How to measure brand awareness

Brand awareness is one of the most valuable metrics that marketers can use to assess the effectiveness of their marketing activities. This is because it aims to establish how well known a ‘company’, ‘brand’, or ‘product’ is by a target audience. Marketers therefore use it to evaluate how well their marketing activities are performing and how to make them more effective.

However, for all this promise, brand awareness is very difficult to measure accurately. This can lead to major inaccuracies and inefficiencies.

In this detailed piece, we run through all the methods that can be used to measure brand awareness, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, before explaining how they can be combined to measure brand awareness more effectively.

So, without further ado, let’s get stuck in…

Not every business needs to measure brand awareness. This is because achieving brand awareness is not essential for a business to succeed. There are many businesses that sell products or services with little or no brand awareness. These often can focus their marketing activities on engaging a potential customer at their time of need, which doesn’t require wider brand awareness.

However, as a business grows, the power of a brand can become invaluable. This is because it reduces marketing costs as the familiarity with a brand is transferred from one purchase to another. For this reason, brand awareness is usually pursued by established brands, as well as fast-growth businesses that are pursuing market leadership.

With this in mind, before considering how to measure brand awareness, a full assessment of its value to the business should be made. A marketing team can then allocate appropriate resources to its measurement.

There are many ways to measure brand awareness. They all have strengths and weaknesses, which means that their applicability varies depending on the available budget and resources.

Market research

• Questionnaires (online/email/ in-person)

Asking people whether they’ve heard of a particular brand, product or service, is one of the most common ways to measure brand awareness. This process is also relatively straightforward and can be performed at the same time as asking broader questions about a business or its competitors.

However, performing this accurately requires a significant sample size so that it can be reflective of the whole market. Typically, 1000 or more is required, which increases the costs and often requires hiring specialist teams and outside market research agencies.

A key strength of this approach is its ability to record the views of customers first-hand, thereby moving beyond digital data. However, there are natural biases that occur when respondents are asked to recall information. Furthermore, many aspects of branding are very difficult to assess by asking questions alone.

• Focus groups

Focus groups explore customer opinions to understand more about how they perceive a brand. For example, an interviewer can initiate a discussion with a group by asking open-ended questions about their knowledge of a brand and its competitors. This may reveal differences in perception between respondents, as well as any potential inaccuracies in recollection.

These can yield many interesting insights beyond measuring brand awareness. However, they are costly to run, and the small group sizes makes them suitable for exploratory findings only.

• Event attendance

A lesser-known way to measure brand awareness is by asking an audience at events. There may be an opportunity to hand out questionnaires or ask for a show of hands. They can be a valuable tool to listen to the views of attendees, however they are unlikely to have statistical reliability.

• Digital polls (email/website/advert)

Marketers can use various types of online polls to test brand awareness. The benefit is that they may be quicker and easier to run than questionnaires. However, they may be less accurate, as the respondents may not be truly engaged when providing answers.

Digital analytics

• Share of voice (media/ social media)

As the name suggests, share of voice metrics measure the proportion of traffic that a brand receives in a particular channel. This is typically measured across social media and media. For example, a company may measure the share of traffic it receives with respect to a particular topic.

Digital marketing tools often measure the relationships between competing brands and particular words or phrases to estimate share of voice. This can be a valuable way to evaluate marketing performance, but it isn’t strictly a measure of brand awareness, as the results can’t be attributed to a target market. For example, if a brand receives 90% share of voice in the media, this statistic provides little insight into the proportion of the target market that read the media. And further still, the proportion that read the media and also search for the topic.

For this reason, share of voice is an important metric on its own, but best separated from brand awareness. However, as with the other measures mentioned above, it can be a useful way to cross-reference other measures of brand awareness for their validity.

• Website traffic

A popular way to measure brand awareness is by comparing a website’s traffic with that of its competitors. This can be completed relatively simply using digital marketing tools. The benefit is that it can quickly and easily establish metrics that are based on large sample sizes.

There are notable limitations to this approach, however. In many industries, the website may not be the strongest measure of a brand’s awareness, as the website may not be the most popular location for people to visit. For example, people may shop at a Nike store instead of its website, or alternatively at a leading sports retailer.

Moreover, the majority of businesses operate in industries where defining direct competitors is difficult. So, for example, a tech company like Apple makes both software and hardware, while Tesla makes more than just cars.

Limitations aside, website traffic is a quick and easy way to establish a brand’s performance or the uplift following recent activities. As with other measures mentioned in this list, it can be a useful way to validate the figures received across other measures.

• Search data

Similar to website traffic, search data reveals valuable insights about a brand’s awareness. In particular, search analysis breaks down the balance between organic and direct traffic. This is a valuable way to investigate brand awareness because the more popular a brand is, and the more it is known, the more likely people are to search directly for it. They may either go direct to the URL and bypass Google altogether, or type the brand name into Google.

As with website traffic, this evaluation is fraught with challenges that need to be navigated before relying on this as a measure of brand awareness. Nonetheless, it is a useful way to dig deeper into website traffic statistics.

• Advertising impressions

The number of impressions an advertising campaign receives is linked to brand awareness. However, not every impression results in awareness, which makes the two metrics very different.

Instead, generating advertising impressions can be seen as a way to generate brand awareness instead of measure it, with another measure such as market research required to assess the success of a brand awareness campaign.

That said, a metric for advertising impressions can be a good way to critically evaluate market research responses.

As we’ve explained above, when a brand reaches societal awareness and develops integrated campaigns across multiple marketing channels, measuring brand awareness can be very valuable.

However, the limitations with the way it is evaluated and measured frequently lead to negative outcomes, which nullify any value associated with its assessment.

To overcome these limitations, a brand can therefore combine multiple measurements to build a more robust overall assessment. This ability is typically the preserve of a handful of global brands. We therefore explain this in three simple steps.

Step 1: Define ‘brand awareness’

A business will need to consider which aspects of brand awareness (e.g. short-term, long-term) to measure before deciding on the best methods of measurement.

Step 2: Select complementary measurement techniques

A business will need to select a complementary set of measurement techniques that are suitable for its size, industry, aspirations and marketing budgets.

Step 3: Evaluate performance and test assumptions

The business will need to collate the data at regular intervals before analysing all the measures in context to develop a rounded view of the brand’s awareness.

We hope you’re inspired

We hope you found this insight piece valuable. To discuss this further with us, or to discuss a project, please get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you!