Strategic brand tracking is something all marketers feel like they should do, and yet, many times these research initiatives yield pages and pages of data that are reviewed once a quarter, then put away on a shelf (or, let’s face it, in a drive) and not revisited again until the next wave of data becomes available. At Flow Strategy, we believe in the power of the brand tracker, but work closely with our clients to ensure they get the most value out of the work they are doing, and aim to give a brand tracker legs far beyond the traditional brand health metrics.

What is Brand Tracking?

Put simply, brand tracking is a way to continually measure the health of your brand, and typically focuses on the traditional brand funnel. Whether your marketing spend is focused on top-of-funnel, mid-funnel, or bottom-funnel consumer behavior, you should be tracking the specific metrics you seek to influence, and using these insights to guide business decisions.

Brand tracking is not a one-and-done research initiative - you should be evaluating your brand health on a regular cadence to track shifts (both positive and negative) in key metrics over time, identify white-space opportunities for growth, and understand how your brand stacks up against the competition. We generally recommend conducting brand tracking waves each quarter, but additional waves can be executed to align with significant marketing campaigns, seasonal activations, or other activities that may have an impact on your key brand health metrics.

Some of the key metrics you should consider tracking as part of your brand tracking initiatives:

1. Awareness. Brand awareness should be tracked on two levels - unaided, or top-of-mind, brand awareness and aided brand awareness. Top-of-mind awareness measures a consumer’s ability to recall your brand from memory, and is a good way to understand the strength of association between your brand and the product or category in question. Aided brand awareness measures awareness of your brand in response to a prompt, such as showing a list of brand names or logos.

2. Consideration. Just because a consumer is aware of a brand does not mean that brand will make its way into her consideration set. Measuring brand consideration enables you to understand how you stack up against the competition in moving consumers down the purchase funnel.

3. Usage. Brand usage, or penetration, is the next step in the purchase funnel, and helps you understand how many consumers are actually buying your product or service (versus the competitive set). This can be measured based on both purchase recency and purchase frequency. 

4. Loyalty or Preference. Brand loyalty is measured based on feedback from existing customers, and provides a view of how likely a customer is to continue to purchase or interact with your brand. It also helps you profile the consumers who are more loyal to your brand, and therefore worth more of your marketing attention and dollars, compared to those who may dabble in your brand along with many others within the competitive set.

5. Recommendation Behavior. Word-of-mouth recommendation is critical to growth across industries, and therefore important to track among existing customers. Over the years, we’ve observed important differences between those consumers we call active recommenders and those we call passive recommenders. Including this metric in your brand tracking initiatives helps you, as with loyalty, not just track the behavior, but also profile those consumers who are more likely to be active recommenders of your brand.

6. Brand Personality and Associations. Exploring the perceptions consumers have of your brand and the competition will help you understand the areas in which you excel, as well as the areas in which you might be lagging or even misunderstood. Exploring the differences in perceptions between loyal customers and those who are aware of your brand but not yet converted enables you to hone your marketing tactics and identify messaging opportunities that can drive conversion.

This All Sounds Great - So What’s the Catch?

Strategic brand tracking is a critical component to tracking your brand’s health, momentum, and opportunities over time. However, as you can see in the metrics outlined above, it’s easy for a quantitative survey to get out of hand based on the number of competitors that are being tracked and number of questions asked for each competitor. We’re all guilty of wanting to gather as much information as humanly possible in an online survey because “it will be good to know.”

However, when you are tracking excessive amounts of data each quarter, or in some cases each month, it’s also easy to get overwhelmed with the number of insights you generate. The first wave of a tracking study is great - you have access to new data you’ve never seen before, you finally understand where your brand sits relative to the competition, and you’re motivated to act on all these new insights. The second wave is just as exciting - finally, you can directly see the impact of your actions on the purchase funnel relative to last wave. 

But, as you get into the third and fourth waves of the tracker and beyond, things might start to get a little boring. Maybe you aren’t running significant marketing campaigns frequently enough to see meaningful shifts in brand health metrics each quarter. Maybe it’s just too much data to look at every quarter. You might start to feel like you aren’t seeing anything new, or the numbers start to blend together, and you aren’t really sure what you are paying for anymore.

But, you know you can’t give up your brand tracker - again, it’s one of the best ways to effectively track the impact of your efforts over time… So what are you to do?

Let’s Reinvent the Tracker

At Flow Strategy, we’re attempting to reinvent the brand tracker by using what we call a “modularized approach” to tracking. We work closely with our clients to identify the core set of competitors and core set of brand health metrics that should be influencing strategic business decisions. We aim to keep these metrics as tight and focused as possible. 

Then, we layer in additional topics of interest for the business as distinct modules within the survey. Generally, about fifty to sixty percent of a tracking survey is dedicated to key brand health metrics, while the other forty to fifty percent is dedicated to ad hoc topics that can shift in and out over time. 

As an example, we recently developed a brand tracker for a client who was interested in measuring unaided and aided brand awareness over time for all brands within their very crowded and commoditized industry (30+ brands). However, they knew they didn’t need to track the full purchase funnel for all brands. Thus, we structured a survey to track awareness for all brands, but other key brand health metrics were only captured for six focus brands (client brand + 5 key competitors we knew from past research consumers often evaluated against the client brand). 

By streamlining our approach to tracking, we were able to save valuable survey real estate to add three “flex modules” addressing other topic areas relevant to the client’s business needs at that particular time. When we kicked off Wave 1, the client was interested in understanding Americans’ financial well-being, the relationship between social connection and personal relationships on mental and physical health, and how parents today make decisions about their teenagers’ screen time and social media use.

The benefit of a modularized approach to tracking is that the client has captured the valuable insights they need to understand their brand health over time, but they have also gathered additional insights that will infuse life and culturally relevant data into their content strategy, including social media posts, email marketing campaigns, blog post development, infographic development, and more.

And, next Wave, they can choose to repeat one or more flex modules from Wave 1 to track shifts in behavior and perception, or develop new flex modules that address emerging strategic questions.

How Can We Help?

We believe in the power of strategic tracking, but we think it’s high time to reinvent the traditional tracker so your learnings go beyond brand health. Our unique approach can help you reinvigorate your business’s dedication to the brand tracker, and drive key business decisions within all functions of the organization. Contact us today to learn more about our modularized approach to strategic brand tracking.