Brand tracking is a way of continuously measuring the health of a brand, both in terms of consumers usage of the brand’s products or services and what they think about it. Measuring a brand with a brand-tracking study allows companies to not only understand the commercial value of the brand but also to record changes and optimize a strategy to get the most from the brand. Many businesses run a brand tracking study quarterly. However, if a company is running new advertising and marketing campaigns more than regularly, than it’s a good idea to increase the frequency so that they can see how these campaigns are contributing to the brand. Some essential key metrics that many companies track is brand loyalty, brand awareness, and brand associations.
With brand loyalty, provides a view of how likely a customer is to continue to buy from or interact with a brand. It often measured by purchase intent and serves as a good indicator of how strong a brand truly is. If a brand is considered strong, customers are much more likely to buy from a brand again in the future. Brand loyalty is usually feedback that’s provided by existing customers.
With brand awareness, they mainly measure in two different ways, which is brand recall and brand awareness. Brand awareness is regulated by the consumers’ ability to recognize a brand and can be measured as aided awareness, which is a prompt such as showing a product or brand logo. It also measures unaided awareness, which is not prompt. Brand recall is when the consumer’s ability to remember the brand from memory, whether after using a product or service, and seeing a piece of advertising. This is a good measure to see how a piece of communication has contributed to the awareness of the brand in general. Brand associations are when customers develop perceptions about a company, and it forms an image in their minds about who they are and what they stand for.
In brand association, is when brands see how they are perceived to consumers. The brand association should measure what makes the brand unique. Brands need to know what makes them unique and what values they stand for, to help draw out the research. An excellent example of brand association measure is through open text feedback. It allows the consumer the opportunity to leave verbatim feedback without prompting so that the brand can get an accurate view of how the consumer is feeling. With the right software, they can analyze the comments and group them by topics in which associations are the strongest.
In all my past job positions, we have used brand tracking to evolve our products and services in every way possible. Right now, at my current position as assistant manager of a local boutique gym, we use brand tracking mostly for brand loyalty with our current members. We like to know quarterly how many members we have lost, gained, and how strong the brand is becoming. Brand tracking helps brands keep growing as a whole, keep increasing their client base, and outperform their competitors.