How to measure brand awareness?

Brand awareness is measured by such indicators as: spontaneous and prompted recognition, the frequency of brand queries in search, the number of mentions in the media and social networks, as well as the dynamics of these indicators before / after PR or advertising activity. For this purpose, they use audience surveys and questionnaires, search demand analysis, and media analytics services.

Brand awareness is a set of measurable indicators. You need to look at several metrics at once: how often a brand is remembered without prompting, recognized in the list, searched in the search, mentioned in the media and social networks, as well as how memorable the advertisement is.

The most obvious way is through surveys and questionnaires. People are asked questions like, «Which brands in this category do you know?» or «Which of these brands are you familiar with?» The first option shows spontaneous recognition, the second – recognition with a hint, or prompted recognition. If a brand is named by itself, without a list or suggestive options, this is a stronger signal: it has already been fixed in the audience’s memory. Surveys with tips, in turn, are extremely important for new market players and, for example, after rebranding.

The second important indicator is search interest. If the number of search queries with a brand or product name increases after an advertising campaign, it means that people are more likely to notice and remember it. It is especially useful to look at the dynamics in comparison with the same period of the previous year. But comparing, for example, the current and previous quarters is wrong, because seasonality seriously affects all indicators.

The third block is media analytics. It counts how many times a brand is mentioned in news, articles, posts, and comments, as well as in what context it occurs. If there are more mentions, and the tone remains neutral or positive, this is a good sign. For this purpose, media analytics services are used, such as Medialogy and similar monitoring systems.

An important guideline is the comparison before and after the campaign. If the brand was almost not searched for and rarely mentioned before the launch of PR activity, and after that there was growth across all channels, then communication worked. If only the coverage has increased, but the queries, mentions, and responses in surveys have not changed, then recognition has not really increased yet.

Don’t confuse recognition with reach. The coverage shows how many people have seen the message. Recognizability – whether the brand is remembered. That is why evaluation requires not only advertising figures, but also surveys, search, media mentions and social activity.

In practice, experts usually regularly look at brand search demand and media analytics indicators, because obtaining this data is automated in the digital world. If all the metrics, except for the negative in tone, are growing, we can confidently say that PR support is working, and brand awareness is increasing. Surveys on spontaneous brand awareness and recognition with a hint are also important, but technically more difficult, so they are conducted less frequently or for a specific task.