A social media campaign gets thousands of impressions, hundreds of likes and a steady stream of comments. The numbers look good. But when the customer needs the product, does the customer recall the brand behind the campaign?
This is where digital marketing measurement becomes a bit more complicated. Engagement is about how people are engaging with content; it doesn’t necessarily tell you if they remember a brand, remember a brand name or associate a name to a product.
Understanding the difference is understanding that marketing is more than interactions. In this article we examine the ways in which brand awareness can be measured, consumer memory understood and the extent to which marketing activity is creating persistent brand recognition.
Contents
- What Is Brand Awareness?
- Why Engagement Metrics Are Insufficient
- Five measures of brand awareness
- Consumer Psychology and Brand Recall
- The Acknowledgment of SEO and Content
- Practical measurement framework
- A Campaign Case Study
- Typical measurement errors
- Optimize Your Measurement Strategy
- Summary
What Is Brand Awareness?
The degree to which consumers are familiar with a brand and can recognize or remember it is known as brand awareness.
Two concepts are especially important.
Brand recognition is when someone recognizes a brand after seeing a cue like the brand’s logo, packaging, name or distinctive visual identity.
Brand recall is when a person can recall a brand without being prompted by seeing its name or logo.
Brand recall can be assessed on two levels:
Unaided recall: Ask people to list brands in a category without giving them a list. The brands they mention pop up spontaneously.
Aided recognition: Give people a list of brands and ask them which ones they recognize. This measures how well the prompts are known.
For example, a person may recognize a skincare brand when shown its packaging, but not be able to name it when asked which skincare brands they know.
These measures are at varying degrees of familiarity. Your logo might be recognizable if someone sees it, but that doesn’t mean they’ll remember your company in the event of buying a product.
Why Engagement Metrics Are Insufficient
Although they track distinct behaviors, clicks, impressions, likes, shares, and comments are all helpful metrics for gaging performance.
- Impressions are the number of times content was shown, not the number of people who remember it.
- Clicks show someone clicked on a link, but not necessarily that they remembered the brand name.
- Likes and comments are visible engagement – it could be for entertainment, for controversy, or for visuals.
- Video views are counted according to the platform’s rules for counting views and do not necessarily represent meaningful engagement or recall.
A memorable video can drive a lot of engagement, but the audience can’t say who the advertizer is. In contrast, a simple ad might get less interactions but make the brand easier to remember later.
The takeaway is not to give up on engagement metrics. They must be interpreted in conjunction with metrics for recognition, recall, consideration, and other outcomes pertinent to the campaign’s objective.
Five ways to measure brand awareness
- Measure brand recall (unaided and aided)
Surveys are a straightforward method of gaging brand awareness.
Begin with an open-ended question: “What brands come to mind when you think about product category?”
Log the number of relevant respondents who mention your brand unprompted Give them a list of brand names, and ask which ones they recognize. This measures helped to awareness.
First Ask open-ended questions. Showing brand names first may influence later answers. Add realistic competitors. Use neutral language. Survey people who are your target audience.
- Track brand queries
Branded searches are your business name, unique product names, and applicable variations or misspellings.
Use Google Search Console to review impressions and clicks from branded search. Branded search query filtering available to help distinguish branded from non-branded search activity for eligible sites.
Compare to your campaign dates and review changes over time. More branded search activity can indicate increased interest or awareness but it can also be driven by existing customers, PR, seasonality or other marketing activity.
- Carefully analyze direct traffic
Typically, direct traffic refers to visits where analytics cannot precisely identify a referring source. This could be people who are typing in a URL, or using a bookmark, or coming through links where the referral data is not available.
Track direct traffic, return visitors, landing pages, campaign dates, and other acquisition channels Use rises are a supporting signal, not proof of brand awareness. Direct traffic doesn’t necessarily indicate someone specifically sought out or remembered your brand.
- Conduct brand awareness surveys
Ask specific questions that show knowledge and comprehension such as:
- What brand would you consider for this product category?
- What products or services come to mind when you think of this brand?
- Have you seen this brand in the shops recently?- How does this brand stand out from other brands?
Ask the same questions before and after the campaign, with similar audiences. Compare, where possible, the exposed to the campaign with a similar group not exposed.
- Run campaign or brand lift studies
A brand-lift study is when you compare how people who have seen your advertising feel about your brand, compared to a suitable control group.
Results can include awareness, ad recall, brand association and purchase consideration, depending on the study.
These studies offer more robust evidence of campaign impact than simple engagement totals, especially where the design allows for a valid comparison. But they require a lot of data and careful interpretation.
How Consumer Psychology Affects Brand Recall
More marketing messages are sent to people than they are able to consciously recall. Which brands pop into your head is affected by familiarity, attention, repetition, and meaningful associations.
Repeated exposure to a consistent visual identity and a recognizable language, in the right contexts, can help to strengthen memory associations. Additionally, storytelling can give consumers a significant context with which to recall a brand.
But repetition alone does not ensure recall. The exposure needs to be visible enough and relevant and the audience needs to associate the message to the right brand. A beautifully produced commercial that hardly identifies its sponsor may be memorable without developing much brand recognition.
How SEO and Content Build Recognition
Search engine optimization makes it easier for people to find a brand when they are looking for information, solutions or products. A company can expand its audience and develop its expertise over time with the aid of quality content.
Content marketing can reinforce recognition by providing consistent topics, helpful explanations, unique perspectives and clear brand positioning. “Storytelling provides context. It helps audiences understand what a company stands for, not just remember the name.”
Combine these measures: non-branded search visibility can indicate discovery opportunities, branded searches can indicate existing brand-related demand, and recall surveys can test whether that visibility translates to memory.
No single number can tell the whole story.
A Practical Measurement Framework
Small businesses can begin with a simple, repeatable process.
- What is your goal? Decide whether you want to build brand awareness, increase spontaneous recall, or link your brand with a particular product category.
- Set a baseline. Capture current branded search activity, relevant website analytics and survey results before campaign launch.
- Select supporting metrics We need to see at least one direct measure of awareness, such as unaided recall, along with supporting metrics like branded search trends.
- Measure consistently Repeat the survey with similar audiences, questions and timing. Tag analytics with major campaigns and external events.
- Bring the evidence together to discuss. Don’t take one change as a conclusive outcome, look across surveys, search activity and website behavior trends.
For companies with a limited budget, a short survey of relevant potential customers, plus a monthly review of the Search Console, can be a good starting point.
A Campaign Example
Example: Imagine you have a hypothetical skincare business that produces a series of fun skincare videos.
The campaign gets a lot of views, likes and shares. But a follow-up survey finds few viewers can name the business without prompting. More respondents recognize the logo when shown it , suggesting some visual familiarity but limited spontaneous recall.
The campaign may have got attention, but not a strong association between the content and brand.
Next time you do a campaign , a logical way to go is to differentiate the brand personality even more in your videos . And keep linking each piece of content to a consistent brand message . Then do the recall survey again .
These are illustrative results rather than real campaign outcomes. They explain why engagement and brand awareness should be measured separately.
Typical Errors in Measurement
There are some errors that can make awareness seem stronger than it is.
Treating impressions as unique people achieved.
- Measuring recognition only after showing the brand to respondents.
- Surveying existing customers when the target is new audiences.
- Demonstrating that a particular campaign resulted in a rise in branded searches.
- comparing survey results from audiences that are very different.
- Short-term results are achieved without verifying whether awareness still exists.
Correlation means two measures go up or down together. Causation means one factor causes a change in another. Other factors could explain the increase, but a campaign and increasing search activity could be related to timing. The evidence of causality from a well designed controlled study is better than a simple before and after comparison.
How to Improve Your Measurement Strategy
Measurement needs to be linked to business objectives.
Determine what success looks like before launching a campaign, select metrics that are appropriate to that outcome, and record external factors that may affect results.
Maintain consistent survey questions and audience criteria over time. If possible, test campaign impact with a control group. Report results by relevant audience characteristics, and separate awareness from consideration and purchase behavior.
Most importantly, use findings to make better decisions. If someone is familiar with the brand but cannot recall what it offers, assist them in understanding its positioning. If search visibility is up but recall is not in step, evaluate how consistent the brand experience is across content and advertising.
Conclusion
Brand awareness is more than just being there.
It’s how well consumers are able to recognize a brand, remember it when it’s pertinent, and comprehend its values.
Engagement metrics describe how audiences respond to marketing and surveys, analysis of branded search, and well-designed brand-lift studies all provide further evidence of recognition and recall. When used together, these measures give a more balanced view of marketing effectiveness.
The conclusion is straightforward: find out if consumers remember the brand behind your advertising in addition to whether they see it.
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