When consumers have so many options, all just a click away on the internet, it's crucial that they are aware of your business and what you have to offer. If your brand is at the top of their mind, they'll choose you over the competition every time. This is why it's important to fully understand and measure your brand awareness online.
\nBrand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize a brand. Research shows that, on average, 5-7 brand impressions are necessary before someone will remember your brand. However, in order to improve your brand awareness, you need to know how to measure it.
\r\nLuckily, there are multiple ways you can measure your brand awareness online, including the following:
\r\nCreate customer surveys.
\r\nLook at website analytics.
\r\nUse social listening tools.
\r\nLook at search volume data.
\r\nFind your brand on review sites.
\r\nHere are some specifics on each type of measurement.
\r\nOne easy way to measure your brand awareness is by creating online surveys. To get the truest sense of your brand awareness, you can approach this tactic in two different ways: creating customer surveys or surveying a random group of people.
\r\nSending a survey to your customers that includes the question \"How did you hear about us?\" will give you insight into how people are discovering your business. For instance, are the majority of your customers finding out about your company through your blog posts? Or maybe they discovered you on social media? Getting these valuable insights will help you determine where users are talking about you online and how you're reaching your target audience best.
\r\nRemember, creating an online survey is just the first step. The next step is actually getting your customers to complete it, which can be challenging. Make sure your customer survey is simple enough for users to fill out quickly and engaging enough to keep their interest. You can make sure your forms are engaging by keeping them short, adding images and emojis, or using conversational forms.
\r\nAside from surveying your existing customers, it's also important to gauge how familiar random online users are with your brand. So, create an online survey that asks users \"How familiar are you with XYZ company?\" By surveying a random group of people, you can learn how many people can recall your brand.
\r\nNext, you want to look at your website analytics using a free tool such as Google Analytics. Google Analytics can be confusing for beginners, but don't worry, you only need to focus on a couple of sections to measure brand awareness.
\r\nThe Channels section is the best place to measure your brand awareness in Google Analytics. In this section, you are shown a list of eight different channels. The one you want to focus on is Direct. The Direct channel mainly tracks the number of people who typed your website URL into their address bar or used a bookmark to directly access your site. Here you can monitor your direct traffic over time to see if your brand awareness is improving.
\r\nYou can also look at your main traffic sources, which is an indicator of how people discovered your brand online. Head to the Acquisition section, then to All Traffic, and finally to Sources/Medium and click on it. From there you can see your website's top traffic sources. If you find your top traffic sources are social media platforms, it shows that your social media marketing campaigns are working to increase brand awareness.
\r\nPeople love to get online and talk about the brands they love – and sometimes the brands they don't love so much. So, what better way to find out if people are talking about your brand online than by checking out social media? By monitoring the conversations people are having on social media about your brand, you can get unbiased, unfiltered opinions.
\r\nOne way to see what people are saying about your brand online is by doing a simple search on Twitter, Instagram or another platform of your choice. Type your brand name into the platform search bar and see what comes up. But don’t limit yourself to direct mentions of your brand's name. You should also do searches for common misspellings of your brand name as well as specific products or features.
\r\nYou can also get more in-depth by using social listening tools. Tools like Awario do the work for you. They monitor the web in real time and send mentions of your chosen keywords straight to your inbox so you never miss out on a conversation. They are even able to track your keywords in any language, collect posts that ask for a recommendation of a product similar to yours, and find posts with complaints about your competitors.
\r\nTo measure brand awareness, you also want to find out how much your brand is searched for online. This might seem difficult to do, but thanks to tools like Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner, it's pretty easy.
\r\nWith Google Trends, you can enter your keywords, such as your brand name, and discover online interest in your brand over time to see if search volumes are increasing or decreasing. You can also see the interest by subregion – for example, which states are most aware of your business – as well as related topics and queries.
\r\nTo find the exact search volume of your keywords with Google Keyword Planner, you will need to start a paid campaign. Otherwise, it'll simply show you a range, such as 1,000 to 100,000.
\r\nCustomers love to leave reviews on sites like Google, Yelp and Yellow Pages. These sites are where users go to find out about your company. For instance, before dining at a new restaurant, you check out the reviews, right? If the restaurant has awesome reviews, you'll book a reservation. If it has poor reviews, you'll probably skip it. Most people check out companies' reviews before making a purchase. In fact, 97% of people read reviews for local businesses. So, it's important to monitor what people are saying about your brand on review sites if you want to get a good idea of how they view your company.
\r\nBy reading reviews from customers, you can also get insights on how to improve your business, so read the negative reviews too. You might discover that a certain aspect of your product or service is lacking. By listening to the feedback and putting it into action, you can repair those negative online opinions.
With these tips for how to measure your brand awareness online, you'll be able to determine how familiar consumers are with your company and how they view it. Be sure to take these findings into account when planning out your content marketing campaigns. You'll be better able to build brand awareness, generate more leads and stand out from the competition.