It may surprise you to learn that companies typically spend up to 7% of their marketing budget on activities that build image and awareness. Yet, despite this willingness to spend, achieving a meaningful measure of its effectiveness, for many, remains elusive.
The fact is, that what is not measured, is not managed and the result too often can lead to the value of a brand slipping through an organisation’s fingers.
Developing a well thought out and balanced set of metrics drives objective decision-making and aids the development of awareness over time. Your corporate strategy should be driven by, or as a minimum heavily informed by, your brand image and awareness objectives. Including your sales process, your pricing decisions and all the customer touch-points of your company.
Ask yourself this “What are all the ways that a customer (or potential customer) can form an impression of your brand, company or products and services?
When you have a list, metrics should be developed that cover all aspects of the customer experience. Whilst ‘brand impact’ metrics provide an indication of the overall ‘health of the business’ it is the perceptions of your ‘brand image’ and awareness that measure how important or meaningful your brand, company or product is.
Each metric that you define has to have a specific purpose and can be tracked by asking a specific question of your target audience. For example, if you decide to measure the ‘preference’ for your brand relative to your competitors, your questions may include: “How likely are you to use brand X?”, or “Given a choice, which of these three brands would you prefer?”, or “Have you ever expressed how much you like brand Y without being asked?” The answers to these types of questions will enable you to develop a rich profile of your audience’s perceptions and provide the insight you need to tailor your communications at each customer touch point.
The image and awareness of your brand is a strategic asset of your business and must be managed over time to identify areas for improvement and, ultimately, the actions that will drive organisational growth.
Contact 2Europe to discuss how quantitative tracking techniques can be used to aid the development of your image and awareness.
