Four ways to measure brand awareness

What are you thinking about when you hear the words “laundry soap”? What about soft drinks, too? Fast food? Computers? Cars? Most likely, your answers were something along the lines of: Tide. Coca-Cola. McDonald's.

This is brand awareness at work.

In today's digitally crowded marketplaces, brand awareness is the ability to identify and recall your brand. Every hour of the day, consumers are bombarded with brand messages and advertisements.

You won't be able to build brand awareness in your industry without constantly fighting for their attention.

How do you determine if your company is well-known? How can you increase it? This article will discuss 4 methods to measure brand awareness and provide actionable steps to increase it.

Quick Take-Aways

• Brand awareness is one of the most important elements brands use to evaluate marketing strategies. This includes organic traffic, word-of mouth marketing, and word-of mouth marketing.

• A higher percentage of organic traffic than paid web traffic is an indicator that high SERP rankings have created brand awareness.

• A high volume of branded searches is a sign that people are specifically searching for your brand.

• Organic share of voice is the measure of how visible your brand appears in SERPs for keywords and topics that are brand-relevant.

What is brand awareness? Why is it important?

Brand awareness refers to the degree that consumers recognize your brand. Brand awareness is measured by looking beyond the established customer base to determine how well your brand is known within your industry and in the wider consumer market.

Consider the examples at the beginning of this article. It doesn't really matter if your Apple, Tide, Coca-Cola or McDonald's customer. You know the brands, both their logos and names, and what they offer.

Truth is that brands won't be able to achieve the brand recognition these examples have enjoyed over many decades. You can, and should, achieve this in your niche market and within your industry. The brand awareness drive organic traffic, conversions and sales. It is ultimately a driving force behind your company's continued growth.

Businesses across all industries recognize the importance of brand awareness, and are incorporating it into their strategic plans. According to digital marketing platform Bynder, 43% of marketers listed “growing brand awareness” as their top goal in 2020 State of Branding Report.

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It is important to regularly measure your brand awareness to ensure that it grows and stays high. You'll be able to identify gaps and opportunities, and then implement the best strategies to grow your brand awareness over time.

Four Ways to Measure Brand Awareness

Comparison of organic and paid search traffic

Organic search traffic refers to web traffic that is not generated by paid advertising. This traffic comes directly from algorithmic searches that are achieved via content marketing and SEO web strategies. This is a great way to gauge brand awareness by analyzing how your rank on search engines.

What is the importance of search engine rankings for brand awareness? Search engines account for 93% of all online interactions. Search engines are the first place people go when they search for brands. To gain consumer recognition, brands must be found in search engine results.

Comparing organic and paid search traffic is the best way to gauge brand awareness. Higher organic search traffic means better brand awareness.

Although organic traffic is a variable percentage across industries, BrightEdge research has shown that it drives about 53% of all web traffic.

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Even if your organic traffic share is low there are still ways to increase it. Organic traffic is driven primarily through search engines. The best way to increase organic traffic is to create content that is compatible with Google's ranking factors.

Some quick tips:

• Your content should be keyword-driven

• You should focus on topics and content that have high value for your audience.

• Mobile optimization: Optimize your content

• Attention to site structure and user experience

Volume of branded searches

Branded search volume is the number of searches generated by branded keywords. This means that branded search traffic is generated from specific queries related to your brand.

Branded search volume is a sign that people are familiar with your brand and will look for it when they need similar products or services.

It's like this: People search online for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Consumers who are searching for your brand do these things already know what you do. This is why you can establish brand awareness.

To find out how much brand-related search traffic you are getting and what it is doing to increase your reach, you can do a branded audit. You can then take steps to increase brand traffic by organizing your keywords and capitalizing upon high-intent keywords.

Here's the way Wayfair did it (really well).

Surveys to increase brand awareness

Surveys that measure how consumers perceive a brand can help businesses gauge brand awareness. These surveys target a group beyond the current customer base. It could be the general population for some brands, while others could define it by geography (especially local brands), or by products and/or services for others.

A multinational wine company might, for example, survey wine drinkers who are of a particular type (e.g. A multinational wine company might survey wine drinkers of a specific type (e.g. red vs..white) or at a certain age which falls within their target customer base. Local breweries may conduct a survey of beer drinkers in one specific region. To get accurate results, it is important to target the right group.

Unaided questions, such as “What brands do you think of when you think about X product?” are the most common way to begin brand awareness surveys. Then drill down to aided questions, such as “Which of these brands have you heard of in relation to X products and services?”

To get started, you can use these brand awareness survey templates (such as the one below).

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Organic search share of voice

One of the best ways to gauge your brand awareness is to understand your organic share. It tells you how visible your brand is in search results when you use a particular set of keywords.

You are more likely to rank higher for branded keywords because you are your brand. It is better to use non-branded keywords to calculate your share of voice.

There are many keyword research tools, such as Ahrefs and SEMRush that can help you find share of voice.

Great content can increase brand awareness

Most metrics used to measure brand awareness are based on great content. High-quality, consistent content drives more organic traffic to your site and improves search rankings.

Marketing Insider Group's writers can provide ready-to-publish content every week for a whole year. While your business is focused on its core priorities, you can rest assured that your brand produces content that delivers.

To learn more, or to schedule a consultation, visit our Content Builder Service.