likely’ and then divide it by the total number of people you asked. This will give you the brand purchase score.
Brand Equity
Brand equity measures customer retention which equals the net worth of your brand. Strong and successful businesses retain almost 65% to 90% of their customer base every year.
3. Brand Perceived Quality
Who owns your brand? Your CEO? Your PR staff? Your marketing team? Honestly speaking, it is the customers who own your brand. Your brand is what the consumers think it is. Your product is as good as the customers think it is.
You have to measure the thoughts and opinions that consumers associate with your brand.
Likert Scale
With the help of various statement based questions, cover the different features and characteristics of your branded product. The most widely used way to do this is using the Likert scale.
Likert scale is a five or seven-point scale that gives an individual to express whether they agree or disagree with a statement. For example, if you want to know whether people like your branded shirt, ask them to strongly agree to strongly disagree with the statement ‘the shirt of (your brand) is well-made’.
Reality v. Marketing
Next, you have to compare the consumer experience with your brand’s marketing. For example, if someone used your services or bought a product from you, you need to follow up with an email or a call.
Ask them questions such as, ‘how did your product/service measure up against your expectations, on a scale of 1-10?’
How the consumer experience measured up to your brand’s marketing
4. Online Brand Metrics
We live in a digital world. From our schooling and office work to time off and vacations, we spend a lot of time online. To boost your brand and increase brand awareness, you need to keep an eye on the digital metrics as well.
Your Website
From bounce rate and total site traffic to top viewed pages and sources of traffic, you have to measure the critical analytics on your site. Website traffic will tell you how many people are visiting, whether they are coming from a search bar, Google Ads, or somewhere else, etc.
If web traffic increases right after you launch a campaign, it is a sign that brand awareness is increasing. Google Analytics for campaign tracking helps you measure traffic over time and check the referral sources, among many other things.
Social Media
From sharing useful study notes to posting vacation pictures, we all use social media regularly. You need to keep your company profiles on various social platforms up-to-date. Track the social metric on social media posts such as conversion rate metric, share & bounce rates, click-through rate, engagement metric, etc.
Moreover, when you are building brand awareness – both organically and via paid options, it is essential to measure the social media metrics such as reach, clicks, follows, comments, shares, impressions, mentions, hashtag uses, etc.
Useful Tips to Enhance Brand Awareness
Now that you know why brand metrics are important, and which basic metrics to keep an eye on, you need to know how you can measure performance indicators. You can use various high-quality, competent, and reliable industry tracking software such as HubSpot, Google Analytics, etc.
To make smarter and faster decisions that will improve your company’s reputation and drive your business forward, you should use real-time analytics and use predictive insights. Understand what is driving your brand and the marketplace results.
It is better to start small and then go from there. Collect data from one source at a period of time so that you don’t get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your brand by using the monthly metrics to your advantage.
There are pros and cons to each metric. For instance, surveys will give you qualitative feedback but lack hard quantitative data. Similarly, social engagement tracks feedback, reach, impression, etc. but they remain stuck within the walls of each social media platform.
Web traffic is effective as it tells how your brand performs across the entire web. Therefore, it is important that you know what your brand awareness objectives are. They will help you choose the right awareness tools to use to lift business to new heights!
Boost Your Company’s Image with Brand Metrics – Final Word
The aim of any business is to build a successful product or service that they can sell and achieve high levels of customer satisfaction. This can be easily achieved if you work in the right direction with dedication and perseverance.
However, if you don’t keep a track of the key performance indicators (KPIs), you will not be able to achieve new heights of success for your company.
Make the brand metrics we have mentioned above a part of your marketing strategy, and you will see a direct, pronounced impact on the bottom line.
