How to Measure Brand Awareness

Copywriting / 10 Jan 2022

Brand awareness is something we all strive for, and quality content backed up with a killer content strategy is a sure-fire way to achieve it. But how do you know when you’re making your mark?

Brand awareness is a bit of an abstract concept. It’s something that takes place within the collective consciousness of your target audience. Just because you’ve seen a rise in purchase numbers or successful conversions doesn’t necessarily mean you have greater brand awareness. They are indicators but not conclusive proof.

What you need is a brand awareness strategy that incorporates key metrics to measure your success. And that’s what we’ll dive into. But first, a word on why brand awareness is such a big deal for your bottom line. 

Why Does Brand Awareness Matter?

Brand awareness is about being visible to your target market and a familiar face to your target audience. You’re building that all-important know, like and trust factor. 

This means when your prospect encounters the specific problem you fix, you’re the first business they think of and their provider of choice. It’s why building brand awareness persists as the number one objective for marketers across industries. 

As prospects today thoroughly research their options (usually online) before making a purchase, with many also heavily influenced by their peers, they are bombarded with choices. Brand awareness is, therefore, crucially important to secure the business of prospects directly or via the recommendations of their networks.

How?

Through a holistic content strategy and a creative marketing plan. Success depends on having a solid knowledge of your ideal client and excellent market research to inform your approach. 

You’re looking for meaningful connection and the power of association to drive decisive action. And once you think you’ve nailed that, you need to know how to measure brand awareness.

Data-based Measures of Brand Awareness

We said above that you couldn’t use conversion metrics to determine current levels of brand awareness. Why? Because they’re steps taken further down the line. They may show the effects of increased brand awareness, but they aren’t direct indicators of that growth.

More useful data-based measures of growing brand awareness include:

Website Traffic Figures

Benchmarking your site traffic metrics and monitoring their growth during a brand awareness campaign is a great way to gauge your overall visibility. 

This gives you a clear picture from the start about the overall numbers of people viewing your content and how that figure changes over time. 

Your brand awareness strategy should lead to more website visits. 

The numbers of new and repeat visitors are also helpful. New visits mean that a wider audience sees your content, and repeat visits often indicate growing trust and a budding relationship between you and a prospect.

Analysing the numbers of direct visitors to your website (not those coming via organic search or referrals from social media) gives you an idea of the number of people already aware of your brand. They need to know you exist to search for you directly.

Engagement and Interaction

Levels of engagement with your content by prospects who fit your buyer personas can indicate the level of knowledge, trust and familiarity prospects have with your brand.

If people interact positively with you on social media, they see value in your content. Plus, taking the time to interact with you boosts your visibility in their newsfeed and their networks.

Encouraging interaction via your social media platforms and sharing content on your website helps an audience feel connected to your business. The more meaningful, valuable interactions you have, the more memorable and authoritative you become. 

Monitor your social media insights and website metrics over time to see results.

Anecdotal Measures of Brand Awareness

Social Listening

Getting back to social media interaction and engagement, a great way to stay on top of what people are saying about your business is by using social listening tools. 

For search engines, the biggie here is Google Alerts. Set up an alert to be notified when a third party mentions your business.

There are many available tools for social media monitoring and tracking of mentions, tags and hashtags. Hubspot has listed their favourites – spoiler alert, they’re on the list.

Ask Your Target Audience Directly

Many businesses don’t ask their customers and prospects for feedback, which is a missed opportunity.

Creating a short survey (incentivised if you wish) adds to your market research data. 

It allows you to reconnect with existing clients and contact new prospects in your target market to begin building a relationship. And all the while, you’re also contributing to your brand awareness. 

Let’s Build Your Brand Awareness Strategy Together

Measuring brand awareness and its growth over time is a tricky beast. Success starts with a solid foundation – a stellar content strategy populated with lots of conversion-driven content. At Beesting Digital, we do both. 

So let’s get started on your supercharged brand awareness strategy. Book your discovery call with us today.