Is your brand tracking fit for purpose?
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.
9. Get the frequency right
When you have decided on the right content and analytical structure, it is time to think carefully about how frequently you should track. Some argue that tracking continuously is always the best way. Others that you never need to track more frequently than once a year.
So which is right? The answer, as to many things in life is, it depends. For many brands, continuous tracking offers real benefits. If you are in a dynamic category, or a category where you or competitors are spending heavily on marketing activation then it is likely that the benefits of having a continuous read on your brand and the ability to understand the impact of your and competitors activity, will be crucial. In other, perhaps slower moving categories, a robust brand deep dive once per year, from which you can derive deep insights to build marketing plans around will be sufficient. In some cases, it is all businesses have the resources to act upon.
Identifying what is right for your brand is something an expert tracking partner should be well placed to guide you on.
