Brand Health 101
Updated: Mar 18, 2021
Keeping your brand healthy and working hard for you is vital to the success of your business.
How Healthy Is Your Brand?
I know it’s kind of a strange question, but just like your own personal health, you’ve got to tend to your brand’s health if you want your business to grow (which we all do!)
At a time where we’re obsessively monitoring likes, follows, retweets and shares, it’s easy to believe that as long as those numbers are holding steady or going up, our brand is in good shape. And it’s fair to say that those are generally good indicators that your brand is isn’t sick or dying – but they can lull you into a false sense of security about how healthy your brand really is.
Looking at a number of different measures of brand health can give you a more complete picture of where your brand is strong and where it needs help.
Why Does Brand Health Matter?
Your brand is one of your most valuable assets. It’s the idea you hold in your customer’s mind, the promise they expect from you, the experience they fall in love with, and the reputation they trust. Your brand is short-hand for the solutions your customers crave, and it powers the whole-hearted shout-outs they give when they’re encouraging others to give you a try.
With all this at stake, keeping your brand healthy and working hard for you is vital to the success of your business.
Measuring Brand Health
Our bodies give us plenty of signals that it’s time to tend to our health. Sometimes it’s a sniffle or a sneeze, or a feeling that something is ‘off.’ We’re tired, groggy, queasy.
But, how do you know if your brand health is in need of some help?
Luckily, there are plenty of ways to measure the health of your brand. Some require more investment than others, but like all health regimes, you’ve got to commit if you want to see results.
Make it a priority to check your brand metrics at regular intervals (at least every 3 months) and make note of the areas where your brand isn’t effectively helping you achieve your business objectives. This practice will give the data you need to make adjustments to your messaging or marketing strategies and help you get things moving in the right direction.
Five Key Brand Health Metrics
To keep things manageable, I’ve outlined five key metrics you can focus on to measure brand health, along with some easy-to-implement measuring strategies that won’t break the bank or put you over the edge.
Brand Recall is a measure of your brand awareness – how many people know your brand exists.
Engagement is a measure of how well your brand message is connecting with the people you want to reach.
Perception is a measure of how people feel about your brand, and if they see your brand the way you want them to.
Preference is a measure of how likely people are to buy your brand.
Promotion (also known as NPS) is a measure of how willing your customer is to recommend your brand to someone else.
You’re probably already monitoring your likes, follows, retweets and shares which can give you data on brand awareness and brand engagement. To get the data you need for other key metrics, try adopting one or two of the following strategies:
Social Listening
Social listening gives you access to what people are saying about your brand, industry, or competitors across social media and the web. It allows you to measure brand awareness by looking at volumes of mentions around your brand and competitive brands – so you can measure how well you’re doing by comparison. It can also look at positive and negative words and how people talk about your brand to help you measure perception, preference and promotion.
Some social listing tools like Brandwatch Analytics can be quite expensive, but there are a number of more affordable options such as Awario, Agorapulse, and Mention that offer free trials and tiered plans.
Surveys
Survey can be more affordable and give you greater control over the information you gather, but won’t give you the real time data you get from social listening. However, what makes surveys so valuable is the richer, deeper feedback you can gather.
Using Survey Monkey or Google Surveys on Facebook, or directing customers to your survey via on-pack promotions can be a quick and affordable way to measure all five key brand health metrics in one go. If you’re consistent, you can track progress over time.
To boost response, try offering coupons or other value-add incentives.
Customer Interviews
If your read my blog regularly you know I’m a big fan of customer interviews. There’s no better way to understand your brand’s strengths and weaknesses, or how you’re stacking up to the competition than by talking to your customers. Of course, these can be time consuming so using customer interviews in conjunction with social listening tools or surveys is a good way to go.
Check out my free download, The Ultimate Ideal Customer Interview Guide for step-by-step guidance on how to set up and conduct these interviews.
Maximize Your Brand Value By Measuring Your Brand Health
Your brand is the engine that drives your business. Make sure it’s running at peak performance by measuring your brand health and fine-tuning where needed. Getting data is great, but acting in it (before your competitors do) will make the difference.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO IDEAL CUSTOMER INTERVIEWS
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