Brand Health Tracker: All You Need to Know
Health comes first, we have always been told. The driving factor behind any hard work or achievement is good and maintained health. The universality of this motto makes this equally applicable to businesses as it is to human beings. While businesses tend to follow a different saying--“the customer comes first”--a sustainable one will also prioritize its health.
This is where the brand health tracker comes in, a study typically quantitative in nature used to monitor customer awareness and perceptions of a brand in order to measure the business’ performance.
How a Brand Health Study Helps You:
While a business could go through its purchase directory to determine the amount of customers it is attracting, the extent of the business’ reach goes beyond purchasing--awareness. Awareness evaluates the effectiveness of your marketing campaign and guides you on whether different strategies need to be implemented. Hence, once a brand presence has been developed and a company is investing in future-driven marketing, it becomes imperative to conduct a baseline study of the brand health. These are the actionable insights your company will achieve:
Determine the pain points in your marketing strategies ranging from ads to customer care.
Plan growth incorporating customer feedback.
Identify your position in the market in relation to your competitors.
Generate business volume driven by customer satisfaction.
Key Metrics of the Brand Health Tracker
A good brand health study takes into consideration all the essential domains that make up the business’ life. No one is sustainable without the other; without loyalty or favourable associations to a brand, a consumer’s high awareness level will not significantly impact their purchase decisions nor their capacity to influence others towards the brand.
At Akademos, we conduct a tracking study by evaluating three domains that we have found to be fundamental to every business:
Brand Awareness: is a measurement of how memorable your brand and its products/services are. Primarily, we use two metrics to judge this.
Spontaneous Recall: Through an unaided recall, identify how likely your brand will be remembered within its market and whether or not it is “Top of Mind.”
Prompted Awareness: This is an aided recall that measures how likely the brand will be remembered when a stimulus is presented.
Brand Equity: is the market value that is produced by customer perception of the brand.
Net Promoter Score (NPS): This is the primary key metric used to gauge brand equity. Put simply, it’s a score out of 10 given by a consumer on how likely they would recommend the brand to someone else.
Based on the score, consumers can be divided into 3 categories:
The detractors are all those who give a score between 1-6. This group does not only break the word-of-mouth chain but could also potentially begin a negative one if they are unhappy customers.
The passives score between 7-8 and, while satisfied with the brand, are not fully committed to it and are impressionable by other brands.
The promoters are the 9-10 scorers who have been swayed by your brand and are willing to spread the word to others.
Brand Relationship: considers both the perceived and actual relationship between the consumer and the business. This should be aimed at fostering benefits for both parties.
The brand relationship metric looks into the purchase frequency of a customer on a range of “I buy from this brand more than once a month” to “I just know of this brand, but have never tried it.” Based on the frequency, consumers can be given labels similar to the NPS ones: Awarers/Non-considerers, Trialists/Switchers, and Regulars/Committed.
Brand Health Tracking for B2B Brands
The above metrics are largely applicable for B2C (Business-to-Consumer) brands. For a B2B (Business-to-Business) company where the nature of the marketplace changes as the purchase behaviour and awareness strategies differ, it is important to consider a different set of metrics. Following are ways B2B companies may be able to determine their brand awareness:
1. Social media: Measure your company’s awareness and engagement through the amount of views, likes, shares, and comments on your posts.
2. Website: The amount of traction you get can indicate your recognisability and how much you need to commit to SEO strategies.
3. Tagging: Identify who and how many promoters of your brand exist online by following the number of tags you get.
Authors bio:
Aiman is a student of History and Public Policy in her final year at LUMS. She is currently a Research Intern at Akademos and the Editor-in-Chief of her campus paper, The LUMS Post.
She can be contacted at www.linkedin.com/in/syeda-aiman-zehra.
Sources:
http://foresight.com.pk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/BHT-Introduction.pdf
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/measuring-brand-health-to-improve-topline-growth/
https://www.protocol80.com/blog/measure-your-b2b-brand-awareness
https://www.kantar.com/expertise/brand-growth/brand-tracking
