Beyond Vanity Metrics: How to Truly Measure Brand Awareness

Social likes and reach are often seen as the best indicators of brand awareness. However, these vanity metrics don’t help software marketers understand how customers perceive their product or the role of brand campaigns in shaping those perceptions. In fact, only 21% of brand leaders think their metrics are actionable.^[1] 

Developing a high-quality brand awareness measurement model requires going beyond easily trackable metrics and connecting with underlying elements, both quantitative and qualitative, that reflect the performance of your brand in the marketplace and inform your business decisions. 

This article deep dives into these common indicators of brand awareness and explains how you can use them to create and boost brand awareness for your software business. 

Quantitative indicators of brand awareness

Quantitative indicators measure numerical data that can be easily tracked, measured, and counted. Often referred to as leading indicators, these metrics are used to recognize early changes in brand perception or recognition. They give an early sign of how your software marketing campaigns are performing in raising your brand’s online visibility. 

Here are some examples of quantitative KPIs that help you measure brand awareness:

• Click-through rate (CTR): Represents the percentage of people who click on your brand’s ad or social post after viewing it. A high CTR suggests your audience is interested in engaging with you and learning more about your offerings. CTR is measured by dividing the number of clicks on digital ads or content by the total number of digital impressions received.
• Return on advertising spend (ROAS): Reflects the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. A high ROAS means your advertising efforts are effective and contribute to brand awareness. To measure ROAS, calculate the revenue earned from an online ad campaign as a percentage of the cost of the campaign.
• Direct traffic: Measures traffic from users who visit your site directly, without being directed from another link. This typically comes from users who are aware of your brand and directly type your website URL into their web address bar. To measure direct traffic, check the estimated monthly average search volume for your branded keywords. You can also use web analytics tools to track direct website traffic numbers, including unique page views and month-on-month changes.

Qualitative indicators of brand awareness

Qualitative indicators estimate public perception, opinion, and feelings about your brand. Also known as sentiment indicators, these offer insights into emotional resonance, brand loyalty, and the overall strength of your brand identity. They help you gain a deeper sense of how consumers perceive your brand. 

Here are a few examples of qualitative KPIs:

• Brand recall: Reflects how quickly your brand comes to mind when people think about your industry or product. High brand recall suggests strong brand impact. To measure brand recall, conduct aided and/or unaided brand awareness surveys. Unaided questions don’t prompt respondents about your brand; for example, “What brand comes to your mind when thinking of accounting software?” Aided surveys, on the other hand, give examples of brands and ask respondents to choose among them.
• Brand consideration or top-of-mind recall: Measures the likelihood of a potential customer choosing your brand when making a purchase. High brand consideration means your audience not only knows your brand but also sees it as a viable option to buy. To measure, calculate the percentage of target customers that report your brand as their first consideration. Ask questions like, “If you were to recommend marketing software to a friend, which brand would you mention first?”
• Customer reviews analysis: Analyzes customer reviews and ratings to assess sentiment around your brand. Since this analysis offers an unbiased opinion of your brand from people who have used your product or service, it’s deemed more trustworthy. To calculate, define parameters that matter to your prospects, such as key features and customer support, and then rate customer reviews on those parameters. This involves processing unstructured customer reviews and ratings from various sources, including post-purchase surveys, software review sites, and emails. 

Leverage the free Review Collection Service of Gartner Digital Markets to gather verified reviews from your buyers.

• Net promoter score (NPS): Assess the likelihood of customers recommending your brand to others. In your surveys, discussions, and interviews, ask customers to rate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how likely they are to recommend your product/service/brand to a friend or colleague. Calculate NPS by subtracting % of detractors (customers giving 0-6 rating) from % of promoters (customers giving 9-10 rating). A score above 50 is considered excellent.
• Share of voice (SOV): Measures your brand's visibility compared to competitors. It encompasses conversations, comments, mentions, and posts about your brand on the web. To measure SOV, calculate the number of your brand’s mentions and divide it by the total number of any brand mentions in your category or market. You can measure SOV manually or via a social listening tool. These metrics are only suggestive; use your best judgment to select metrics that best represent the impact of your branding activities and give actionable insights.

4 steps to effectively measure brand awareness

Now that you understand the metrics involved in brand awareness, let’s see how you can create an effective brand awareness measurement model, customized for your business needs.

Step 1: Select metrics applicable to your business

Business-to-business (B2B) software marketers are often faced with the challenge of how to  generate demand. Building brand awareness is a large part of a demand generation strategy, as you look to build interest in your products to drive high-quality leads. 

As you choose metrics to measure brand awareness, make sure to couple them with demand generation metrics to gauge the impact of your brand on overall demand creation. For instance, to evaluate the brand recall rate, also look at your lead volume. If your brand recall is high but lead quality is low, it could mean that while people are aware of your brand, they don’t perceive it as the right solution for their needs. In this case, check if you’re targeting the right audience segment or using the right brand messages.

Step 2: Determine data collection methods

Having selected your desired metrics, decide how you’ll gather data for them. Data collection methods usually differ based on the metric type. 

For quantitative metrics, which focus on numerical data, a variety of tools can be used. Web analytics tools, such as Google Analytics, can track website traffic and user behavior, giving you insights into how many people visit your site, which pages are most popular, and what visitors do once they’re there. Similarly, social media monitoring tools can track brand mentions and conversations across platforms, providing a snapshot of your social media presence and engagement. 

For qualitative metrics, which delve into the “why” behind the numbers, you’ll need to go the extra mile to gather insights into people’s attitudes. Customer feedback surveys can provide first-hand customer experiences and perceptions of your brand, while customer reviews can help you understand the feelings people express about your brand and products online. Additionally, organizing focus group discussions and arranging in-depth interviews with customers can offer a more personal and detailed perspective, allowing you to dive deeper into customer attitudes, perceptions, and needs.

Step 3: Analyze and benchmark results

Once you’ve measured the metrics, interpret the results to assess your brand’s strengths and weaknesses. Calculate averages to identify overall trends, and set a point of reference (either from industry or your past) to compare the metrics and get more context.

This step is critical in understanding the effectiveness of brand awareness metrics. It’ll give you a clear idea of where you stand and what you need to improve on. Depending on data availability and your business needs, you can use three sources to analyze results:

• Industry standards: Look at average metrics for businesses like yours, and compare your performance against those numbers. These reports are usually published by third parties such as industry associations, software review and rating websites, consultancies, and media companies.
• Historical data: Compare your current data with your own past performance. Historical data provides context for your results, measures progress over time, and even helps you make forecasts for the long run based on previous trends.
• Competitor data: Analyze the performance of your immediate competitors. It’ll provide context for your own results and help identify areas where you need to improve.

Step 4: Report your findings

The final step is to effectively communicate your findings to all relevant stakeholders, including analysts, marketers, sales professionals, and leadership teams. Also, make sure your data presents a story and provides context. To make reporting your metrics more engaging and meaningful, follow these tactics:

• Use visual aids such as tooltips, color contrasts, and arrows indicating increase or decrease.
• Consider sharing your metrics on a real-time dashboard for a clear, concise, and interactive presentation.
• Concentrate on the most significant takeaways that directly convey your brand’s awareness levels. Avoid overwhelming the audience with too many metrics. 

Prioritize metrics that matter

Less is more when it comes to metrics to measure brand awareness impact. Gartner research suggests there’s a “sweet spot” to the number of metrics you should use. Notably, 61% of organizations that use a limited number of metrics report exceeding their marketing performance objectives. ^[2]

Using fewer but relevant metrics simplifies the understanding and assessment of what brand building can do to meet marketing goals and also facilitates better communication between stakeholders about branding’s impact.

Start gathering and analyzing customer reviews and feedback with our dedicated  Review Collection Service. Take the first step toward evaluating your brand position.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sources 

1. Brand Survey Key Findings: Alignment and Measurement Challenges, Gartner 
2. 2023 Multichannel Marketing Survey, Gartner

Amita Jain

Amita Jain covers B2B content creation and strategy to help businesses reach their marketing goals. She received her master’s degree from King’s College London, U.K. Exploring the world of art and reading fiction are some of her usual happy distractions outside of work. Connect with Amita on LinkedIn.