In a constantly changing world where business competition is becoming increasingly intense, building and maintaining a strong brand identity is essential for a company’s success.
The brand of your business or the company you work for reflects what you offer as a business and how consumers perceive the products and services you provide.
Therefore, it would be beneficial to use brand tracking tools to monitor and improve public perception of your brand.
In this article, we will explore how to choose and use such tools for your business. Enjoy 🔖
Conținut
Why is Brand Tracking Important?
Brand tracking is the process of monitoring your brand’s performance over time to understand how it is perceived by consumers and to identify any changes in this perception. I have also written an article about what brand tracking is and why you need to measure brand awareness to grow your business.
In general, brand tracking studies focus on the following aspects:
- Brand Recognition: Measuring the extent to which the target audience knows and recognizes the brand.
- Brand Image: Evaluating the brand’s image among the target audience and identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the brand’s image.
- Brand Trust: Measuring the level of trust the target audience has in the brand and identifying the factors influencing this trust.
- Brand Positioning: Evaluating the brand’s positioning in comparison to its competitors and identifying opportunities for improvement and market differentiation.
Measuring and Monitoring Your Brand Awareness
One of the main objectives of brand awareness studies is to evaluate how well your brand is known among consumers.
Identifying your brand’s awareness level is essential for increasing your market share because the more people know your brand, the more likely you are to attract new consumers and retain existing ones.
How are these brand tracking studies conducted?
Simply. During the survey of the target sample, respondents are asked if they are aware of the brand’s existence and if they recognize it.
They can be given details about the brand, such as the slogan or the main characteristics of the products or services offered, what they think about prices, customer service, or any other details we set during the study’s objectives stage.
Based on the responses received, different levels of brand awareness can be identified, such as:
- Very Low to Low Awareness: When few respondents are aware of your brand or do not recognize it at all. In this situation, it is necessary to focus on increasing the degree of brand awareness through marketing and advertising strategies.
- Moderate Awareness: When a significant number of respondents know your brand, but do not know many details about it. In this situation, it is important to focus on communicating the characteristics and advantages of your products or services.
- High Awareness: When the majority of respondents know your brand and recognize its characteristics and slogan. In this situation, it is important to focus on maintaining and consolidating brand awareness by developing consumer loyalty strategies.
After identifying the level of brand awareness, it is essential to develop an effective marketing strategy.
Depending on the identified awareness level, messages, audience types (personas), and communication channels can be adapted to reach your target audience more efficiently and effectively.
For example, if your brand’s awareness level is low, you can run advertising campaigns, but it is also very important to do them online or offline or combine the two, depending on where most of your consumers are, as well as their socio-demographic profiles.
You can learn more about how we do brand tracking at MKOR by reading the full article.
What to Choose: Brand Tracking or Market Research?
Brand tracking studies and market research are two distinct types of marketing research, with the main differences lying in their objectives, what they measure, and when they are conducted.
Here’s how these two types of studies differ:
Primary Objectives:
Brand tracking studies focus on measuring and evaluating the perception and awareness of a brand among its consumers.
The main goal is to understand how the public perceives and interacts with the brand over time.
Market Research Objectives:
Market research has broader objectives, focusing on understanding and evaluating the market as a whole.
The goal is to obtain information about market size, consumer behavior, competition, market trends, and opportunities.
Brand tracking studies evaluate the level of brand recognition, association with certain attributes, and emotional and attitudinal responses to the brand.
They track how these aspects evolve over time following various marketing actions.
These studies are often conducted periodically, usually at regular intervals, such as quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. It is extremely important to ensure continuous monitoring of brand evolution.
The goal of measuring brand awareness is to evaluate the effectiveness of branding strategies and make continuous adjustments to improve brand perception among consumers. Additionally, we can identify trends among market consumers, both for the brand and its competitors.
On the other hand, market research measures market demand and supply, including consumer preferences, prices, distribution, and other aspects that affect marketing decisions and overall business strategy.
Market research can be conducted at various intervals, similar to brand tracking, depending on the specific objectives and needs of the business or project.
The ultimate goal of market research is to be used to help the business understand how to develop, position, and commercialize its products or services in the market.
Brand tracking studies focus on the perception and awareness of a brand, monitoring its evolution over time, while market research has a broader objective, covering aspects related to the overall market, including demand, supply, and general trends.
Both types of studies are valuable for a business but are used in different contexts and for different purposes.
At MKOR, we conduct both types of studies and have the tools and technologies needed to provide relevant data about your brand and consumers.
Contact us if you want to work together on your brand. The sky is the limit when it comes to our creativity and determination.
Developing More Efficient Marketing Strategies
Brand awareness studies are useful for any business, regardless of its size or the industry in which it operates, as they provide important information about what clients and potential clients expect from a brand and how it can be improved to increase awareness, sales, and ultimately, the entire business.
Brand tracking is a powerful tool for measuring the results of marketing campaigns, leading to the development of more efficient marketing strategies.
These studies involve collecting data to evaluate the level of recognition and understanding of your brand by the target audience.
At MKOR, brand awareness research is often conducted through surveys, interviews, and/or focus groups, with the collected data analyzed and interpreted to gain an overall picture of brand awareness and trust.
Here’s how you can use these studies to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns:
- Campaign Preparation: Before launching a campaign, conduct a brand awareness study to determine the current level of recognition and perception of your brand among consumers.
- Defining Objectives: Based on the objectives of your campaign (e.g., increasing awareness, improving emotional attachment to the brand, or increasing purchase intent), set specific metrics to follow. A brand tracking study will help you obtain the desired results while setting realistic objectives based on data collected from your target audience.
- Campaign Implementation: Launch the campaign and monitor the evolution of the results. You can use brand awareness studies in real-time or at predetermined intervals to evaluate the campaign’s impact. At MKOR, we develop the brand tracking strategy together with you to understand your business goals. We then create custom brand tracking studies tailored to your needs. All you have to do is control the results: made to measure.
- Data Analysis: After the campaign, conduct post-campaign analysis to evaluate the results obtained using the best brand tracking tools. We support you in both stages through in-depth analysis of your target audience’s perception of the campaign, helping you understand and know your consumers better.
- Adjustments and Improvements: Use the results obtained to adjust your marketing strategy and improve future campaigns. The MKOR team helps you understand how to use this data to measure the success of your campaign and develop more effective future marketing plans.
As you can see, brand awareness studies can help develop personalized promotion strategies that match the specific needs of your brand’s consumers.
These studies contribute to identifying ways to approach different consumer segments and communicate personalized messages, ensuring the successful implementation of your marketing strategy.
Every business needs to understand what its consumers’ needs and preferences are.
This valuable information can be used to develop and improve the products and services offered to meet market gaps and areas of unsatisfied demand.
In this way, you can develop new products and services that meet consumer needs and thus increase your market share.
How to Obtain Data About Your Consumers
Conducting an internal study of this magnitude can be very costly and, more importantly, requires specialists who can develop the methodology of the brand tracking study from setting the research objectives, defining the sample and data collection methods, developing the questionnaire or interview guide, to conducting pre-tests.
Moreover, you need access to consumers who will provide honest feedback, rather than telling you what you want to hear.
This is unlikely to happen if you collaborate with a third party, such as a market research agency, where the responses represent the unbiased viewpoint and unmediated experience of the consumers.
MKOR has been conducting market research with a panel of over 54,000 people and has been active in the market for over 10 years. We offer services such as:
- Business consulting
- Strategic market research
- Opportunity studies
- Data analysis
- Consumer studies
- Brand tracking analysis (one-time or ongoing) 😊
Together, we can set (develop) the research objectives for a study to measure your brand’s awareness. With well-targeted questions, we can analyze:
- Brand recognition
- Association with specific attributes (e.g., quality, innovation, price)
- Brand sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) – Sentiment Analysis
- Purchase or recommendation intent
- Brand loyalty
The goal is to reveal behavioral data extremely important about your brand’s consumers.
Interested? Contact us to schedule a meeting with us.
Also, in the Services section, you can read more about how we conduct brand tracking studies.
If you want to stay in touch with us, we invite you to subscribe to our newsletter. We promise to send actionable information about the market, based on our latest research.
