Most consumers have a preferred choice between competing brands: Apple and PC, Coca-Cola and Pepsi or Walmart and Target. Given the choice, you’ll always buy from one over the other. There will be exceptions of course. For example, when you’re in a town with a local grocery store chain like Wegmans, Safeway or Heinen’s, but most people have a favorite place to do their weekly shopping and stick to it.
Whether conscious or not, the reasoning behind this choice lies within the success of each brand. You perceive the store you shop at more frequently to be a more successful brand. The question is, has your brand reached this level of success that it resonates with your customers like your favorite store does with you?
The first step in answering this question is determining your brand’s equity or it’s ability to be recognized and the added value of a product given its brand name. This is based on the customer’s perception of the brand and the value it brings to them.
How do customers feel about your logo?
If your customers recognize your brand’s logo when they see it on products in the store, you’re on the right track. A strong logo encompasses your brand and delivers a promise that this product will meet the expectations set by your brand. Your logo should add value for your customers and make their purchasing decision easier.
Surveying consumer thoughts on your brand
To measure if your logo is resonating with customers positively, you can conduct surveys through email, website or telephone. Participants can be your existing customer base or a randomized selection of individuals familiar with your brand. Survey questions often ask participants to rate their feelings on a scale from one to ten. These responses will provide an insight into your customer’s feelings about your brand and whether you should consider rebranding or not.
Setting up focus groups
Additionally, focus groups can provide more in-depth responses to measure your brand’s success. Focus groups allow a handful of individuals to converse with one another and a moderator. Their conversations will reveal insights about your brand that would have never occurred to you. Throughout a focus group session, questions should measure the memorability, favorability and distinctiveness of your brand. A simple, low-budgeted approach to focus groups is compiling reviews on your website or comments from customers to customer service representatives.
Do customers engage your brand digitally?
If you’ve measured your brand qualitatively and want more, use data-driven metrics to determine its success. Looking at the number of views, likes, shares and comments on each of your platforms is a great way to do so. You can also look at industry benchmarks to determine if your posts are receiving a successful amount of engagement.
Facebook’s Insights allows businesses to gather metrics from how many people are seeing your Facebook posts to how many organic and paid likes you have received within a specified date range. Also, direct mentions, when users actively tag a brand’s social profile in posts using ‘@’, on Twitter is a good indicator of brand awareness. You can monitor users’ comments directed at your brand through mentions and should reply or interact with their tweets to show consumers you’re engaged.
Subsequently, use data from your web traffic such as page visits, clicks, engagement and time spent on page for further quantitative data. For example, Google Analytics tracks who types your URL into their address bar, uses a browser bookmark or clicks a link in an untracked email or offline document. Monitoring these metrics can provide information on changes in brand awareness and the overall success of your brand.
What does your brand’s success mean?
A successful brand is not created overnight but it is created, managed and updated to reflect the evolution of your business and industry. Creating a successful brand will be a long-term investment that will pay off. Increasing brand awareness and strengthening your brand will allow your customers and potentials customers to understand your business better which can lead to an increase in sales.
With the tools to increase your brands’ success, get in touch with Proforma, industry-leading print and promotional products supplier to reach your customers wherever they are.