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Insights From Our Experts

Brand Awareness: How to Measure it 6 Ways to Sunday

by Eric V. Holtzclaw

Apr 19, 2023

Brand awareness is how well you’re known among your target audience— like a popularity contest for the business world.

Marketing and promoting your company to build brand awareness is essential to success, but you can’t grow what you don’t know.

In order to measure brand awareness, establish a baseline and measure against that baseline to see if your efforts are having an effect.

But I thought brand awareness couldn’t be measured!?!? You scream into the endless marketing void.

Well, you’re kind-of right. You need to get a little creative with measuring (but that’s the business we’re in, no?).

Start by reviewing activities and metrics that gauge where your brand stands in the way of “buzz” and “trending” so you can optimize your efforts for the best outcome.

By the Numbers

Here are the metrics you need to track to get a high-elevation view of your brand’s performance.

  • Social engagement numbers. Track your socials people. These numbers not only reflect how many are aware of, and interact with, your brand, but they also show how effective your content is.
  • Site traffic. This is just how many people end up on your site, however they get there.
  • Direct traffic. This is how many individuals take the effort to type your URL into the browser window to visit your website. Nowadays a lot of consumers end up on your site through keyword searches, social media, and online ads. If they type it in directly then they already knew about your brand. You can see how well your marketing is performing by tracking how the direct traffic number changes from month-to-month.

A More Subjective Take

Here’s where measuring brand awareness becomes a little less about the numbers and a little more about the feels. These tactics allow you to glean valuable information about your brand.

  • Surveys. A great way to collect direct feedback about your brand from your existing audience is using surveys. They are especially useful when you need to find out who is aware of your brand, what they think it is, and how they feel about it.
  • Set Up Google Alerts. Once set up, you’ll receive a notification anytime your brand appears in any press distributed online. This allows you to boost any positive articles and quickly handle any negative press.
  • Social listening. Tools like SocialMention or TweetDeck show who’s mentioning your brand in comments, tagging it in posts, or using your hashtag.

Whether you go by the numbers or are more subjective, these tactics lead to valuable information about how well your target audience knows your brand and how well you’re spreading the word.

Now you can grow your brand awareness because you know your brand awareness.