Is your brand tracking fit for purpose?
Your brand is your most valuable intangible asset. A strong brand helps you to grow your business and helps to ensure profitability through justifying a higher price. As Mark Ritson says, ‘if you’re not tracking your brand then you’re not managing your brand’. So, it’s perhaps no surprise that the majority of businesses have some form of brand tracking in place. Without tracking, how will you manage, steer and course correct your brand?
So what does a good tracking study look like?
We have put together what we are calling our Top 10 of brand tracking. 10 posts, that in combination aim to provide the most valuable advice we can based on our combined experience.
1. Meaningful metrics
If you’re going to be tracking the health of your brand, then what should you be measuring? A good starting point is to have some kind of overall measure of your brand equity that you know is meaningful. That is to say, that the metric bears a clear relationship to business success. If it doesn’t then you risk tracking, and attempting to drive, a metric that can lead you in the wrong direction. Think carefully about what that metric is. Ask to see your tracking partners’ validations for their recommendations. And ideally, once you have sufficient data, look to conduct your own validations between your business metrics and your brand tracking KPIs.
But what metrics are likely to be important? At Ipsos we have our own validated attitudinal equity metric but we also believe that there is still value in the measures that make up the sometimes criticised ‘brand funnel’. While it is true that customers rarely follow a nice linear journey from becoming aware of a brand to considering it, to choosing it, this doesn’t mean that there is no value in understanding where your brand sits in these terms. If you don’t know this information, then how can you know what the main focus for marketing should be? The role for marketing and the tools you might employ are likely very different if your focus is on building awareness rather than if, for example, everyone knows about you but you need to nudge more people to choose your brand (more often).
Beyond these measures, a good tracking study should help you to understand how your brand is perceived - both in terms of image and personality - and in what occasions your brand comes to mind or is considered – and vitally how this relates to your brand’s competitors. In mapping these out, we are able to understand whether your brand is positioned as intended in the minds of consumers. It also means that we have the means to derive what is important for people in your market – and in turn to identify opportunities and to provide guidance.
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