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How To Measure Brand Awareness: Quantify Your Brand Impact

Market research 04 12

The goal of every marketer is to make sure their brand is never forgotten.

If your target audiences recognize your brand anywhere, then you are winning in the game of ‘Brand Awareness.’ While it may seem vague, establishing brand awareness at the early stages of a business is a game changer. It may not be a metric, but it determines the success of a business.

In this blog, we’ll walk you through some important concepts related to brand awareness and also explore how to measure brand awareness using multiple methods. 

Let’s get started.

What is Brand Awareness?

Brand Awareness1 2

When we hear “Just do it,” we know the brand mentioned is “Nike.” Or, when we think of “Coca-Cola,” we are talking about soft drinks. 

This is what brand awareness is. 

Brand awareness does not imply that the customers remember your brand name. Instead, it implies where your stand and how successful your marketing goal and business have been for your company. 

A customer needs to recognize a feature that sets your product apart from products in the same category. Brand awareness indicates how familiar your target market is with your brand, its products, and its services. Popular or trending is the word people associate with a brand that has high brand awareness.

What are the Levels of Brand Awareness?

There are five levels of brand awareness that a customer goes through before becoming a repeat customer. These levels are as follows: 

  1. Unawareness: 

At this stage, the brand’s name, logo, products, or services are unfamiliar to a customer. This means your brand has not made any impression on the target audience. 

  1. Awareness: 

Customers become aware of a brand’s existence, but they might not have a deeper understanding of the brand. 

  1. Recognition: 

Customers can identify your brand with visual elements like its logo, name, or color palette at this stage. 

  1. Recall: 

Customers at this level can actively remember your brand without any prompts or external cues. They can instantly think of your brand from memory. 

  1. Top-of-mind awareness: 

This is the final level, where your brand is the first one that customers remember when they think of a specific product or service. 

Now that we have identified the five levels of awareness, let’s look into its different types to better understand how to measure brand awareness. 

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What are the different Types of Brand Awareness?

The four types of brand awareness you should know about are – 

  1. Brand recall
  2. Brand recognition
  3. Brand dominance
  4. Top-of-mind awareness

Let’s dive deep into all of them.

01. Brand Recall

It defines a customer’s ability to recall a brand name in association with a product category. It indicates a strong link between the brand and the product category. A customer is generally able to recall 3 to 7 brand names.

The ability to recall a brand name in relation to a product category depends on usage, brand loyalty, and other situational factors. If you think of toothpaste, you are more likely to recall the brand name you frequently use.

02. Brand Recognition

For a customer, recognizing a brand is a key element for their purchase decision. The customer makes a purchase when they are familiar with the product category and its associated brand.

Brand recognition helps customers tell two brands apart. The customers should be able to remember your brand specifically when they think of a product category you offer. Or, they should be able to state the products/ product category when your brand is mentioned.

Brand logos, slogans, packaging, and other visual features can help establish Brand Recognition. A high brand recognition indicates that your brand is reaching the target market.

03. Brand Dominance

When a customer recalls only one brand for a product category, it indicates the brand dominance of the company. When you think of soft drinks, you think of Coca-Cola. The brand name is a synonym for the product.

When a large customer base can remember only one brand for a product, the brand name becomes a household name. This indicates the business’s success and its dominance over the entire market.

04. Top–of–mind Awareness

When a customer is asked a question about a product category and the first brand that they recall is yours, it is called Top-of-mind Awareness.

This implies the brand name that is most recognized and recalled. There is always a possibility of recalling many brand names for a product category, but that is how tough the competition is.

Top-of-mind awareness has a high impact on purchase decisions. When customers have many competing brands to choose from, this factor influences their decision.

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What is the Importance of Measuring Brand Awareness?

Brand Awareness11

When building a brand, knowing where you’re at and where you plan to reach is important. Understanding where you’re at in a quantifiable way helps you benchmark your performance. 

In simple words, measuring brand awareness allows you to review your efforts and track your progress as a brand over time. 

Here are some other reasons why it is important to measure brand awareness:

Foster Trust: 

Customer’s trust in a brand heavily impacts their decision to purchase. When customers start trusting your brand and forming a bond with you, they will likely become repeat purchasers.

Brand awareness closes the gap between brand trust and customer loyalty. It gives your brand a personality that helps customers feel familiar with the brand.

Enhance Brand Association: 

You must have Googled your query or gone for Coke when you wanted a soft drink.

Brand Awareness associates actions with the brand product. Google is a search engine with many other options in the same category. But when you tell someone to search for a query, you tell them to “Google” them.

Brand Awareness has led to replacing common words with brand names. Before you even know you have been “Xeroxing” instead of making ‘copies.’

Build Brand Equity: 

The experience of your customers determines the value of your brand. Positive experience results in positive perception, which leads to higher brand value.

Brand awareness can help in delivering a positive customer experience. Once customers start recognizing and purchasing from a brand, they start to favor the brand more than the other options available. It establishes trust and a strong bond between customers and the brand. This leads to a positive experience and eventually builds brand equity.

Better brand equity results in higher stock prices, huge social impact, and expansiveness.

How to Measure Brand Awareness in 2 Steps?

Even though there is no formula to measure brand awareness, there are some brand awareness metrics that you need to track brand awareness and methods that you can use to measure brand awareness. In this section, we’ll look at both of them.

Step 1: Brand Awareness Metrics to Track

Let’s look into three KPIs or metrics you must remember when you consider how to measure brand awareness. 

1. Aided & Unaided Brand Awareness

Aided & unaided brand awareness is mostly the result of brand awareness surveys and is the most fundamental metric used to track brand awareness. 

While unaided brand awareness indicates the measure of the number of people who express knowledge of your brand or product without prompting (brand recall), aided brand awareness indicates the measure of the number of people who express knowledge of a brand or product when prompted (brand recognition).

2. Branded Search Volume

Another interesting way of evaluating brand awareness is determining your brand’s search volume or the number of times people look up your brand’s name or associated keywords on search engines. 

For example, if your brand is called Simple Beauty, then someone going to Google and typing ‘Simple Beauty products’ would be considered a brand search instead of them typing ‘beauty products.’ 

3.  Social Share of Voice

Social share of voice is a metric that gives a holistic view of your brand’s online presence and indicates your brand’s visibility across social channels. In other words, it gives you an insight into how your brand is being perceived by customers online against your competitors. 

Brands use software that scours the web for mentions of their name among blogs, outlets, news, searches, social media platforms, customer forums, etc., and run a competitive analysis. The result is then used as an overview of how their brand is being perceived against their competitors. 

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Step 2: Methods to Measure Brand Awareness

Now that we have identified the KPIs, let’s see how to measure brand awareness using the following methods. 

1. Brand Awareness Surveys:

One of the most simple ways of measuring brand awareness is conducting a brand awareness survey. Get feedback directly from your customers using robust online survey tools. 

Customers can help you understand what they think of your brand. As a result, you become more aware of how your brand appears to the target market and what you can do to gain a more positive perception.

When conducting a brand awareness survey, consider including the following:

  • Unaided Brand Recall Test

In this test, customers are presented with a survey with a product category. They are asked to select brands to check how many can identify your brand correctly. No clues are given to the customers.

After the survey, you can calculate brand recall by

Brand recall = Total no. of respondents who identified/ Total no. of respondents X 100 correctly

  • Aided Recall Test

A customer is reminded of a brand name and then asked if they have seen/ heard the brand before. The survey may ask them what they know about the brand or about its visual features. The test helps determine brand recognition.

Related Read: Brand Awareness Survey Questions

2. Website Traffic

Direct traffic indicates how many people are intentionally typing and searching for your website. It tells you the success of your marketing campaign in attracting users to visit your website.

Site Traffic tells you how many users, in general, check your website and your content. It shows how much time they spend on your website.

3. Social Engagement

Followers, likes, retweets, comments all such features in social media indicate the popularity of a brand in the digital world. It highlights how many people are aware of the existence of your brand. Social engagement shows how much impact your content has on your customers.

4. Google Alerts

This shows how much your brand is being discussed in the online digital ecosystem. You will be alerted of any mention of your brand by the third-party press. 

Brand Awareness Vs. Brand Recognition Vs. Brand Perception

Let’s clarify your confusion about brand awareness, recognition, and perception. 

Brand Awareness: 

  • This metric explains the extent to which customers are familiar with your brand. 
  • It’s the foundation of recognition and recall. 
  • This is the first step in a customer journey, where a customer starts a relationship with the brand. 

Brand Recognition: 

  • This occurs when customers can identify your brand based on visual elements like logos, colors, or jingles. 
  • It is the result of successful brand awareness efforts. 
  • This involves a customer associating a brand with visual or auditory elements, which makes it different from brand awareness. 

Brand Perception: 

  • It refers to the customers’ thoughts, feelings, and attitudes toward the brand. 
  • Perception goes beyond awareness and recognition, as it includes emotions linked to the brand. 
  • Customers form a perception from their experiences and interactions with the brand and the image portrayed through marketing. 

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Companies with successful Brand Awareness:

Red Bull:

A company that manufactures energy drinks. Had it not been for the marketing campaigns, Red Bull would have remained just one of the many energy drinks in the market.

The company took its marketing strategy to an extreme level by sponsoring events like cliff diving and also sponsoring athletes. It created brand awareness by creating a buzz around the brand name. Red Bull is now associated with daring and adventurous events.

Dove:

Dove created a campaign called “Campaign for Real Beauty.” The campaign was aimed to show women that beauty comes within and that they are more beautiful than they think.

The models used in the campaign are of different body sizes and skin colors. They are asked to describe themselves to an artist who cannot see them. The artist draws the women based on their perspective. Then the same artists draw the women from a stranger’s description. The perspective of the strangers was more flattering than those of the models themselves.

Dove touched a sensitive matter and made women feel appreciated all around the world. The company influenced a woman’s self-esteem by breaking societal standards of beauty.

C21:

#LawSyndrome was a campaign led by a restaurant called C21 against the law that claimed people with Down’s Syndrome could not work full-time jobs without losing their Medicaid. All the staff in C21 restaurant are people with Down’s Syndrome, and they invited lawmakers and business people for the dinners.

How to Increase Brand Awareness?

Enhancing customer engagement can help increase brand awareness. Here, we discuss five ways you can increase a brand’s engagement with the customer to influence brand recognition, loyalty, and trust. 

Consistent Branding:

Maintaining a cohesive visual identity across all communications and platforms can help foster brand recognition. Whether it is email or SMS communication, surveys, or products, consistent visual elements can create a strong sense of recall and recognition. 

Social Media Presence: 

Being on social media and interacting with the audience is a “must” to increase brand awareness. You can market your business and reach audiences all across the world in just a few minutes.

Find out which social media platform your target audience prefers and build your brand presence there. With an appropriate social media platform, you will see growth in brand awareness in no time. Organize and schedule your posts and respond to your audience in order to help the audience become familiar with your brand.

Referral Program: 

Most consumers trust the recommendation of their friends and families before making a purchase decision. Offering discounts, gifts, or other referral deals expands your reach when your customers refer your brand to someone.

Sponsor Events: 

Sponsoring events like festivals, concerts, sports, etc., is a guaranteed way to reach your target audience. Sponsoring events that your target audience will most likely enjoy and participate in can help you present your brand to thousands of people. 

Your brand name will be everywhere in the event, and you will have it associated with the event.

Podcast: 

Podcasts can help you connect with your target audience and also promote your brand. With a podcast, you can inform, entertain, or educate your target audience about your brand and what it stands for. You build trust and establish a bond with the audience instead of just promoting the brand.

 

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Conclusion

Brands are more than just their products and logos; it is important to understand how brand awareness influences loyalty and retention. The focus is to forge a connection, inspire trust, and create experiences that linger in the audiences’ memories. 

Brand awareness is not a single metric but a mix of customer perception, the brand’s unique essence, social interactions, and more. As you learn how to measure brand awareness, analyze data, and uncover patterns to discover what part of your brand truly resonates with your audience. 

FAQs

Brand Recall and Brand Recognition are the two types of Brand Awareness.

Brand Recall indicates a customer’s ability to recall a brand in association with a product category.

Brand Recognition indicates a customer’s ability to differentiate between brands associated with a similar product category.

Brand Awareness helps build knowledge about the brand among the target audience. It helps acquire customers and convert prospects into paying customers. It builds a strong bond between the brand and customers.

Brand Awareness Strategy implies marketing efforts that help a business promote a brand message. The aim is to grow the customers and establish brand recognition in the target market. Marketers develop strategies to make sure the customer does not forget their brand but rather stands at the top.

You can use various methods like surveys, social media mentions, tracking brand mentions, and website traffic to measure brand awareness. 

You can implement many strategies to increase engagement and enhance brand awareness. 

  • Consistent branding
  • Social media engagement
  • Sponsored events
  • Podcast
  • Referral programs

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