There’s a new metric in marketing town, and it’s here to stay. Brand awareness isn’t new, but there’s increasingly more, well, awareness for it. That’s because it’s proving to be a great guide for setting up more effective marketing campaigns and winning the hearts of more customers.
But what’s a great marketing strategy without measuring its effectiveness? Measuring brand awareness is less abstract than you might think. Let’s look at three key metrics that indicate how well you’re performing on brand awareness and eight tools that help you measure them.
What Is Brand Awareness?
First things first, let’s make it clear what we’re really talking about here. Brand awareness can be defined as how familiar people inside your target group are with your brand. That’s the top level of it. Brand awareness is taken further when they also know what products or services you’re offering, or even what your company values are.
What Are Relevant Brand Awareness Metrics?
That’s right: brand awareness on its own is not really a metric. You can’t actually find out or say that 40 percent of your target audience is ‘’familiar’’ with your brand. The layers to brand awareness and the dynamics in the market make this impossible.
It’s an umbrella term that combines multiple metrics. Before we dive into the tools we recommend for tracking brand awareness, here are some metrics that indicate brand awareness, so you know what you’ll actually be measuring.
Branded Search
Are you looking for ‘’running shoes’’ or ‘’Nike running shoes’’? This is the difference between a generic, and a branded search. If people already use your brand’s name in their search, it means they’re not just aware of who you are, but also what you offer—and they’re ready to consider it.
Brand Name Mentions
A clear indicator that people know about your brand is when they’re talking about it. No need to listen into their conversations, just look at where you are being mentioned online. From blog posts to comment sections and of course, on good old Twitter: there are countless platforms people can use to talk about you.
A lot of people talking about you isn’t necessarily a good thing. You want to aim for high brand awareness, but only in combination with a good brand perception, meaning that people actually like you. There is such a thing as bad publicity.
Another important thing to note is that these brand mentions shouldn’t just be noted. You can (and should!) take them as an opportunity to interact with your target audience. Thank them for their kind review, answer the questions in the comments and solve complaints—even if they’re placed directly in your inbox.
Share Of Voice
If we take branded mentions a step further, we land on share of voice. This metric basically shows how well you’re performing when it comes to brand awareness compared to your competitors. Because let’s face it: an increase of 10 percent in mentions isn’t much if your competitor did 40 percent.
Brand Awareness Surveys
Not a metric by itself, but it has to be mentioned. One of the best indicators of how well your target group knows who you are is that they tell you they do. It’s hard to simply ask everyone if they’ve seen you somewhere, but sit tight—we have a great tool for this is coming up later on.
Social Media Reach And Followers
Buying new followers on Instagram won’t boost your brand awareness, so use this metric with care. Reach and followers aren’t just vanity metrics, as long as you know how to use them and what other metrics to combine them with. They do give you an indication on who is aware of your brand, even if they’ve never bought anything from you.
These Tools Will Help You Measure Brand Awareness
No need to read minds to find out if you’re front-of-mind for your target audience. The tools below give you insights in the metrics we mentioned above.
It’s important to note that measuring just one metric doesn’t give you the full picture. It’s recommended to combine tools and metrics to give more context to the data you’re about to get.
1. Attest
Attest is a survey tool on steroids. The best way to find out if your target audience knows them is to ask them that million-dollar question: how familiar are you with our brand? Granted, the question should be a bit more nuanced than that, but Attest will help you with that too. The solution lets you send out surveys to audiences that match your target group. You get access to 100 million people across 49 countries. With their filters, you can make the target group as niche as you’d like.
How Much Does Attest Cost?
The professional plan that gives you access to their global markets starts at $1.6k a month, but there are custom plans available too.
2. Alexa
‘‘Alexa, how am I doing on brand awareness?’’. Ah, if only. It’s getting there, though. Alexa, which is an Amazon company, is a nifty tool that lets you do extensive keyword research, competitive analyses and…it shows your share of voice.
How Much Does Alexa Cost?
For just $149 a month, Alexa is at your service with a full range of competitive analysis and SEO tools.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics in the right hands is so much more than just a web traffic tool. When used correctly, you can use Google Analytics—or any other dashboard you use to keep an eye on who’s visiting your website, as a tool that measures brand awareness.
When looking at some of the metrics Google Maps shows, brand awareness isn’t found in how many people find your website. If they click a paid ad or link, it doesn’t say much about how aware of your brand they were before they were presented with the ad. But if they type your name into the search bar, a branded search, and not just the products you’re selling, you’re winning at awareness.
How Much Does Google Analytics cost?
Absolutely Nothing.
4. Mention
Mention is your fly on the wall of the whole internet. It’s a tool for web listening that gives you a heads-up when people are talking about you anywhere on the web. You can enter the name of any brand you want to track, select what platforms and pages you want to keep an eye on and it starts searching for any mentions of your name.
The tool shows you past mentions but also real-time comments. Use this tool to keep track of if your mentions are going up after you’ve launched a big campaign, to test its effectiveness.
How Much Does The Mention Cost?
Plans start at only $25 a month for entrepreneurs and small companies who want to track up to 5000 mentions. Need more? Check out all the plans here.
5. BrandMentions
Another great tool for social listening is BrandMention. It’s different from Mention in that it doesn’t just show you the mentions of your brand, but is able to detect the sentiment behind the tweets or comments that mention your name. This gives tracking the effectiveness of your latest campaign a whole new dimension.
How much does BrandMentions cost?
BrandMention plans start at $99 for growing businesses, going up to $ 499 for their Enterprise plan. Check the different features here.
6. Hootsuite
A tool that many marketers love is Hootsuite. It’s handy for social media management, but it can do much more than that. It also allows you to monitor online conversations about your brand, content and your competitors.
How Much Does Hootsuite Cost?
The social listening solution is only available as an add-on for Business or Enterprise plans, starting at €599 a month. Check all prices here.
7. Brandwatch
Another winner in the social listening game is Brandwatch. This tool dives deep into several brand awareness metrics and analyzes not only how many people know you, but also if they like you. This will guide you in creating better and more effective marketing campaigns, while also analyzing your performance on brand awareness and brand perception.
How Much Does Brandwatch Cost?
Brandwatch adjusts its pricing to the size of your company and needs, based on how many mentions you want access to. Contact them for a more specific price indication
8. SurveyMonkey
With the SurveyMonkey brand tracker tool, you can create great-looking surveys and send them to relevant audiences all at once. The Brand Tracker tool gives you all kinds of insights into brand health metrics. Not just awareness, but also reputation and perception. Combining all that knowledge will really power up your marketing strategies.
With the SurveyMonkey Brand Tracker tool you can send out your brand awareness surveys to tailored audiences, gathered from integrated panels accessing 144 million people in over 130 countries. That should do it, right?
How Much Does SurveyMonkey Cost?
There’s no one-size-fits-all audience for tracking brand awareness, so SurveyMonkey doesn’t indicate a fixed price for accessing their global audience. But, feel free to reach out to them to get an estimate.
When’s The Right Time To Use These Brand Awareness Tools?
Anytime, really! Measuring brand awareness shouldn’t be a one-time thing, but should be done periodically to see if your campaigns are effective. It can be especially interesting to measure awareness right before and right after a big online or offline campaign to see how your marketer’s creative wit has contributed to brand awareness.
