How to measure brand marketing: 6 ways

Bloom Content Team
Apr 25, 2023
4 min read

In today's crowded marketplace, building a strong brand is more important than ever. For high-growth startups and scale-ups, a strong brand can make all the difference in standing out from the competition, attracting new customers, and retaining existing ones. However, one of the biggest challenges of brand marketing is that it can be difficult to measure success. Unlike other marketing efforts, such as advertising or social media campaigns, the results of brand marketing are often intangible and difficult to quantify.

Despite its perceived intangibility, measuring the success of brand marketing is essential to ensure that you are investing your resources effectively and achieving the desired outcomes. In this post, we will explore some key ways to measure the success of your brand marketing efforts.

Below are six ways you can measure your brand marketing success:

1. Product-market fit with the magic 40% benchmark

One of the most important metrics for measuring brand success is product-market fit (or PMF*).

Rahul Vohra, the founder of Superhuman, suggests that a good indicator of product-market fit is if at least 40% of users say they would be "very disappointed" if they could no longer use your product or service.

In his article for Firstround, the entrepreneur detailed the practical steps to how he built a PMF engine - crucially to identify a leading indicator of PMF, as opposed to lagging (as part of the original concept by Silicon Valley OG, Sean Ellis).

This metric is a strong indicator that your brand is resonating with your target audience and that you are delivering real value.

Read more about how to achieve product-market fit here.

2. User intent through branded search terms

Another way to measure brand success is by tracking branded search terms. Branded search terms are keywords that include your brand name or variations of it. Tracking these terms can help you understand how often users are actively searching for your brand, which can be a good indicator of user intent and interest in your products or services.

Those searching your brand name directly are more likely to convert into customers compared to those who randomly find you in search.

As such, branded search is a huge (albeit neglected) part of any sales funnel; about 50% of people will type [brand name reviews] or something similar in Google before buying.

Read this handy tutorial on optimising your branded search terms from CXL for more.

3. Brand recall through surveys or questionnaires

Is your brand well-known enough for consumers to name it without being prompted?

Achieving brand awareness is one thing. Brand recall, on the other hand? That's where the magic happens.

The bedrock to successful brand marketing is to firstly develop a distinctive brand. One that's memorable and that comes to mind in the right way when a customer needs you.

Measuring memorability in the industry is called "brand recall" - and it's another key metric for measuring brand success.

This refers to the ability of your target audience to remember and recognise your brand. You can measure brand recall through surveys or questionnaires that ask respondents to recall your brand and assess their familiarity with it.

Why does this matter? Well, if you know the % of people who are aware of your brand, and roughly what your market share is, you can compare and contrast these two numbers. The goal should be to turn brand awareness into brand consideration – and ultimately get more people buying from your brand, and that market share percentage will increase.

Not sure where to start? Head to Attest's guide on how to measure brand recall including survey templates and question prompts.

4. Customer loyalty

Another way to measure brand success is by tracking customer loyalty. People remain loyal to a business primarily through an emotional connection. And how do businesses emotionally connect with people? Through brand, of course.

Sure, you can implement a loyalty scheme or rewards programme - but often the sign-ups are motivated by the discounts or freebies on offer. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but it is more of a tactical quick win as opposed to the longer-term, deeper customer relationship your business should be aiming for.

Besides reward incentives, loyalty can be assessed through metrics like shopping frequency, churn rate, basket size, daily or monthly active users (DAU/MAU) depending on the type of business.

These metrics can help you understand how engaged and loyal your customers are, which is of course a strong indicator of brand success.

5. Word of mouth measured by referrals

Naturally following on from loyalty is advocacy; where your customers are not only loyal to your brand, but they love you so much they will advocate for you!

This translates into the holy grail of marketing: £0 CPA! a.k.a. Word of mouth marketing - another powerful indicator of brand success.

Tracking referrals can help you understand how often your customers are recommending your brand to others. Referral metrics can be tracked through referral programs, customer feedback surveys, and social media monitoring.

6. Customer Lifetime Value

Finally, customer lifetime value is a qualitative indicator of brand success.

Stronger brands tend to have higher-paying customers who are more loyal and engaged. By tracking customer lifetime value, you can gain insights into the long-term value of your brand and how it is perceived by your target audience.

In conclusion, while measuring the success of brand marketing can be challenging, it is essential for ensuring that your investments are paying off and achieving the desired outcomes. By tracking key metrics such as product-market fit, user intent, brand recall, customer loyalty, word of mouth, and customer lifetime value, you can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your brand marketing efforts and make data-driven decisions to optimise your strategy.

Interested in seeing how brand marketing can help your startup? Simply book a call or send us an email - we'd love to help your business bloom!

Bloom is an award-winning marketing agency taking startups to sophisticated scale-up status through marketing strategy. With work featured in the likes of Forbes, The Independent, and Sifted, we are proud to help UK businesses achieve the next level in their growth journey.

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