With so many emerging brands crowding the marketplace, branding has become more important than ever for businesses to develop a loyal customer base and differentiate from competitors. Not only that, but a strong brand can help you increase sales and even attract top employees.
Needless to say, it’s crucial to keep an eye on your brand health, because any existing risks to brand health can critically impact your company’s success.
What is brand health? Why is it important?
Many elements contribute to overall brand health including brand awareness, brand equity, brand reputation, and more. Brand health tracking can help you understand how your brand is performing in the market, how you stack up against your competitors, and how your audience thinks of you.
How do you track brand health?
There are many ways to track brand health and no one method is one-size-fits-all. The outcome and helpfulness of each strategy will ultimately depend on what best fits the size and stage of your business as well as the industry you’re in.
Let’s explore some common brand health tracking strategies, below.
1) Social Listening
Social listening focuses on the volumes of mentions around your brand. It is important to measure the sentiment around the conversations as well to understand whether the tone of mentions is positive or negative. This will help gather more information around brand awareness and brand perception.
Moreover, by tracking the conversations people have about your brand, you can compare to your own positioning statement to see if public perception aligns with internal brand identity. This will help you shape your marketing strategy to ensure you’re delivering the right message and image to your audience.
2) Customer Feedback
Your customers can provide tremendously insightful information on your brand health by conducting regular surveys and interviews. At a very high level, these are some general questions you can consider asking your existing customers:
- What do you like and dislike about the brand?
- How has your perception of the brand changed over time (if at all)?
- Why do you choose to shop with this brand over competitors (or when do you choose a competitor)?
3) Net Promoter Score
Net promoter score (NPS) provides you with numerical data using 0-10 scale to help you understand how likely your customers will recommend your products or services to others. Word of mouth is considered one of the most effective ways to gain new customers. According to Nielson, 92% of people trust recommendations from their friends and family more than advertisements on any platform.
Steps for Calculating NPS
- Step 1: Ask your audience how likely they will recommend your brand to their friends and family on a scale of 0-10.
- Step 2: Total up the answers with a score of 9 and 10 and divide it by the total numbers of people asked. This will be your promoter score.
- Step 3: Total up the answers with a score ranging from 0-6 and divide it by the total numbers of people asked. This will be your detractor score.
- Step 4: Subtract detractor score from the promoter score. This will be your Net Promoter Score.
NPS Benchmark
NPS scores are measured with this single question survey. They’re reported with a number from -100 to +100, with a higher score being desirable.
4) Focus groups and qualitative surveys
Data from qualitative surveys, interviews, and focus groups can provide a more thorough understanding of your brand awareness, reputation, and sentiment from a specific target audience. With advanced technology like FC Live, expert focus groups and interviews can be conducted remotely in real-time with just a mobile phone, laptop, or desktop.
Key Takeaways
By tracking and assessing your brand health, you will learn how well your current brand strategy is working for you. These methods can also shed light on the specific strengths and weaknesses of your brand, thus providing you with clearly defined areas for improvement and the opportunity to gain market share.
If you’re a data-driven marketer looking to track your brand health with easy-to-implement, agile technology, check out Fuel Cycle Ignition to learn more.
