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Creating a brand is one of the most important things an organization will do. A brand is more than a name and a visual system; it’s the foundation for every touchpoint with every audience — from customers to employees and investors. To get it right, smart business leaders bring in the expertise of branding agencies to conduct a thorough audit of the offering, the competitive landscape, and key areas of differentiation.
The product of a brand-building project should be an impactful brand book with stunning visuals and inspirational descriptions of what the brand stands for, what it hopes to achieve, and who it will serve.
But then what?
Once a brand is created, how do you measure and manage brand health? Without a concerted, structured effort, it’s easy for brands to go astray, unwittingly falling short of the brand promise or failing to reach their full potential. That’s where brand measurement and brand management come in.
Measuring Brand Health
Understanding how to measure brand health starts by defining it. Your brand health is an assessment of how well you meet your business objectives by delivering on your brand promise. It’s important to take this balanced approach vs looking at cost, growth and revenue targets alone, since those KPIs can not capture the long-term costs of short-term measures.
For example, if your brand sells upscale products, you could simultaneously grow your revenue and customer base while reducing cost per acquisition by marking down all of your products by 50%. But in the long run, this approach would diminish your brand value because you would no longer be able to afford the same level of investment in quality, service and design. You would no longer be delivering on your brand promise.
To evaluate your brand health, you must also track every aspect of your brand presence — your brand awareness, reputation, engagement, consideration and loyalty. Purposefully managing these elements of your brand will help you build brand equity over time, generating big value for your business. In fact, 84% of the value of S&P 500 companies comes from brand equity.
The below reference outlines some ways that each of these elements of your brand can be measured.
Managing Brand Health
To effectively manage your brand health, it is important to track these aspects of your brand presence periodically to see how well your brand is performing compared to your own baseline, as well as your competitors. Looking at these metrics within the framework of these five areas also helps to provide guidance on how to move forward if your brand health is struggling.
For example, if you see that your brand awareness is low, start by evaluating your audience personas and media channels to ensure that you are meeting your target audiences appropriately, and then work to create an impactful brand awareness campaign. To make the most impact, focus on bringing big ideas to life to grab audiences’ attention and make your brand promise shine.
If your brand is meeting all of your goals for impressions and share of voice, but you find that audiences are not engaging with your content, drill in further on your brand campaign with updated messaging that connects on a more emotional level. Your mid-level campaign should provide more information without getting technical, and convey how your brand recognizes and addresses a core human truth.
If all of your paid media is working to bring audiences to your website, and you find that your brand health is suffering at that point, there is work to be done to help increase purchase intent and sales velocity. Start by digging into cart abandonment data to see where consumers are losing interest. Consider engaging with an outside agency to evaluate your user journey, then identify areas of confusion or breakage, and work to enhance your experience and messaging accordingly.
Your brand reputation and brand loyalty are very closely tied together, so one of these areas rarely suffers without impacting the other. If you find this to be the case, consider introducing elements of surprise and delight into your brand experience — not only for customers, but also for employees. These team members are important ambassadors who bring your brand to life in the market with every customer touchpoint, so it’s important that they live and breathe your core values.
Gigasavvy helps brands improve their brand health by bringing big ideas to life with emotionally impactful creative. Contact us to find out how we can help you connect with your audiences on a deeper level at every stage of the purchase journey.
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