You wouldn’t ignore your own physical or mental health, so why ignore the brand health of your company?
What, you didn’t even realize that your brand has health? You better believe it does! What’s more, it’s something that you can track too.
Even if you are happy with your brand health at the moment, this is no reason to ignore it. Just like us, our brands can quickly become “ill” but if you spot it in time, it should be easy to recover from.
Whether you didn’t previously know about brand health, or you’ve been unsuccessful in diagnosing your own, this blog post is for you. Read on to get the basics on this important metric and to find out how you can track it.
What is Brand Health?
Firstly, let’s take a look at what brand health is.
It’s quite simple really. It’s all to do with how well your brand is performing overall.
If the brand is helping the company achieve all the goals that are set for it, then it’s a success. A successful brand is a healthy brand!
Why is Tracking Brand Health Important?
If you know that your brand is targeting the right audience and increasing your sales, you might be wondering why you should focus any effort on tracking its health.
Well, as we mentioned before, it doesn’t take long for a healthy brand to turn into a weak one. You can’t afford to keep your eye off it-when you look back it might not be quite as fit and healthy as you thought.
Tracking brand health will also bring these benefits too:
- You’ll clearly see the brand’s strengths and weaknesses. What’s working for your branding strategy, what isn’t? Take a look at the brand health metric to find out.
- It’s a chance to check the overall performance of the brand. Finding out the status of your brand health is a chance to get an accurate insight into its performance as a whole.
- What is holding your brand back from striving? You’ll know once you check in with its health.
Now that you know why you should be tracking the brand health, let’s take a look at what you need to track. There are 11 key metrics involved.
13 Brand Health Metrics You Need to Know
1. Brand Awareness
Time and time again we keep on returning to brand awareness. Because this is such an important metric for all things brand, we’ve already written loads about it.
The main takeaway is that all of the smaller metrics that come together to show you brand awareness-think social media mentions, website traffic, and online reviews-can also add up to highlight your brand health.
2. Brand Consideration
Even though someone knows your brand, that’s no guarantee that they would actually buy something from you. To get an idea of how many of your target audience would genuinely think to use your company, you need to take a look at brand consideration. If you find that there’s a strong consideration, then it’s a sign of good brand health. That’s because you’ll have a large group of people who you could nurture to become actual sales.
3. Brand Associations
It’s important to not worry what people think about you, but that isn’t the case for your brand. Think of it this way; if your target audience doesn’t have a very good perception of your company, then there’s not much chance in them choosing it over your competitors.
By delving into your brand associations, you can see what your audience consider to be your strengths and weaknesses. You then know what needs to be worked on.
4. Time on Website
Getting a lot of web traffic sent your way through SEO and other referrals is great. However, if those web users are spending hardly any time on your site, then that isn’t so great.
If people are leaving your site as soon as they land on it, it’s a sign that they simply aren’t interested. There are ways you can change this. Add lots of attention-grabbing content that appeals to them and shows them instantly that your site is the place to be.
5. Search Intent
Finding out how web users discover your domain isn’t just for the SEO whizz kids. All of you brand managers out there should take note of this as well. Take a look at all the keyword phrases that people are searching for when they land on your site. This is closely linked to brand awareness, as it will give you an idea of whether web users are Googling specifically to find you.
If people are searching for branded search terms, then it’s an indicator that your brand has a particularly good unaided brand awareness.
While you are at it, you should see if there are any signs that people are trying to search for your site but aren’t discovering it. That might mean that you need to reconsider the keywords you are targeting with your current branding strategy.
6. Brand Loyalty
Attracting customer, great; retaining customers, even better! A large chunk of most brands’ profits come from loyal customers. Plus, it’s always loyal customers who go on to recommend brands to all their friends and family, so you need to get on their good side.
There are a few different ways to track loyalty, but the main ones are tracking its various elements: commitment, associations, trust, satisfaction, and repeat sales.
7. Social Listening
Consumers want to spread the word about brands and companies that they love. So, you can be sure that those who love your work will be shouting about you on the likes of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.
But that is just one side of the story. If people have had bad experiences with your brand, then they might also take to their social media profiles to vent their frustration.
Listen to all of these social mentions but put them in context. If people aren’t happy, then there is obviously some room for improvement.
8. Volatility
Our opinions are constantly changing. You’ll know this from your own experience. This means that consumers’ feelings about your brand might change over time. This is something that can be measured quite easily. As long as you have your finger on the pulse, you will be able to sense when there are any negative changes and put a stop to it.
You should also find that tracking and managing volatility can help to strengthen your brand value as well. If people view it in a good light, then it will be seen to have a lot of value for them.
As a side effect of measuring volatility and seeing where improvements are necessary, many brands also find that they can inadvertently boost their customer relationships.
9. Purchase
Being able to track all of the above brand metrics is all well and good, but there’s one thing missing: knowing exactly how many people are actually buying from you.
If few people are buying your products or services, you are definitely doing something wrong-but what? To find out what you need to do to push them all the way down the sales funnel, you need to track the purchase metric. You’ll gain plenty of data that shows who is buying and how often, as well as how much they are spending. Take a look at the target audiences that are missing and think about how you can start sealing the deal with more sales.
10. Returning Visitors
Your website analytics should show you how much of the web traffic consists of returning visitors. Plenty of returning visitors show that you have strong brand loyalty, which should also correspond to its health.
One further point to make is that you are a lot more likely to sell to returning customers. Those who land on your site for the very first time probably won’t be ready to commit to a sale. They are just there to check you out and have a peek at all the information about you. If they like what they see, though, then they should be back at a later date to make their purchase.
11. Brand Score
This score will come from the brand tracking tool that you use. These kinds of tools are all very different and the brand score that you get from one could give you a slightly different insight into the score from another. However, these scores are still pretty useful for getting an overall indication of your brand health.
If you are short on time, then these brand trackers are super useful as they make it quick and easy to get an overall view of how you are doing.
12. Brand Preference
They say that jealousy may be the green-eyed monster, but we say that having a sneaky look at what competitors are up to can only be a good thing! Otherwise, how are you meant to know how you compare to them?!
If you look at brand preference, you will get an idea of who your target audience prefer-you or your main competitors. If the results aren’t what you wanted to hear, you should at least come away with ideas on where you can improve.
13. Brand Delivery
It’s all well and good to have a shiny brand that looks super attractive. However, if you aren’t delivering what you promise, then you are going to run into problems. Unhappy customers will go elsewhere, so you better make sure that your brand is delivering!
That’s a lot of metrics to track, right? If you were reading through the list and started to think that it sounds like it might be too much effort, trust us-it definitely isn’t! The benefits that you will gain from using these metrics to track your brand health will make it all completely worth it.
There’s so much that you will come away with. From understanding what you need to do to improve your branding, to getting an up-to-date idea of your brand’s success, you’ll certainly be able to take all of these key insights and run with them!
Originally published at https://www.latana.com.
