Take Your Brand’s Temperature: How to Measure Brand Health

The need to establish clear brand awareness and brand health metrics is essential for any new brand awareness campaign. We believe the first challenge is to clarify brand goals according to best practices that will lead to meaningful business results. The second is to ensure those goals are adopted and understood throughout the organization. This is key to long-term planning ability and helps align resources with marketing and business goals. While brand awareness is a significant factor, there are other health metrics that should be monitored to create a full picture.

We recommend measuring total awareness, both aided and unaided, and metrics such as preference, intent to purchase and satisfaction with the customer experience. These will enable a richer view of the brand and show progress as an organization over time.

How to approach this challenge

Brand measurement should be approached on two different paths. We believe in combining a classic brand awareness and health study with a media effectiveness and impact study.

Brand awareness and health measurement study

This is a survey-based study that is conducted quarterly or twice per year at a minimum, and is designed to thoroughly understand how well a brand is known by the target audience, how it is perceived and how it is viewed against competitors. It can also measure attributes such as intent to purchase and mission-based perceptions as well. The study should be customized to the specific goals of the brand and be considered the ultimate measurement; all efforts should be aligned around this data.

Media effectiveness and impact study

Naturally, as a media agency we recommend measuring the impact of media efforts on brand and marketing goals as directly as possible. There are many great tools and technologies to help facilitate the process. The result is enhanced confidence in long-term planning for media and advertising dollars that work harder to achieve specific brand goals.

A media effectiveness study can look at cross-channel media such as TV, digital, video, print and more, understand how they work together and then provide insight on which channels deliver in more effective ways to reach specific objectives. Dollar for dollar it can help identify which tactics and platforms drive greater outcomes. It is not a full attribution study, but a quicker, less costly way to gain insight specifically on media spend and its impact.

This approach is ideal for a new brand launch since it can quickly shed light on how valuable media dollars are performing in the marketplace.

Recommendations for selecting partners and services

There are many services and agencies that can deliver a brand health measurement approach. The ideal partner is one who is a proven expert in creative and effective ways to approach brand and marketing research. They should be able to work quickly to customize for specific needs and deliver a range of research solutions that can lead to real business insights. Of course, a classic brand study is essential, but additional customer experience research can prove helpful as well, especially as the brand grows.

For the media effectiveness study, Comscore offers a variety of cross-channel media impact measurement tools. They can help determine the best option based on the parameters of the study, identify which is best-suited based on needs and aid in planning adequate budget resources. It is best to share media plans as they are developed. They will then examine for feasibility and outline costs and expectations for the study. At the end of the study, Comscore will deliver a comprehensive report of all media tactics and explain which types of media, creative and audiences were most impactful to the advertising goals.

More broadly, to evaluate total marketing ROAS and understand the impact of efforts across all channels, we recommend collaborating with a business partner who has a complete team of data scientists that can quickly recommend a data approach and build a predictive ROI model. Although it has a longer development time window, this type of model is ultimately necessary to forecast and manage marketing spend.

Next Steps

Ready to move forward with brand measurement? Let’s connect. We will review your needs, make recommendations and facilitate conversations with additional agencies or consultants as needed to ensure comprehensive brand health measurement and guidance to fast-forward your business.