Brand and Marketing are vital business tools and it’s important to measure their performance. We recommend measuring them in two ways: long-term brand health and short-term marketing effectiveness.
The starting point is to establish a baseline. This can be done through commissioning your own research, or it may be that you have sufficient current data to do this. This data could be contained in reports, research, and analytics data which you already have. Even the number of social media followers that you have can be a useful starting point (if that’s something that’s important to your brand.)
After this is established, then you can start measuring the change over time.
Here’s how we recommend doing this:
Long-term brand health
This should be done through regular survey activities, normally every three to six months. It can be commissioned directly, or questions can be added to an omnibus survey. The preferred approach will depend on which audiences you are trying to reach.
Questions should be repeated over several cycles to establish the trends for:
- Brand Awareness (i.e. do they recognise the brand – prompted and unprompted)
- Knowledge (how well do they feel they know the brand.)
- Consideration (how likely would they to be to buy your brand.)
- Attraction (how much do they like the brand.)
Some models jump straight from awareness to consideration but in our experience, we’ve found many brands with high levels of awareness but comparatively low levels of knowledge. This lack of knowledge about the brand can be what erodes the power of the brand over time making it vulnerable to competitors entering the market. It’s also a problem that can be fixed by having a strong brand strategy backed up with a clear narrative.
At the same time, you should test the attributes that the brand is communicating. These should be aligned with your brand strategy and the shift you are trying to effect.
For some brands, a simple proxy for brand health can be the number of followers you have on your social media channels. This indicates a level of interest and willingness to engage in the brand and the content that you create.
Marketing Effectiveness
Regular measurement of marketing activity should be carried out at least monthly but more frequently during specific campaign periods.
The type of measures, particularly for social media campaigns include:
- The number of people reached
- The number of people who engage with the campaign (clicked links, read articles, liked posts, shared content)
- Website visits
- Direct calls to action e.g. the download of reports, purchase of product
Similar metrics can be created for other activity like PR based campaigns. The important thing is to establish a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), measure them, learn from what works well and put in remedial action where things are less effective. This type of activity can be done in-house or can be outsourced to a third-party marketing agency.
A sample of how these could be reported in an easy-to-use dashboard is included below.
Measurement is the first step towards progress
Sometimes measuring is scary. You don’t want to look. But usually our clients are pleasantly surprised. So don’t be afraid. Measurement is the first step towards more effective brand and marketing performance. And depending on what the numbers are looking like, they may help you secure the investment you need in the future.
If you have questions about how brand strategy can impact your performance as an organisation contact our Director of Growth, Karen Newbold, at karen@rblteam.com.
