What would you choose: A trusted, recognized, reliable product or just an affordable one? For most of us, the choice is crystal clear, a reliable product is what weighs more.
The research reveals that 81% of consumers think trusting a brand is the most influential factor when it comes to purchase decisions. This highlights the critical position of brand awareness in the success of any marketing strategy.
Your products or services should stay in your audience's mind whenever they see similar options. This makes it easier for them to choose your brand.
If you are not effectively scaling up awareness about your brand or establishing a stronger connection with the intended demographics, you may as well say goodbye to your long term plans.
Brand awareness is the level to which your target audience recognizes and remembers your brand. It reflects how familiar people are with your name, logo, or products and how easily they associate them with your business.
Strong brand awareness keeps your brand top of mind, making customers more likely to choose you over competitors when they see similar options. It’s the foundation for trust, customer loyalty, and long-term growth.
Brand awareness isn’t achieved through ads or surface level interactions that don’t create lasting relationships. Without meaningful engagement and ongoing connections with customers, you're simply being seen without being remembered.
Just creating brand awareness isn't enough, you must be diligent in measuring this awareness to know where you are standing in the market and how far you must go.
Tracking your progress helps you identify gaps, take quick action, and improve your marketing efforts. Measuring your brand’s reach and recognition enables you to:
Let’s come to the practical aspect of brand awareness measurement – the how factor! There are various metrics and tools being used in the industry to gauge the success of branding.
Using these metrics and key indicators, companies can track the impact they are generating with their marketing efforts. Let’s explore each one in detail:
Social media has become one of the most powerful ways to track brand awareness. Metrics here can tell you how many people are exposed to your brand, how they interact with it, and how widely it’s being discussed.
Impressions tell you how many times your content (like posts, ads, or stories) has been seen, while reach measures how many unique people saw it. These metrics are all about visibility. The higher these numbers, the more likely your audience is becoming familiar with your brand.
A mention occurs when someone talks about your brand, whether or not they tag you directly. Hashtags help gauge how much your brand or campaign is being discussed. Tracking both offers a clear picture of your brand’s buzz and audience interest.
Track likes, shares, clicks, and comments to measure how actively people are interacting with your content. Higher engagement typically indicates a stronger connection with your audience.
To effectively track your brand awareness through social media, you can use tools like:
Hootsuite: This platform lets you track and analyze social media performance across multiple networks. It offers detailed reports on reach, engagement, and mentions, making it easy to see how your brand is performing on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Sprout Social: Similar to Hootsuite, Sprout Social provides comprehensive analytics for social media campaigns. It allows you to monitor brand mentions, engagement, and sentiment, and even compare your brand’s performance against competitors.
Built-in Analytics on Social Media Platforms: Most major social networks, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, offer their own analytics tools. These built-in features allow you to track metrics such as impressions, reach, engagement, and audience demographics directly from the platform, offering a simple way to gauge your brand’s visibility.
Search engine data is a goldmine for tracking brand recognition. How easily people find your brand through search engines can say a lot about its presence in the market.
Branded search volume shows you how often people search for your brand name or related products. A noticeable increase in these searches means your brand is becoming more recognizable.
When people actively seek out your brand by name, it indicates that they’re familiar with it and are engaged enough to find it again. Monitoring this trend over time allows you to see if your marketing efforts are driving brand recognition and growing interest.
For instance, if you recently launched a campaign or product, a spike in branded search volume could mean it’s resonating with your audience.
Another critical metric is the traffic your website gets from direct searches. This means visitors are specifically looking for your brand or products on search engines, which is a clear sign of strong brand recall.
If your website is attracting consistent or increasing traffic from direct searches, it indicates that people remember your brand and are actively seeking it out.
This metric helps you gauge how successful your branding efforts are at making your brand top of mind for consumers. You can also scale your website traffic through SEO services that focus on promoting your brand to the right customers.
Backlinks are essentially votes of confidence from other websites linking to your content. The more reputable sites that link to your brand, the more visible and credible your brand becomes.
Backlinks are an indicator that others are talking about your brand and finding it valuable enough to reference. They not only improve your brand’s SEO but also amplify its reach by exposing it to new audiences. A strong backlink profile suggests that your brand is being recognized as a trusted authority in your industry.
Surveys and polls are among the most direct ways to gauge brand awareness. By creating questions that ask customers about their familiarity with your brand or specific products, you can gain valuable insights into how well your brand is recognized.
You can use platforms like social media polls, email campaigns, or third-party survey tools to gather this information. These are direct methods to determine the level of your brand awareness among the customers.
You can also use metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) that can help you understand overall customer loyalty and trust in your brand, providing a solid measure of satisfaction and likelihood to recommend.
What makes surveys and polls effective is that they give you real, actionable data from your audience, helping you refine your marketing and branding efforts.
Monitoring your brand's media coverage can provide a clear picture of its reach and influence. By tracking how often and where your brand is mentioned, you get a sense of how well-known your brand is. You’ll want to evaluate three key elements:
Using tools like Meltwater, Mention, or Cision, you can gather media data to assess the volume and impact of your brand’s presence in the news, this helps you measure whether your PR efforts are paying off.
Share of Voice or (SOV) is a metric that measures your brand’s visibility compared to your competitors. It shows how much attention your brand is getting within your industry and helps you gauge your presence in the market.
If your brand consistently appears on different advertising channels, it builds familiarity and trust over time. This recognition makes your brand more memorable and helps it stand out in a crowded marketplace.
Tracking SOV allows you to evaluate how well your advertising, PR, and other efforts are performing. You can use tools like Brandwatch and BuzzSumo to simplify the process, and help you analyze mentions, ads, and media presence to see where you stand and where you can improve.
Your brand can get a holistic view of its share of voice by analyzing these channels:
Social Media: Mentions, tags, and engagement across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Paid Advertising: Visibility through PPC campaigns, display ads, and sponsored content.
Search Engine Results: Organic search rankings and paid search (Google Ads, Bing Ads).
PR and Media Coverage: Brand mentions in news articles, press releases, and other media outlets.
Content Marketing: Performance of blogs, videos, podcasts, and other branded content compared to competitors.
Influencer Marketing: Mentions and promotions by influencers or key opinion leaders.
Industry Forums and Communities: Presence in niche forums, Reddit discussions, and community platforms.
Customer Reviews: Brand mentions and sentiment on review sites like Yelp, Google Reviews, or Trustpilot.
SOV is usually calculated based on one of the following key metrics, depending on your industry and goals:
For simplicity, let's focus on mentions on social media in this explanation, but the steps can be adapted to any of the above metrics.
You need to track how often your brand is mentioned on social media platforms. This can be done manually or with tools like Brandwatch, BuzzSumo, Mention, or native analytics tools within platforms like Facebook or Twitter. These tools help you capture mentions of your brand name, campaign hashtags, or related keywords.
For example, let’s say: Over the last month, your brand was mentioned 500 times across social media channels like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Next, you need to calculate the total number of social media mentions for all brands in your industry, including your competitors. You can use the same tools to track mentions of other brands in your market, or you can use industry reports that estimate total brand mentions.
For example: The total number of social media mentions for your industry including your brand and competitors over the same period is 10,000 mentions.
Now, to calculate the Share of Voice, use the formula:
In our example:
This means your brand holds 5% of the total mentions in your industry, indicating that your brand is responsible for 5% of all the conversations happening in your market.
Once you have your SOV percentage, interpret it in the context of your market and competitors.
If your SOV is high, it shows that your brand is getting noticed and standing out in the market. It means your marketing is on the right track, and you're ahead of the competition. The key now is to keep up the effort, stay visible and keep engaging with your audience to maintain that edge.
If your SOV is low, it means your brand might not be getting the attention it deserves. This is a sign to rethink your marketing approach, whether that’s increasing your ads, getting more active on social media, or working on building brand awareness. So you’ll need to find ways to make your brand stand out.
Word of mouth is one of the most powerful indicators of brand awareness. When customers are talking about your brand, whether through reviews, testimonials, or personal recommendations, it shows that your brand is top of mind.
Keeping track of reviews and referral rates can give you a sense of how engaged your customers are and how likely they are to spread the word. If your customers are sharing their positive experiences and recommending your brand, it’s a clear sign that your brand has strong awareness and credibility.
Word of mouth marketing isn’t just great for getting the word out, it really builds trust. People are way more likely to listen to a friend’s recommendation than any flashy ad.
When customers talk positively about your brand, it’s a big deal and it means your brand is making a real impression. This kind of buzz can turn casual customers into loyal ones, as those who spread the word feel even more connected to your brand.
Your website is where people get their first real sense of your brand. it’s where potential customers decide if they want to stick around or move on. That’s why it’s essential to have SEO optimized content that ensures your business gets discovered and keeps visitors engaged.
When you look at how people behave on your site, you get a clear picture of whether your content is truly connecting with them. Are they exploring your products, reading your blog, or bouncing off immediately?
Here is what you need to pay attention to when checking how well your brand is engaging with visitors:
Using tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar, you can track these behaviors to see what’s working and where there’s room for improvement. The better the engagement, the more likely your website is making an impact and leaving a lasting impression on your audience.
By regularly checking these metrics, you can get a clearer picture of how your website is contributing to your brand awareness and identify areas that could use more focus. This approach will help you stay on top of your audience’s interests and keep your brand in the spotlight.
To succeed, a brand needs more than just visibility, it needs to understand how well it’s resonating with its audience. By keeping track of metrics like social media mentions, website traffic, and search volume, you can see whether your marketing efforts are landing or missing the mark.
This data helps you pinpoint what's working and what isn't, so you can adjust accordingly. Brand awareness isn’t just about being seen; it’s about staying relevant and making it easy for customers to choose you.
With the right insights, you can build stronger connections, increase brand loyalty, and ensure your brand remains top of mind for the long haul
Higglo is a digital marketing agency offering SEO, PPC, web design services and more. We’ve helped different client industries and brands like Hulu and Blizzard expand their reach and grow their presence worldwide. Ready to transform your digital presence? Contact us today and let’s create something unforgettable together.
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Brian Curley
Boost Your Online Presence with Higglo Digital, a leading web and SEO agency offering high-quality services tailored to elevate your brand. Our expert team delivers top-notch SEO strategies, award-winning website designs, and impactful branding solutions. Trust us to optimize your website, drive targeted traffic, and unlock your business's true potential.
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