Author: Jeremy Braune

Jeremy specialises in delivering market research and consultancy programmes that enable organisations to maximise the impact of their brands, products and services, communications and customer experience delivery. His company, Brandspeak, has offices in London and Bristol and since 2004 it has been helping companies all over the UK and globally. Jeremy has also been a guest lecturer and speaker on London Business School's acclaimed MBA course, on the subject of Brands and Branding.

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In the digital space, where information spreads like wildfire, a brand’s reputation becomes highly vulnerable to crises. A negative review by a customer can go viral, and even ads can get misinterpreted,  destroying years of trust and creating a PR crisis. This is where brand tracking comes into play and contributes much to crisis management. It helps a company keep its finger on the pulse of brand perception, catches early warning signals of trouble, and acts quickly to prevent possible crises from getting worse.

This blog explores how ongoing brand tracking can protect brand reputation through the detection and mitigation of emerging crises before they spiral out of control.

What is Brand Tracking?

Brand tracking encompasses the methodological procedures behind the process of continuous monitoring and measurement of brand perception within its target audience.

It is a technique that combines data from surveys, social media, customer feedback, questionnaires, and media coverage to measure fluctuations in brand sentiment and awareness. Brand tracking aims to give a crystal clear picture of the performance of the brand through the consumers’ eyes and allows shifts in public perception (which could signal a problem) to be detected.

benefits-of-brand-tracking-infographic-brandspeak-1-412x1024 The Role of Brand Tracking in Crisis Management: Protecting Brand Reputation

Brand Reputation Matters

Before going into the details of how brand tracking will support crisis management, let’s outline why brand reputation matters. Perhaps the most prized asset of a brand is its reputation,  because reputation influences consumer trust, purchasing decisions, and finally, loyalty over the long term. A good reputation typically leads to higher levels of customer retention, word-of-mouth recommendation, and brand resilience when a marketplace or economy is hit by adverse conditions.

On the other hand, a negative reputation can kill sales, destroy shareholder value, and sometimes even lead to legal or regulatory repercussions. With news and opinions now capable of spreading so rapidly thanks to social media, managing and protecting brand reputation is more challenging than ever.

Branding Tracking during Crisis Management

Ongoing brand tracking helps companies identify and understand the information that can be used to anticipate and manage any potential PR crisis. 

There are various ways in which brand tracking can do this, including:

1. Early Detection of Negative Sentiment

The greatest advantage of brand tracking is perhaps that of being able to detect a change in sentiment before it has actually become a full-fledged crisis. 

Businesses can use real-time feedback from social media, review platforms, and online forums to identify negative trends early. For example, the sudden rise in negative comments on a brand’s Twitter feed or serious criticism of reviews on a product page serves as a warning that something is amiss. These early signals enable the firm to deal with the issue quickly before it gathers momentum and explodes into the wider public domain.

2. Knowing the Root of the Crisis

Of course, not all negative feedback means that there is an imminent threat to a brand’s reputation. However, some issues have the potential of blowing out of proportion if left unattended. Brand tracking tools enable a business to identify the root cause of a problem through analysis of patterns in the data. 

For instance, if a brand only receives quality complaints from a particular region or demographic audience, a brand tracker can be configured to identify this, meaning that a solution can be formulated to directly target the source of dissatisfaction, thereby minimising the possibility of worsening the situation.

3. Real-time Response and Crisis Containment

Speed is of the essence in crisis management. The faster the brand can move when a negative situation arises, the better it will be able to contain the damage. 

Real-time brand tracking can be configured to enable companies to identify and respond to defamatory sentiment and misinformation with speed. For example, in the event that a defamatory rumour starts to make its rounds online, in a matter of minutes, a brand tracker which incorporates social media listening can alert the company to the issue. This will then enable the brand to take immediate action to clarify the situation or issue an apology, or correct false information with regard to the nature of the crisis.

4. Measuring the Effectiveness of Crisis Response

Having taken action to resolve the crisis, the brand’s ability to measure the effectiveness of its response is paramount. Brand tracking data reveals how public perception evolves in a post-crisis world. 

Monitoring changes in sentiment, brand mentions, and customer feedback may reveal whether taken actions were successful in restoring trust, or if further intervention is needed. 

With continuous tracking, the brand can be proactive in making necessary adjustments to its strategy in the journey of restoring customer confidence in it.

5. Long-term Brand Resilience

Brand tracking aids not only in controlling a crisis but also in building resilience in the long run. With periodic assessment of relevant brand perceptions, a business can identify weaknesses or points of vulnerability that wouldn’t necessarily become evident through the daily grind of operations. 

In this way, a brand can take pre-emptive steps to avoid certain crises that could have come their way. Also, brands that understand the concerns of the customers and show receptiveness in the form of feedback are more likely to establish strong and continuing relationships with their audience.

How to Effectively Implement Brand Tracking

To maximise the benefits of brand tracking for crisis management, there are some key measures that can be taken:

  • Combining automated and manual tools: Automated social listening tools should be used in combination with more manual methodologies, such as customer surveys, to deliver a full view of brand sentiment.
  • Benchmarking: Continuously benchmarking and comparing levels of brand sentiment, share of voice, and customer satisfaction.
  • Channels: Tracking brand perception across different channels so that the brand is  being monitored across social media, review sites, news outlets, and direct customer feedback.
  • Acting fast: A problem, once identified, requires rapid and clear responses to hold the fire from spreading.

Conclusion

When brands are under constant public scrutiny, maintaining a good reputation appears to get tougher day by day. Ongoing brand tracking forms the backbone of crisis management as it can help companies identify issues well in advance, react fast, and understand the effectiveness of the remedial actions they have put in place.

15dcab26042039fdae77f9e2736a1bbc98e23d57c5db0839962d9fb67179b110?s=300&d=mm&r=g The Role of Brand Tracking in Crisis Management: Protecting Brand Reputation
Jeremy Braune
Jeremy specialises in delivering market research and consultancy programmes that enable organisations to maximise the impact of their brands, products and services, communications and customer experience delivery. His company, Brandspeak, has offices in London and Bristol and since 2004 it has been helping companies all over the UK and globally. Jeremy has also been a guest lecturer and speaker on London Business School's acclaimed MBA course, on the subject of Brands and Branding.

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Today, more than ever, consumers are bombarded with messages from all corners. Gone are the days when one-size-fits-all worked for a brand. To connect with an audience meaningfully, any business needs to craft communications and  experiences that are personal and relevant. This is where customer segmentation really works its magic: segmenting discrete groups of an audience based on particular characteristics gives a brand the power to craft marketing strategies that can resonate so much more deeply.

Why Personalisation is no Longer Optional

Today’s customer expects more than ever from the brands they interact with. That means, among other things, a need for them to feel understood and appreciated, and that equates to receiving marketing messages relevant to them. In fact, 71% of consumers today expect a personalised experience, with many openly admitting to getting frustrated when brands blow it.

Personalisation is no longer a nicety; it’s a necessity. If done right, personalisation nurtures connections and helps build trust, driving conversions. But one cannot do personalised marketing without profound knowledge of the audience, and this is where customer segmentation comes into effect.

mckinsey-1024x867 The Power of Customer Segmentation

Image Credit: McKinsey & Company – The value of getting personalization right—or wrong—is multiplying

What is Customer Segmentation?

Essentially, customer segmentation means separating your customers into small groups based on some common traits among them. These can be demographic traits like age, gender, and location; behavioural traits like purchase history and browsing patterns; or psychographic traits that include lifestyle, values, and interests.

Segmentation enables the brand to slice into big, diverse audiences groups that are more manageable with which to craft messages that will speak very specifically to the needs and desires of each group. For instance, a skin care brand may need to sell anti-ageing products to older customers and acne treatments to a younger audience. It is about relevance, and segmentation helps you get there.

You can read more about the process and importance of segmentation on Brandspeak’s Customer Segmentation Research page.

The Benefits of Segmentation for Brands

Segmentation is much more than a buzzword. It’s a powerful tool that can help brands sharpen their marketing strategies in a number of ways:

  1. More Targeted Messaging: With better targeted messaging segmentation, one can speak more precisely to the needs of the audience. Rather than publishing generic messages to your entire list, you can create content that tends to address the needs and interests of each segment. A travel company may want to make young professionals aware of budget travel deals while targeting high-income families with luxury holiday offers.
  2. Efficiency in the Use of Resources: Each brand wants to get the most value from their marketing budget, and that is where segmentation comes in. By identifying high-value customer segments, you will know where to allocate resources for maximum effect. Targeted campaigns  translate into less waste and higher efficiency.
  3. Stronger customer relationships: Consumers today do not look for just a product or service but a relationship with the brands they patronise. This means segmentation lets you know your customers on a much deeper level and thus communicate with them personally and thoughtfully. This level of personalisation fosters loyalty, in turn contributing to higher retention rates.
  4. Improved Customer Retention: It is infinitely cheaper to retain one customer than to gain a new one. Segmentation allows you to keep a close eye on customer behaviour and thus design appropriate marketing strategies that keep their attention and interest. A personalised discount or even a ‘we miss you’ email would do the trick if a customer hasn’t ordered in a long while.
  5. Informed Decision Making: Segmentation is based on data, and that data will have much to say about what drives your customers. Whether it is their purchasing behaviour or the content they create that should help drive your marketing strategy and create better-informed decisions on how to engage your audience.

Personalisation in Action

Let me illustrate this with an example. Suppose you operate a small bakery outlet in the UK, whose clients range from busy working professionals to families with toddlers and young children. Applying segmentation may reveal that the office workers, who must commute daily, particularly like the morning coffee and croissant deal. Knowing this, one can develop an early bird offer for this type of customer by instituting a discount before 9 am.

On the other hand, it may be that families prefer larger family-sized portions and weekend treats. If you can target this group with your marketing messages at weekends, offering family-sized cakes, for example, or discounts for children’s birthday cakes, you are far more likely to receive positive responses. Both groups are receiving different marketing messages, yet both are made to feel valued and understood.

Why Customer Segmentation is a Must

Today, it’s not just a matter of casting a wide net and hoping to catch a few customers. Brands today have to get personal if they want to thrive. Customer segmentation lets businesses understand their audience on a deeper level and thus provide targeted, personalised marketing that speaks directly to their customers’ needs.

In the competitive landscape, segmentation is a powerful tool. With the help of segmentation, businesses can connect meaningfully, boost engagement, and drive growth.

To read more about the benefits of customer segmentation, refer to Brandspeak’s Customer Segmentation Research and learn how your brand can benefit from a more targeted approach.

15dcab26042039fdae77f9e2736a1bbc98e23d57c5db0839962d9fb67179b110?s=300&d=mm&r=g The Power of Customer Segmentation
Jeremy Braune
Jeremy specialises in delivering market research and consultancy programmes that enable organisations to maximise the impact of their brands, products and services, communications and customer experience delivery. His company, Brandspeak, has offices in London and Bristol and since 2004 it has been helping companies all over the UK and globally. Jeremy has also been a guest lecturer and speaker on London Business School's acclaimed MBA course, on the subject of Brands and Branding.

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Riding out a recession

When times are tough, the impulse is to cut back. Consumers do so by avoiding ‘luxuries’ and trading down to own-label goods.  Businesses do so by looking for opportunities to make savings across the board.  However, whilst it may feel like a recession is a good time to cut back on expenses such as marketing and research; we disagree. Not only should you retain your research spend so you can understand consumer behaviour and adjust accordingly, but we believe that investing now in a brand tracker could actually safeguard your brand and help to recession-proof your marketing.

How do consumers behave in a recession?

Consumer behaviour is complex at the best of times and in a cost-of-living crisis, all bets are off. According to the Harvard Business Review, consumers can be allocated to one of four different groups during a recession, based on the attitudes and behaviours they exhibit:

  1. Slam-On-The-Brakes. These are consumers who have been hard hit by the downturn and need to decrease their spending accordingly. It’s worth noting that this group can be made up of not just low-income consumers but also high-income consumers who simply have more anxiety and caution in their behaviour.
  2. Pained-But-Patient. This segment tends to be the least affected by unemployment during times of recession. They are often positive about the long-term but more nervous about the short-term effects of recession on their standard of living. If economic news worsens, this group may transition to become Slam-On The-Brakes.
  3. Comfortably Well-Off.  These consumers tend to live frugally and have confidence that they can weather the storm and wait out the downturn. The group reflects those in the top 5% of earners, as well as those with fewer means who are nonetheless financially stable.
  4. Live-For-Today. These individuals are typically younger consumers with little in the way of responsibilities and liabilities.  They tend to delay big purchases but still indulge in consumer electronics and experiences, so as not to miss out on any trends.

All four groups broadly regard the different products and services they consume as one of the following:

  • Essentials: items necessary for survival or perceived as central to well-being.
  • Treats: indulgences whose immediate purchase is considered justifiable.
  • Postponables: needed or desired items whose purchase can be reasonably put off.
  • Expendables: unnecessary or unjustifiable

However, each group’s behaviour towards the individual categories is different, and changes further, depending on the economic conditions.

Harvard-Business-Review-How-to-Market-in-a-Downturn-hbr.org_ Marketing in a Recession: How a Brand Tracker Could Safeguard Your Brand

Image Credit: Harvard Business Review – How to Market in a Downturn (hbr.org)

What is a brand tracker anyway?

Brand tracking is the process of monitoring the health and performance of a brand over time. Brand health and performance can be evaluated using a variety of methods including social media listening, analysis of online reviews, qualitative interviews, focus groups, customer service feedback and website analytics. However, for the most effective and flexible way to measure brand health, we recommend a purpose-built, quantitative, longitudinal brand-tracking survey – a brand tracker.

One of the key benefits of a brand tracking agency is that they enable you to tailor its content so that it only focuses on the metrics your brand requires to inform decision-making regarding future marketing strategy, brand positioning, product development, customer service and other brand-related issues.

How does a brand tracker help safeguard my brand?

Consumers don’t react uniformly to a downturn so you need to understand how different elements of your target audience will react to your brand.  This is likely to reflect a combination of the following:

  1. The extent to which they are financially exposed
  2. Their wider attitude towards spending versus saving
  3. How they categorise your brand: is it an Essential (hopefully) or an Expendable

The default brand response in a recession is to lower prices, or costs, or both.   However, that only addresses Point 1. above.  A better response to Point 3., might be a communications campaign that repositions your brand as Essential rather than Expendable, or in the case of Point 2., a bundling offer and communications campaign that illustrates the cost saving to be made, by buying in larger quantities. 

Of course, identifying which action(s) to take requires access to suitably insightful data. Not necessarily lots of data, just the right data.  And this is where brand tracking comes in. The data provided by a tracker will typically allow responses to key metrics to be analysed according to household income. 

These standard tracker metrics are sufficient for brand owners to determine the extent to which recession is impacting:

  • Sales
  • Market share
  • Brand loyalty
  • Brand preference and usage

They can also reveal the extent to which perceptions of the brand and its perceived relevance are also being undermined by the economic conditions. Of course, whichever course of action is most appropriate, it still needs to be identified quickly – market conditions change rapidly, and brand owners need to be able to act quickly and appropriately, if they are to minimize the impact of the downturn.

Why is data so important?

During a recession, customer attitudes and behaviours can change quickly, so the ability to access the right customer data at the right time is essential. A brand tracker can act as an early warning system, to identify not just when the downturn is affecting your sales but, more importantly, your core brand equity and future purchase intent. It can also give you a means of evaluating the impact of your marketing strategy versus those of your competitors.

We would argue that the job of protecting the brand is a higher priority than addressing a fall-off in sales because your brand is for the long term. Recessions typically only last 6-15 months, on average, so while drops in sales are painful in the short term, a damaged brand can be terminal.

So, how will a brand tracker recession-proof my brand?

Your brand tracker can monitor all the metrics required to monitor brand health, including awareness, loyalty, intention to purchase, brand values and competitor activity and comparisons. In hard times it is also important to be flexible. At least 80% of your brand metrics should be constant and repeated with each wave.  However, your tracker can also include a flexi-section, where individual metrics can be changed on a wave-by-wave basis.  This flexibility ensures that your tracker is always able to take full account of changing market conditions and any campaign activity that could influence results.

Brand tracking guides you in directing your marketing investments where they will yield the most success given the economic climate. Whether you need to boost awareness, refine your relevance, or run better campaigns, brand tracking data ensures you don’t dilute your brand message.

By implementing a brand tracker as a lens when the going gets tough, you will become more attuned to how your consumers are reacting to your comms strategy and learn which campaigns and messaging resonates best and performs best with your customers. Perhaps a tracker will reveal which different channels have become more important. Or that advertising that you created before the cost-of-living crisis is likely to appear tone deaf in the current climate. Having a tracker in place will allow you to be proactive as well as reactive and agile to the state of flux in the economy. Measures you may take as a result of insight from your brand tracker could include:

  • Creating offers and payment structures to help alleviate the economic pressures
  • Delivering more (frequent) empathetic brand communications, reflecting the pressures customers are facing
  • The development of longer-lasting strategies to deal with more fundamental changes in customer attitudes and behaviours
  • Responding to successful competitor activity with the right initiatives and campaigns

Getting on the front foot with the data will give you an edge over your competitors, who are all vying for the attention of the overwhelmed public – whether they are the Slam-On The-Brakes variety or the Live-For-Today. Your brand wants to be the voice of certainty, security, relatability and grounded reassurance, and you can only do that by getting under the skin of how you consumers are feeling. This can only be discovered through the data obtained from a robust brand tracker that adapts and asks the right questions.

Summary

The recession-proofing power of brand tracking is the best weapon in your market research arsenal because it will provide the data that helps you navigate your way out of an economic downturn. It can help you gain competitive advantage, maintain brand resilience and give your marketing and advertising messaging the nuances and relevance to resonate with your consumers. Ultimately, it is about building trust and ensuring that with what reduced expenditure they have, your brand is one they will invest in and ride out the recession with, to better times ahead.

If you want to speak to our in-house expert regarding all things trackers, contact our Head of Quant Mark Bagnall today, on +44 (0)7825 303 244 or at Jeremy@brandspeak.co.uk

15dcab26042039fdae77f9e2736a1bbc98e23d57c5db0839962d9fb67179b110?s=300&d=mm&r=g Marketing in a Recession: How a Brand Tracker Could Safeguard Your Brand
Jeremy Braune
Jeremy specialises in delivering market research and consultancy programmes that enable organisations to maximise the impact of their brands, products and services, communications and customer experience delivery. His company, Brandspeak, has offices in London and Bristol and since 2004 it has been helping companies all over the UK and globally. Jeremy has also been a guest lecturer and speaker on London Business School's acclaimed MBA course, on the subject of Brands and Branding.

Competitor analysis services

Anyone who has ever come last in the egg and spoon race at school sports day may still be pondering, many years later, why everything must be a competition. But, deep down, we all know that getting a medal just for participation doesn’t cut it. 

Competition is a necessary and important part of life. In a business context, competition drives innovation, increases consumer choice and promotes economic growth. You just need to be sure that it is your business that is innovating and growing more effectively than your competitors. That’s where competitor analysis market research comes in. 

In this article we explore the subject of competitor analysis (also called competitive analysis or competitor research) and its vital importance to any brand wishing to establish or maintain competitive advantage.  

We explain what competitor analysis is, the different ways in which it can be undertaken, and when up-to-date competitor insight is essential for brand success.  We’ll also identify the issues to consider when looking for an agency to undertake competitor research on your behalf.

 

What is competitor analysis research?

Competitor analysis in market research is the process of gathering and evaluating information about competing companies or organisations within your category or market. It involves studying and analysing the strategies, products or services, strengths, weaknesses, market positioning, customer base and any other relevant factors relating to direct competitors.

The primary goal of competitor analysis is to gain insights into the competitive landscape and understand how rival companies are operating to inform your decision-making and support your marketing and innovation strategy. It provides a comprehensive understanding of market dynamics and helps identify potential opportunities and threats.

It can be done as stand-alone research or incorporated into other types of research. For example, competitor analysis is integral to brand tracking – it is hard to understand how your own brand is performing without the context of other brands in the market. 

What is the difference between competitor analysis and competitive analysis?

In practice, the terms ‘competitor analysis’ and ‘competitive analysis’ are often used interchangeably and refer to the process of examining and evaluating the competitive landscape in a particular industry or market. However, some may argue for a slight distinction between the two terms.

Competitive analysis can be seen as a broader term that encompasses the analysis of not only direct competitors but also the overall competitive environment. It involves assessing various factors that influence competition in the market, such as industry trends, market dynamics, customer preferences, regulatory factors, technological advancements, and other macro-level influences. Competitive analysis aims to gain a holistic understanding of the competitive landscape beyond just individual competitors.

 

Benefits of competitor analysis

There are many benefits of conducting competitor analysis, as follows:

  • Gaining insights into competitor strategies: by conducting thorough research into your competitors’ product and service portfolio, pricing, advertising, customer base and positioning, you should be able to understand a great deal about their marketing strategies – which will help you to identify your own strengths and weaknesses.
  • Understanding consumer preferences: do other brands attract a different customer base? Are they eating into your target base? What are they doing that attracts those customers and are there gaps in the market that you could fill?
  • Understanding pricing strategies: pricing is complex – why are some brands perceived as premium and others as bargain basement? For example, consumers are happy to pay more for Apple phones because they perceive them as high quality, innovative and conferring status.
  • Informing innovation: looking at what competitors are doing well can give you ideas, and looking at what they are not doing can also highlight opportunities and demonstrate where there are unmet needs that your brand may be better placed to fill.
  • Understanding your own business: we all know it isn’t healthy to compare ourselves with others. But for brands, comparison can be extremely helpful in providing context to better understand your own approach, know where you are vulnerable and get clarity on how you are perceived by your customers and prospects.
  • Identifying industry trends: by seeing where competitors are successful and where they are placing their marketing efforts, you will gain an impression of the direction of travel of the category or wider market.
  • Gain competitive advantage: this is the ultimate goal and benefit of competitor analysis – the insights gained through this type of research will enable you to improve your ability to compete in your market.
 

How to conduct competitor analysis 

There are five key steps to conducting an effective competitor analysis. 

  1.     Identify your competitor set: this may include both direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors offer similar products or services, whereas indirect competitors may provide alternative ways to achieve the same customer benefit. For example, Uber competes directly with traditional taxi services, but indirectly with other forms of public transport, or with driving. You need to research both.
  2.     Define the scope and objectives:  what do you want to analyse about your competitors and how are you going to use the results? You could include any or all the following: product offerings, branding, pricing strategies, marketing and advertising efforts, distribution channels, target market, customer base, and competitive advantages.
  3.     Plan and conduct your data collection: this will include primary research with consumers as well as secondary research, looking at websites, social media, industry reports and press coverage. Primary research will typically involve online surveys but can also include qualitative research such as focus groups or depth interviews to help get a more in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape.
  4.     Analyse your data: SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) is a useful framework for competitive analysis – strengths and weaknesses are internal to your business whereas opportunities and threats are external, dictated by the competitive environment.
  5.     Monitor and update: competitor analysis should be an ongoing process. The frequency with which you need to refresh your competitor analysis will depend on business and market dynamics, as discussed further below. For example, in a mature market, the landscape will be unlikely to change rapidly, so less frequent research will still be effective.
 

How to use competitor analysis research

Competitor analysis research can be used at any stage of the product life cycle and as part of, or in addition to, other types of market research.  It’s sometimes not clearly defined as competitor analysis research – for example, branding research will always gather opinions about competitor brands, but will be called brand research, rather than competitor analysis research.

  • NPD – competitor analysis can help you generate ideas, identify gaps in the market or unmet consumer needs.
  • Branding and positioning – competitor analysis is an integral part of branding and positioning research as you are always defining your positioning relative to the other brands in the market. 
  • Customer segmentation – understanding how consumers relate to competitors can be helpful in dividing the market and prioritising which segments to target.
  • New market entry – competitor analysis is key here. If you are looking to enter new markets or extend your brand into adjacent markets, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the space you are trying to occupy. Are there a lot of small brands, or a few big dominant brands? How have the market dynamics changed over time and what is the direction of travel?
 

How often should competitor analysis be conducted?

As so often, the answer is ‘it depends’. In this case, it depends on factors including the nature of the industry, the pace of market changes, and the specific goals of your business. However, as a general guideline, it is recommended to conduct competitor analysis regularly to stay up to date with market dynamics.

In industries with rapid technological advancements or intense competition, it may be beneficial to conduct competitor analysis more frequently, such as quarterly or semi-annually. This enables you to closely monitor your competitors’ actions and changes in the market. For industries with slower-paced changes or less competition, conducting competitor analysis on an annual basis may be sufficient. However, even in such cases, it is important to keep a pulse on the market and stay aware of any emerging trends or shifts in customer preferences that may impact your business.

 

Working with a competitor analysis company

 If you are new to conducting competitor analysis research, it is helpful to understand what the process of working with a competitor analysis company will involve. In every case, you should expect to go through a detailed briefing process. This does require you to think carefully about what your objectives are for the project and how you will know if you have been successful. Often, competitor analysis companies can help you to put a brief together – some offer templates – and should certainly have a consultative approach, questioning the brief that you deliver, to help refine the process. 

Following the briefing, the competitor analysis agency will typically produce a proposal which steers you through the choice of methods as well as pricing and timing. The agency will be able to help you understand whether you should be conducting stand-alone competitive research or weaving an understanding of the competition through a separate piece of research. They will also help you to understand whether you should be conducting a one-off ad-hoc research project or looking to set up a program of ongoing tracking.

 

How to choose a competitor analysis agency

We recommend you ask prospective competitor analysis agencies the three following questions:

  1. What experience do you have of similar work? Ask to see case studies and/or client testimonials.
  2. Who will be working on my project and what skills and experience do they bring? Ask whether the senior team members that you meet at the beginning of the project will be involved all the way through.
  3. What methods will you use? Can the team explain why they have proposed particular methods and why they are better than the alternatives? How transparent are the methods? Are there ‘black box’ processes or research products that are ‘one size fits all’ or do you get a truly tailored approach that is right for your business?

Summary

It’s a tough world out there, but we know that we need competition to stimulate us to try harder and to work smarter. Without competition, there would be no growth, and without competitor analysis research, your brand might just be the last one over the finish line. And there is no participation medal for companies that fall behind. 

To find out more about competitor analysis research contact Jeremy@brandspeak.co.uk or call us on +44 (0) 203 858 0052.

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Image attribution: Photo by Daniel Herron on Unsplash 

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Commentators have been predicting the death of brand tracking for as long as I’ve been in research, which is over 20 years. A quick Google search uncovers headlines such as “Is brand tracking irrelevant?” and “How to revive your brand tracker.” But what are these articles really saying? We read some so you don’t have to and – surprise, surprise – none of them actually say that it is no longer important, relevant or useful to track key brand metrics to assess brand performance and stay on top of brand health.

So why the headlines? Betteridge’s law of journalism says that when a headline ends in a question mark, the answer is always no. But if we were to frame the question differently, “Is traditional brand tracking dead?”, we might come up with a different answer.

Most of the articles on the death of brand tracking fall into one (or sometimes both) of two camps:

  1. To sell a new brand tracking product, technology or approach by highlighting problems with traditional brand tracking to make a case for the ‘new improved’ version.
  2. To move the industry forward; thought-leadership pieces exploring how traditional brand tracking can and should evolve to be more useful and responsive

To really understand what’s happening, we need to look in more detail at what these articles are really saying and, in particular, the term ‘traditional’ in the context of brand tracking. We can take this to mean ‘the way brand tracking is currently being set-up, run, and delivered’.

What is traditional brand tracking?

As a thought experiment, lets travel back in time to the 1990s when brand tracking interviews were carried out either face-to-face or over the phone (and a landline at that). The advent of the internet and the beginnings of an idea that online research could be cheaper and faster than traditional methods was likely the cause of mutterings about the death of the brand tracker at that time. Although they were more likely to have been discussions in the pub, or possibly conference papers than blogs; although the first blog is thought to have been written in 1994, corporate blogging didn’t take off until the new millennium.

Skip forward a few years and the majority of brand tracking interviews were indeed conducted over the internet; brand tracking didn’t die-off, but one of its traditions – face to face and telephone interviewing – did. And over the years what used to be ‘new and improved’ – online brand tracking – has become today’s traditional approach.

We think brand tracking, in some format or other, is as unlikely to die as branding itself. While there are brands, brand managers need to know how they are performing, and a brand tracking agency will develop brand tracking studies to help them to do so.

Brand tracking traditions that need to die

But we do think that there are some elements of traditional brand tracking that can be done away with or improved. Some of the issues that exist with brand tracking include the following:

  • Frequency: traditional brand tracking often captures data at specific intervals (e.g., quarterly or annually). This approach can miss out on recent changes in sentiment and can mean it takes too long to spot emerging trends.
  • The ‘rear view mirror’: compounding the problem of frequency, brand tracking surveys tend to be large and unwieldy and take a long time to analyse and produce results. This means that by the time brand managers get results, they are in the past and not actionable. The pace of business has increased rapidly, and backwards-looking data is not as effective in predicting future shifts or trends.
  • Quantitative emphasis: many brand tracking studies lean heavily on quantitative data, sometimes at the expense of qualitative insights, and can miss the nuance and depth of consumer emotions and perceptions.
  • Static survey questions: the very nature of trackers is that they stay the same so that you can track performance over time and see trends in the data. However this can be problematic in that brands aren’t static, the relationship between brands and consumers is always evolving and competitor sets change over time.
  • Return on investment: conducting comprehensive brand tracking research, especially using traditional methods, can be expensive and time-consuming – so it needs to deliver a return. If brand managers aren’t using the tracker to support decision-making, due to some of these issues, it can be hard to justify the expense.
  • Narrow view of the market: there are so many other sources of data about how consumers relate to your brand, such as online transactional data or social media which aren’t included in traditional brand trackers.
  • Death by PowerPoint: often brand tracking agencies take the reams of data that brand tracking surveys produce and put all of it into a presentation deck, which can be deathly to sit through.

What’s next for brand tracking?

Brand tracking agencies are getting smarter at creating the sort of brand tracking tools that brand managers need and value. For example, some of the issues around frequency and lagging metrics can be resolved by going to an ‘always on’ model of market research, rather than wave by wave with serial reporting.

Rather than endless charts and decks, agencies can present results in a self-service brand-tracking dashboard, enabling brand managers to consult the data at all times. Adding open-ended questions and bringing together other sources of data such as social media into the dashboard ecosystem helps to give a holistic view of everything happening to the brand. And the static nature of the survey can be managed by keeping one core section of the questionnaire for key metrics and adding dynamic modules that can be swapped in and out as needed. Progressive brand tracking agencies can help their clients to get the most out of their tracker and ensure that it is used to support decision making.

Changes that are in the future include using AI to create synthetic respondents which, will again reduce costs and time taken to get results. Cue cries of, “is the survey respondent dead?”, to which, as Betteridge suggests, we answer with a resounding, “no”. Currently using AI to simulate respondents is a technology that is in its infancy; as such it is subject to too many biases and concerns to be used in anger by most agencies or to be trusted by most brand managers. But AI is just another algorithm and, with time, the use of AI respondents will no doubt become an accepted part of our research methods toolkit.

So, is the brand tracker dead?

These changes all go to show that reports of the death of the brand tracker have been greatly exaggerated. And no doubt, in time to come, we will look back at what is traditional now and wonder why we ever did it that way. The traditions of brand tracking do die off to be replaced by different or better approaches that augment the whole but the brand tracker, the critically important research that helps brand managers to make decisions about their brands, lives on. 

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Table of Contents

12 Important Brand Tracking Metrics

First, here’s a quick list of the 12 important brand tracking metrics that we cover in this article:

  1. Unprompted brand awareness

  2. Prompted brand awareness

  3. Emotional brand loyalty

  4. Brand attributes

  5. Brand personality

  6. Need states

  7. Brand quality

  8. Brand satisfaction

  9. Behavioural brand loyalty

  10. Brand preference

  11. Brand purchase

  12. Brand usage occasions

What are brand tracking metrics?

In this article, we explore in detail what brand tracking metrics are and how they are used to monitor brand health. Brand health can be influenced by many things, and key brand tracking metrics can be analysed through brand tracking projects.

The term brand metrics refers to the different metrics that are derived from the questions typically included within a brand tracker.

A brand tracker is a form of ongoing market research survey used to assess your brand’s health and the impact of your marketing activity.

The results of a single brand tracker wave provide a snapshot of brand health.  Results are presented for each brand tracking metric (e.g. brand awareness, brand loyalty) individually, but can also be rolled into a single, overall brand health score. 

 

Why are brand tracking metrics important?

Your brand’s health ultimately depends on the extent to which consumers:

  • are aware of your brand
  • can bring it to mind in a purchase situation
  • feel that it meets their needs
  • are subsequently willing to (re-)purchase it

As a brand manager, without suitable, up-to-date brand tracking metrics, you are almost certainly working in the dark – lacking the critical insights required to target the issues that are undermining your brand’s ability to grow.

In addition, your brand is also more likely to be susceptible to targeted activity by competitors that are closely monitoring it, as part of their own brand-tracking activity. I.e you might not be tracking your brand at the moment, but your competitors might be tracking their own brands and yours, positioning themselves to capitalise on any opportunities.  

However, by comparing brand metrics across different tracker waves over time, you can quickly identify any significant changes, so that targeted action can be taken to improve your brand’s performance, in relation to:

  • customer satisfaction
  • market share
  • brand loyalty
  • lifetime value

Figures provided by InMoment demonstrate the importance of managing these issues closely:

  • Nearly 50% say that they have rejected a brand to go to a competitor which they felt was better able to meet their needs
  • 75% of loyal customers say they are likely to recommend their favoured brand to others

Brand tracking metric selection criteria

Of course, the ability of your brand tracker to drive meaningful brand growth will depend on whether you have selected the right brand metrics in the first place. 

The brand tracking metrics you choose should:

  • Reflect your long-term brand strategy, rather than short-term brand tactics.
  • Be customer-centric, meaning that they accurately analyse your brand from the point of view of the target audience, rather than the way your organisation thinks about it internally.
  • Compare the performance of your brand to those of established and upcoming competitors. Reviewing your brand in a vacuum will provide a very misleading view of brand health.
  • Be actionable.  Metrics that are ‘interesting’ but can’t be acted upon are of no use.
  • Be flexible. At least 80% of your brand metrics should be constant and repeated with each wave.  However, your tracker can also include a flexi-section, where individual metrics can be changed on a wave-by-wave basis.  This flexibility ensures that your tracker is always able to take full account of changing market conditions and any campaign activity that could influence results.
  • Encompass your brand’s distribution strategy.  To obtain a realistic picture of overall brand performance, the tracker questions resulting metrics should be applicable to all channels and touchpoints used by the brand.
  • Be concise. Historically, brand trackers have tended to be too long!  The more brand tracking metrics that are included, the more chance there is that the person completing the tracker will lose interest.
 

Types of Brand Metrics

Core brand tracking metrics can be divided into 3 groups: brand awareness, brand closeness and brand behaviour.

 

Brand awareness

This group assesses the ease and speed with which your brand is brought to mind by the target audience.  It comprises:

  1. Unprompted brand awareness
  2. Prompted brand awareness

 

Brand closeness

This group focuses on the nature and extent of the relationship between brand and consumer.  It includes:

  1. Emotional brand loyalty
  2. Brand attributes
  3. Brand personality
  4. Brand need states
  5. Brand quality
  6. Brand satisfaction

 

Brand behaviour

This group is concerned with the more functional aspects of the consumer’s behavioural relationship with your brand.  Specific metrics include:  

  1. Brand usage occasions
  2. Brand preference
  3. Brand purchase frequency
  4. Behavioural brand loyalty

Not all of these metrics may be relevant or important to your brand.  The trick is to work out in advance which ones are, and how you will use the insights they provide. 

 

Brand awareness metrics

In this section, we look at each group in more detail, and provide example tracker questions from which the individual brand tracking metrics can be derived. 

Unprompted brand awareness 

Quite simply, if your brand is more top-of-mind than others then it stands a better chance of being purchased.

The unprompted brand awareness metric reveals the extent to which your brand comes to mind – in the context of the sector in which it operates – without being prompted by name. 

Unprompted brand awareness example question:

Thinking about brands in the [INSERT CATEGORY HERE], which brand first comes to mind? And which other brands come to mind?

If consumers are unable to recall your brand at an unprompted level, this indicates that it hasn’t yet succeeded in permeating the conscious mind and only resides in their subconscious – if at all. 

Prompted brand awareness

In the brand tracker, the prompted brand awareness question typically follows the unprompted one. If there is a low level of unprompted awareness, its inclusion is particularly important, to determine whether the brand even exists in the consumer’s subconscious mind. 

In a prompted brand awareness question, a shortlist of brands (including yours) is provided for the respondent to select from. For example:

Looking at the list of brands below, before today, which were you aware of?

Clearly, if this question results in a low score as well, then it means that your brand hasn’t yet achieved threshold levels of consumer awareness and has a considerable amount of work to do amongst the target audience.

Brand closeness metrics

Emotional brand loyalty

Brand loyalty is often seen as the most important metric for most brands! A loyal customer will keep purchasing from you and is more likely to forgive the occasional brand slip-up.  Moreover, once the fundamentals are in place, it can cost far less to retain a loyal customer than it does to convert a new one.

In reality, there are actually two brand loyalty metrics; emotional brand loyalty and behavioural brand loyalty (discussed in more detail later).  

Whilst the two metrics are usually in-step (i.e. if someone is emotionally loyal to your brand they are likely to display the same level of loyalty in their purchase and usage behaviour), they can become detached from each other.

For example, the iPhone is a social phenomenon that commands a high degree of emotional loyalty.  However, its high cost may still prevent emotional loyalists from buying the latest model. 

Emotional brand loyalty is often assessed using the classic Net Promoter Score question:

On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend [brand] to your family and friends?

In your own words can you tell us why you gave [brand x] a score of [insert score selected here]?

Brand attributes

How do consumers perceive your brand and its associated attributes, such as performance, reliability, and uniqueness? What comes to mind when they think of your brand and does that image reflect the one that your organisation has worked hard to create?

The ability of customers to associate specific attributes with your brand is important because they establish brand relevance, create memorability, and can even act as prompts to brand recall at the moment of purchase.

Positive brand attributes are often the result of carefully crafted marketing campaigns, but they can also reflect the use of striking packaging or a distinctive font.

A brand attributes question will typically include rating scale statements for each attribute to be assessed. For example:

Thinking about [BRAND X] how strongly do you agree with each of these statements? Please use the 5-point scale where 5 means completely and 1 means not at all.

Brand personality

This metric is closely linked to the brand attributes metric outlined above, but the questions that underlie it focus on the brand’s personality. For example, whether the brand is perceived as being ‘warm’, ‘caring’, ‘smart’, etc.  

Whilst your brand’s personality is mainly derived from its marketing, it can also be inferred by customers through their experience of buying and using your product/service (versus those of your competitors), through social media and even word of mouth.  

Not only does your brand’s perceived personality reveal the extent to which you have been successful in creating emotional resonance, it can also determine the extent to which it is seen to be similar to, or different from, its competitors.

The absence of key brand personality traits provides a clear understanding of where the brand needs to develop its profile if it is to increase top-of-mind awareness, resonance, and differentiation. 

Example question:

Thinking about [BRAND X], how well do you associate it with the following characteristics? 

Please use the 5-point scale where 5 means completely and 1 means not at all.

Need states

The need states tracker questions are used to evaluate the perceived suitability of your brand in relation to their needs and expectations. Needs can be either practical or emotional in nature.  

Using yoghurt as an example, some consumers may need a low-fat healthy probiotic yoghurt to fulfil their need for physical fitness and well-being, whereas others may need a tasty treat with chocolate pieces to fulfil their need for indulgence that is still perceived as healthy.

Example question:

How well do you believe [BRAND X], meets the following requirements?

Please use the 5-point scale where 5 means completely and 1 means not at all

Brand quality

No matter how well you market your brand, if the customer’s actual experience of it is underwhelming, they are far less likely to repurchase or become brand loyalists.

When assessing brand quality, it is important to consider the issue from the point of view of the customer and the features and benefits that are of most importance to them.

For example, a brand that commands a premium price on the basis that it offers a lifetime guarantee is of little interest to a customer who is looking for a cost-effective, ‘quick fix’.

Conversely, a brand that promises years of service, only to break down or become redundant within a year or two is likely to result in future brand rejection.

The criteria used by the consumer to assess your brand’s quality may include, amongst others, the following:

  • Performance
  • Reliability
  • Durability
  • Appearance and finish
  • Style
  • Fit

To identify perceptions of brand quality, the following questions may be asked:

How would you describe our products to a friend or family member?

If you had to describe our brand in five words, which words would you choose?

Brand satisfaction

The satisfaction metric reflects the totality of the consumer’s interactions with the brand.  For this reason, it is regarded by many organisations as one of the most important, along with brand loyalty. 

A typical brand satisfaction metric question would be:

Overall, on a scale of 0 to 10, how satisfied are you with [brand X]?

However, this can provide a fairly ‘blunt’ measure of overall satisfaction and can actually obscure lurking issues.  Therefore, it is best to supplement it with other questions that address the individual issues that can affect overall brand satisfaction and loyalty.

For example:

  • Price 
  • Customer service
  • Staff behaviour 
  • Product or service availability 
  • Speed of delivery

Behavioural brand tracking metrics

Behavioural brand loyalty

Unlike emotional brand loyalty, the behavioural loyalty metric reveals the extent to which customers will actually purchase your brand in preference to others, rather than being simply emotionally wedded to it. 

High levels of behavioural loyalty are important to manage the cost of customer acquisition and retention. They are also more likely to result in the spread of positive word of mouth about your brand. 

A typical brand loyalty question:

Thinking about [BRAND X], which of the statements below would you most agree with?

  • It’s the only brand I would buy
  • It’s one of a few brands I would buy
  • It’s one of a wide range of brands I would buy
  • It’s not a brand I would buy

Brand preference

Brand preference is a brand tracking metric used to record the number of customers who would select your brand ahead of named competitors when presented with a brand list. As such, it provides a clear understanding of your brand’s appeal within the context of the wider marketplace.

The question can be as simple as:

Tick which brand of [product] you prefer to buy…OR

If you had to choose just one of these brands the next time you are ready to make a purchase, which one would you choose?

Brand preference is a very useful indicator of overall brand strength because it usually reflects positive sentiment across a number of other key brand metrics, including brand awareness, brand associations and brand quality.

However, it doesn’t explicitly take price into account, and this is a criterion that could still see the consumer selecting another, cheaper brand ahead of their preferred one.

Brand purchase – including frequency

Brand purchase metrics are used to determine purchase behaviours. 

For example:

  • Frequency – how often an individual customer purchases your brand
  • Quantity – how much is purchased on each occasion
  • Location – where purchases are made
  • Share of wallet – how much of a consumer’s spend is devoted to a particular brand

The results are used to monitor overall sales patterns, to assess the impact of any market activity that has taken place (e.g. a communications campaign, an offer or price change), and to identify any unusual purchasing behaviour.  

They can also be used as the basis for future financial and logistical planning and in association with competitor data they can be used to calculate market share.

Typical brand purchase metric questions could be:

On average, how often do you purchase [BRAND X]?

When you buy [BRAND X] on a typical occasion, how many [packs, units, pieces] would you usually buy?

Thinking about the different places you can buy [BRAND X} from, which of these would you consider?

Imagine you were buying [CATEGORY X] for a whole year, how many times would you buy each brand?

Brand usage occasions

Brand usage metrics are used to determine how and when the brand is actually being used by consumers.  

They can be used to identify and quantify the different usage occasions, the individual need states that correspond to each of those occasions, the extent to which the brand is able to address each of those need states, and the volume of brand consumption on each occasion. 

These metrics enable you to ensure that your product and brand communications are appropriately configured to address consumer needs and behaviour. 

A typical brand occasions metric question would be:

Example Question:

Thinking about the range of occasions below, in which ones do you feel [BRAND X] is appropriate?

brandspeak-brand-metrics-funnel-diagram-1024x576 12 Brand Tracking Metrics & How You Can Measure Them with Brand Tracking

Which brand metrics should you track? 

In this article we’ve described the brand tracking metrics most commonly used in brand trackers today, but you may not need to use all of them to monitor the health of your own brand. You should select the brand metrics that you track based on what you want to achieve with your brand tracking research.

A brand tracking agency like Brandspeak can help you choose which brand metrics you should be tracking, and will help you to use metrics to create an effective brand tracker.

Conclusion

In this article we have outlined the tried and trusted brand tracking metrics most commonly in use today, as well as a host of possible survey questions that you can use to measure these metrics.

As we have shown, many are interlinked, with their power lying in the composite picture of brand health that they provide.

However, individual metrics can also be used together with other forms of sales data, to identify and address specific challenges and opportunities at different stages in the relationship between brand and customer.

Whilst their role and prominence will vary on a brand-by-brand and strategy-by-strategy basis, the chart below shows where and how individual brand metrics can be considered, together with other data, to monitor and support the marketing focus at different stages of the customer relationship, in order to maximise loyalty and share of wallet.

As a brand tracking agency, it is Brandspeak’s job to work with you to:

  • Identify the most appropriate brand tracking metrics for your brand and strategy.
  • Ensure each, underlying question is as closely aligned to your brand and its position in the market as possible.
  • Advise on the most suitable brand tracking frequency.
  • Provide an overall brand health score that best reflects your sector and your place in it.
  • Use the brand tracking metrics as a diagnostic tool to provide you with the best guidance to help achieve your business and brand goals.

For more information about how brand tracking metrics can be used to transform your brand, get in touch with our team of expert researchers today. 

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Brand tracking is a way to invest in your brand

Your brand is one of your biggest assets. The most effective brands – the ones that we all love the most – deliver real benefits for organisations such as customer loyalty and business growth. 

But what makes an effective brand? Typically, top brands have great awareness and recognition. For example, 94% of people worldwide are reported to recognise the Coca-Cola logo.

So, it makes sense to invest in your brand – and because we can’t manage what we can’t measure, one of the key investments must be in brand tracking.

 

What is brand tracking?

Brand tracking is a way of measuring your brand across a variety of metrics to establish brand equity, as well as other information about brand activities such as communications campaign awareness or pricing perceptions. 

Brand equity is a composite measure of the value of your brand, which shows likely brand performance.  Brand equity is the sum of the following elements:

Brand awareness and mental availability: Awareness refers to the extent to which consumers are familiar with and recognise a brand.  Mental availability references the extent to which it readily comes to mind at time of need or at purchase. You want both to be high so that when the consumer is (for example) looking at a supermarket shelf full of competing yoghurt, cereal or hair dye brands, your yoghurt, cereal or hair dye is the one that they recognise and pick up.

Brand loyalty: The extent to which consumers consistently choose your brand over others. This is important not only in terms of the cost of acquisition and retention of customers but also in terms of the ongoing relationship – loyal customers are more likely to forgive the occasional customer service failure, for example. They are also more likely to spread positive word of mouth about your brand.

Brand image: How do consumers perceive your brand and its associated attributes, such as quality, reliability, and uniqueness? What comes to mind when they think of your brand and does that image reflect the one that your organisation has worked hard to create?

Brand associations: This refers to the emotional or psychological associations that consumers have with your brand, such as (hopefully) feelings of trust, reliability, or nostalgia. Trust is really important: research shows that 75% of people with high brand trust say they will buy the brand’s product even if it isn’t the cheapest, it is the only brand of the product they’ll buy, and they are far more likely to check out a new product from that brand to purchase.

Brand value: This is the sum of perceived benefits and corresponding value that consumers attribute to your brand, based on the extent to which they feel it meets or even exceeds their needs and expectations.  Perceived brand value can subsequently have a significant influence on purchasing decisions.

Brand experience: How do consumers interact with your brand? How often do they use it, when, and where? Which are the key touchpoints and how positive is the nature of the brand experience that is delivered?

Need states: this refers to the suitability of your  brand in relation to the consumers’ main need states – so what need they need your product or service to fulfil. Going back to yoghurt, for example, some consumers may need a low fat healthy probiotic yoghurt to fulfil their need for physical fitness and wellbeing, whereas others may need a tasty treat with chocolate pieces to fulfil their need for indulgence that is still perceived as healthy.

Your brand tracking metrics

Your brand tracking study may report on some – or all – of these measures individually, as well as providing an overall brand equity score. It’s important to track these measures over time, as well as tracking sales, so you can see which initiatives have been effective and how to improve your marketing.

A brand tracker will enable you to determine the health of your brand and identify the issues that need to be addressed in order to drive brand growth.

Brand tracking vs a brand tracker

So what is the difference between brand tracking and a brand tracker? Simply that brand tracking is the process, described above, and a brand tracker is the vehicle – most often a quantitative online market research survey – that is used to conduct the brand tracking process. Typically, market research agencies that specialise in brand tracking will offer brand trackers as products. In many cases, these will be standardised ‘black box’; approaches; however, at Brandspeak, we believe in a more flexible approach to brand tracking – for more on this, see our other article on brand performance measurement.

What are the benefits of brand tracking?

Brand tracking should be seen as an investment which enables you to improve your product or service to better reflect your target audience’s needs, expectations and behaviours.

Brand tracking also helps you do the following:

  • Measure performance:  you need to understand what is happening with your brand in the market and over time – things change and tracking can help you get ahead of the curve.
  • Prioritise customer segments: brand tracking can be used to understand the preferences and behaviours of different customer segments. If you have an existing segmentation, you can apply this to your brand tracker to identify segments that show strong affinity, loyalty, or growth potential. 
  • Evaluate marketing: you can test hypotheses and validate assumptions about your marketing strategies by monitoring brand metrics before and after implementing a specific strategy, and seeing if the impact aligns with your expectations. This should be an iterative process.
  • Generate ideas: brand tracking enables you to monitor changes in the market landscape, including shifts in consumer preferences, emerging trends, and competitive activities. This can help you identify gaps in the market where your brand can potentially fill a need or offer a unique value proposition. 
  • Compare with competitors: by tracking key metrics for your brand as well as competitors’ brands, you can identify areas where you outperform or lag behind the competition. This information helps you understand your brand’s position in the market and informs your marketing strategy decisions.
  • Evaluate the impact of marketing communications: brand trackers can help evaluate comms by measuring brand metrics before and after campaigns and by measuring message resonance, recall and relevance.
 

Brand tracking should be seen as an investment in your brand which enables you to improve your product or service in line with customers’ needs and wants.

Brand tracking also helps you do the following:

Frame-9 Brand Tracking Research & Studies - The Complete Guide
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Brand tracking methods

These days, the majority of brand tracking is conducted via online survey, which is the most cost-effective and fast way of gathering data.

However, surveys aren’t the only way to gain insight about your brand. There is scope to enhance your survey with data from additional sources such as social media, online search data, share of voice and share of spend data, internal sales data and CRM analysis and qualitative research. When you bring together these disparate data sets, it helps you get a more holistic picture of what is happening with your brand.

 Brand tracking metrics

A brand tracking survey should contain the following key metrics: 

  • Spontaneous brand awareness
  • Prompted brand awareness
  • Brand imagery associations
  • Brand personality associations
  • Product/service quality ratings
  • Brand preference 
  • Brand purchase including frequency
  • Future purchase intent
  • Brand usage occasions 
  • Brand need states fit
  • Brand closeness – emotional connection 
  • Net promoter score (NPS)

In addition to the above, a tracker can also be used to evaluate the impact of a recent marketing campaign.  For example, brand awareness, associations and purchase intent scores can be compared before and after the campaign has run, to determine uplift in those areas.  Specific questions regarding campaign recall can also be included.

We’ve written in more depth about brand tracking metrics here.

How to design your brand tracker

There are seven key steps to follow:

1. Include the right target audiences – Your tracker should include not only your current customers, but your competitors’ customers too.  If appropriate, you should also aim to include a demographic spread that will enable you to identify any age-based differences in relation to your brand. 

2. Ensure you have a sample size that allows for statistically robust analysis. There is always a tension between cost and sample size, but choosing too small a sample is a false economy.

3. Determine tracking frequency –  Agree on the correct frequency of tracking relative to your brand and sector dynamics. Some brand tracking agencies recommend that you conduct a brand tracker once a year, so you can compare annual results. Others suggest that quarterly is more appropriate, so you can be more aware of changes in the market and pick up on specific campaigns and changes. However, the right answer is the one that works for you and considers the size and stability of your brand and your strategic objectives.

4. Include a ‘flexi-section’ so that you can respond to special circumstances without disrupting the core questioning. Core questioning should remain stable, wave on wave, so you can compare and see trends over time, but the tracker can also be a vehicle for exploring current issues.

5. Implement ongoing and recurring reporting that enables you to visualise trends. Brand managers often use an interactive, always-on’ dashboard that shows key metrics at a glance, whilst enabling them to carry out their own data analysis and quickly export the results for internal sharing.

6. Calculate an overall aggregate brand health score drawn from all the key brand health metrics. This sounds simple but in reality can be a nuanced and complex exercise which involves careful consideration; this will be the key measure that you use to track performance so it is important to get it right. Again, there are no hard and fast rules, other than to consider what is important for your brand and your goals.

7. Carry out annual strategic deep dives using the full year’s data set. Regardless of how often you conduct your brand tracker, an annual review makes sense as part of your wider marketing strategic review. If you are interviewing more frequently than once a year, the aggregate data set will give you a larger base for more detailed analysis.

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Five types of brand tracking studies & brand trackers 

There are five main types of brand tracking studies to consider:

1. Consumer brand tracking

For brands that sell to consumer audiences. This form of tracking is suitable for any brand involved in the provision of goods or services to the consumer. 

For example,  broadband suppliers, food, clothing retailers, car manufacturers, package holiday providers and retail banks.

2. B2B brand tracking

For brands that supply other brands, rather than consumers. Brand health is vital for all brands, meaning that it is just as important that it is measured by organisations that specialise in supplying products and services to other businesses, rather than consumers. 

For example, car leasing companies, facilities management companies, and organisations that provide insurance for businesses.

3. Pure brand tracking

In contrast with brand and comms tracking, pure brand tracking focuses on brand metrics only and doesn’t use the survey as a vehicle to delve into other areas of insight.

A pure brand tracker will therefore focus on core brand metrics only, like brand awareness, brand associations, brand preference and purchase intent.  It won’t include analysis of any particular marketing campaigns.

4. Brand and comms tracking

Unlike pure brand tracking, brand and comms tracking includes elements of the brand that relate to marketing communications, such as ad recall or recognition.

5. Always on brand tracking

As the name suggests, ongoing sampling and completion of your brand tracking survey, with the data cut in waves to provide agile and responsive insight when needed.

 

Reporting on your study 

A brand tracker is only as useful if it is actionable. The first step to using your tracker to drive change is to ensure that you have easy-to-understand and accessible reporting. There are several ways you can do this:

  • Create a brand health scorecard that reports on overall brand health metrics and the brand equity score. The equivalent to an executive summary when only the headlines are needed.
  • An online reporting platform for always-on brand trackers. This enables you to monitor brand health in near time including the provision of easy-to-use data interrogation so that you can ask and answer ad-hoc questions quickly and easily
  • A post-wave analysis and presentation that includes a detailed data analysis of the results and answers both core objectives and wave-specific brand questions.
  • A strategic, annual deep-dive. An opportunity to look back at the data set over a full year and carry out a much more detailed analysis, usually to answer bigger, more strategic questions and objectives.
 

How frequently should you carry out brand tracking studies?

For smaller, established brands operating in less volatile sectors, where less-frequent marketing activity is conducted, an annual or bi-annual brand tracking exercise is likely to be sufficient.  

But for larger organisations and those operating in fast-moving sectors where there is significant competitor activity or price fluctuation, ongoing brand health monitoring can be essential so that brand issues can be rapidly identified and acted upon.  

 

Measure the ROI of brand building

Measuring the ROI of brand building can be challenging because brand-building initiatives often have long-term effects that are difficult to attribute solely to specific marketing activities – you could argue that all of your marketing investment is a form of brand building. 

However, a well-thought-out measure of brand equity represents the intangible value of your brand, including customer perceptions, loyalty, and brand associations. 

Measuring changes in brand equity over time can indicate the effectiveness of brand-building efforts. Trackers can help measure ROI of specific campaigns by measuring brand equity before and afterwards. And finally, metrics such as market share, sales and revenue, customer acquisition and loyalty are also indicators of the impact of brand-building activities.

 

Get expert help with your Brand Tracking 

Brandspeak is a market research and brand tracking agency that specialises in B2C and B2B brand tracking. For more information about our services, or to have a chat about the benefits that brand tracking will have for your brand, please contact Mark Bagnall, our Head of Quantitative Research at Jeremy@brandspeak.co.uk .  

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Best practice brand performance measurement

You can buy a suit off the peg. There are advantages in doing so – cost, speed, availability. This is all fine if you are a standard size and shape and you are not looking for your suit to do much more for you than give you something appropriate to wear at Great Aunt Mildred’s memorial service. But you wouldn’t get married in one. Context is key. If you want something for a special occasion to help you look and feel great, nothing compares to a bespoke suit, made to measure and to your exact specifications. 

As with suits, so with market research. There are any number of proprietary black-box brand measurement tools on the market, and there are some advantages to using them. However, at Brandspeak, we believe that nothing compares to taking a flexible and bespoke approach to measuring your brand’s performance. 

Our consultative and flexible branding research and brand tracking services take the positives of fixed approaches and improve on them to give you something that, like a made-to-measure suit, is perfect for your brand. We will work closely with you to develop brand equity, brand performance and brand health metrics that take account of your brand’s realities. 

Five advantages of taking a flexible approach

  1. Tailored to your needs: we develop bespoke research and analysis that is responsive to and reflective of how the brand is activated, the context of the marketplace it’s competing in, and its stature in that marketplace. 
  2. Method agnostic: we can incorporate the most appropriate research methods and approaches, allowing for a more comprehensive understanding of brand performance, including qualitative research to scope and explore your brand positioning as well as quantitative brand tracking.
  3. Innovative: as new or innovative research techniques arise, we can incorporate them in our approach – black-box tools are, by definition, fixed and don’t have room for updates.
  4. Deeper analysis: we can provide deeper analysis and interpretation of the research findings, helping to identify more subtle insights and trends that may not be immediately apparent through standardized tools.
  5. Competitive advantage: when you come to us for a flexible approach, you are getting something that nobody else has access to – you don’t want to show up to your own wedding and find your annoying second cousin is wearing the same off-the-peg number as you. Bespoke research can provide a competitive advantage by providing unique insights that are not available to competitors who may be using standardized tools. 

Developing a brand equity score. 

We don’t believe in a generic calculation to determine brand equity, but we do believe in being able to calculate a brand equity score that is based on the relevant metrics for the brand in question. Having a single score is a great way of aggregating your earned equity which, once in place, can be monitored from wave to wave and within key sub-groups, as well as applied to tracked competitors so that you have comparative insight. 

We start by deconstructing what brand equity means to you. In developing the score, we consider three features:

  1. The brand metrics to include as the constituent elements that make up brand equity.
  2. Any relative re-weighting that should be applied to each metric to equalise the scoring, such as inherent brand stature.
  3. The best way to aggregate the constituent scores into one overall equity score that is sensitive enough to pick up movements in the market. 

A collaborative process

We work with you and your stakeholders to explore and decide upon the three features above. Not only is this an intellectually stimulating exercise, but it also serves to get buy in from the stakeholders involved and the effort is more than paid back by producing a relevant and fitting brand equity calculation. 

As part of this process, we consider which key brand metrics to include: what are the best data points and should we use absolute percentage scores, mean scores, conversion scores or any combination of these? We also explore whether we should re-weight certain scores. For example, for a well-known mature brand we might want to down-weight brand awareness in favour of other metrics such as brand loyalty or brand sentiment, whereas a new brand with low awareness might want to up-weight metrics such as brand differentiation or brand vision. We then need to work out the best way of aggregating all the constituent brand metrics, considering how to make sure it’s sensitive enough to clearly demonstrate market shifts. We would do all this work based on evidence from the first wave of brand tracking data. 

Context is key

We don’t want to stretch the suit analogy any further, but context really is key in brand measurement. It’s an obvious statement but the results of one brand’s performance may signify ‘doing well’ whilst the same scores for another brand may not. The work in developing brand equity scoring will have already taken account of a brand’s stature in the marketplace.

As an example, for a small brand with low market presence, an uplift in future consideration by +5% might be considered ‘doing well’ if the resting level score is just 6%, whereas a leading brand with a future consideration score of 70% might be seen as ‘not doing well’ if prior scores were around 80%. This is part of the job of relative weighting in the equity scoring, so that we can build in ‘what doing well’ means for that particular brand. 

What about costs and time?

Black-box approaches do save time as the measurement criteria are pre-decided and the tool has been used multiple times for multiple clients. However, we think that ‘fail to plan, plan to fail’ is a cliché for a reason. The time we spend collaborating and building a bespoke approach pays back in the quality of the outcome, and the way it helps to get stakeholders invested in the project. Additionally, brand tracking and brand measurement is a longer-term investment so should never be a knee-jerk purchase that you need done yesterday. 

Similarly, it does cost more to take a bespoke approach but (an adage this time, rather than a cliché), we also think ‘buy cheap, buy twice’. What is the point of adopting a fixed, black-box approach that doesn’t quite fit. Unlike the suit, you won’t be constantly fiddling with your waistband, hoping to feel comfortable, but you will find that you have something that only partially meets your needs. To find out more about our flexible approach to measuring brand performance, contact Brandspeak at enquiries@brandspeak.co.uk .

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Introduction

We’ve been on a bit of a roll recently with our blog posts on segmentation. We’ve written about what is market segmentation and why do you need it, we’ve given you some practical hints and tips on how to conduct market segmentation research, and we’ve helped you to make the most of your segmentation output in three ways to maximise your investment in market segmentation research.  

In this latest article, we explore how to prioritise market segments in the way that will be best suited to your business.

Why is market segmentation research important right now?

The main purpose of market segmentation is to enable an organisation to understand its target markets more closely – and to be able to target them more effectively.

However, both the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have caused significant changes in the way we think, feel and behave, meaning that many pre-pandemic segmentation models are now increasingly out-of-date. 

Coupled with this is the fact that market segmentation research typically has a shelf-life of about five years, and whilst many organisations have been aware of the need to refresh their models, they have opted not to do so during what has been a prolonged period of turbulence for customers. 

As a result, we are currently receiving even more consumer and b2b segmentation enquiries than usual, from companies seeking to play ‘catch-up’ in terms of their target market understanding.  

For some, this provides a real opportunity to challenge the way that they have prioritised and addressed individual segments, as they seek to increase both efficiency and profitability.

But what are the different ways in which segment prioritisation can be considered?

Seven ways to prioritise market segments

Size

This sounds obvious – the larger the segment, the more potential customers you can reach, and the more revenue you can generate – so you should choose the segment that has the greatest market size. 

But there may be more to it than that. The biggest segment by size may have other drawbacks such as being overserved by competitors or being a key target for another of your products that you may end up cannibalising. There may be a sweet spot – a segment that is not the biggest but is still big enough to be profitable.

You can also run into problems if the segment is too big, meaning that it might be too broadly defined and not particularly homogeneous.  This should have been resolved in the customer segmentation analysis by your market research partner – if a segment is too big it may benefit from being broken up into two smaller segments. 

Growth potential

You also need to consider whether your segment is likely to grow or decline over time. It helps to look at trends and ask, “how is the market clustering?”.  

For example, if you have conducted a psychographic segmentation around food preferences and choices, you need to be aware of the trend towards reducing meat consumption – a drop of 17% in the decade to 2021. This should help you decide how to prioritise your target market between the ‘Unapologetic Carnivores’ segment and the ‘Tentative Vegan Trialers’ – there may still be many more meat eaters than vegans, but interest in plant-based foods is growing fast.

Competition

If your market is crowded, you could gain competitive advantage by prioritising segments that are less well-served by competitors. Segmentation studies can reveal opportunities for ways to serve a new target consumer; instead of competing with numerous other brands, you could prioritise a more niche target market with less competition. 

Profitability

What does the opportunity look like for each segment? Some might have high volumes, but low profits – while others might have small volumes but high profits. You need to consider cost of acquisition, profit margins, and lifetime value to get a full picture of profitability. 

However, the segment that is most profitable in the short term may still not be a good bet if it detracts from overall strategy, brand purpose or long-term goals. To use the plant-based foods example again, if your business makes vegan foods, then pivoting to sell profitable steaks to Unapologetic Carnivores would not be a good choice.

Fit with strategy

On that last point, it may be easy to rule out some segments straight away as the needs and behaviours of the target consumer are completely unaligned with your overall business strategy. For example, you could spend a lot of time and effort trying to educate Unapologetic Carnivores about the value of plant-based food. But why bother when you know that your business is built around offering meat-free alternatives and there are other segments who are already ‘vegan curious’?  

Fit with capabilities

Similarly, if you are set up to make beanburgers it may not be sensible to target a segment that is suspicious of any food that doesn’t contain meat. There may be an opportunity in that segment, but it isn’t for you.  

Reach

One of the most important considerations when prioritising a segment is can you actually reach them? Segments need to be well defined and, usually, differentiated by some key demographics to enable you to buy the right media to reach your target consumer. Otherwise you could find that your segmentation is very interesting and stimulates ideas but isn’t actionable.  

Which way works best?

The reality is not that you need to choose one of the above seven ways to prioritise but that the right answer involves looking at all seven and then making a judgment. One way to formalise this is to assign a score to each segment for each of the ways listed then tot up which comes out top. This isn’t fool proof – you will still need to apply judgement – but this is certainly something that your market research partner can help you with. If you want to find out more about how to apply segmentation and prioritise different segments.

Moving forward

For more information about market segmentation and how it could benefit your business, please contact Brandspeak at enquiries@brandspeak.co.uk

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Why Measure Brand Performance?

First of all, why do you need to measure your brand performance? Surely, sales figures will tell you all you need to know. If your products and services are selling then your brand is doing its job, right? Unfortunately, nowadays it is not quite as simple as all that. Your products could be selling despite your brand (in which case, just imagine how much better you could be doing). 

We’ve come a long way from the days when a brand was just an ownership mark stamped onto the side of a cow. Branding has developed in sophistication and nuance. Brands now do much more than just identify who owns a product (or living creature); a brand is a conversation between organisation and customer across every touchpoint including advertising, packaging, social media, employees, customer service and channel partners. And one mustn’t underestimate the importance of seemingly small elements such as colour in branding, brand logos or tone of voice – these all need to be consistent with your brand character and brand essence.

Marketers create and manipulate brands to convey brand personality and brand purpose, and consumers project emotions and relationships onto brands. Good branding can produce brand growth and a bad rebrand can damage sales and market share. 

Case study – how a change in packaging cost Tropicana $50 million.

This article in The Branding Journal shows how changing one small aspect of a brand – in this case, the packaging – can have a devastating effect.

Tropicana-Brandspeak-768x480 How Do You Measure Brand Performance? Five Key Steps

This classic example of a branding failure comes from 2009, when Tropicana invested in new packaging and advertising. The main packaging change was from showing the outside of the orange to showing the inside – the juice. A small change for a brand in the international market, you might think, and for the better in that it shows the actual product. However, the impact was that within two months, the company had lost 20% of sales, with market share going to competitors. 

Because the packaging had a simpler design than the original one, consumers thought it was a low-range supermarket brand. The President at Tropicana North America said, “We underestimated the deep emotional bond [customers] had with the original packaging.” Overall, the ‘investment’ and the cost of fixing the problem added up to a cost of $50 million for the company.

Five steps to measuring brand performance

As the case study shows, it is important to listen to consumers and understand, in depth, what your brand means to them. Once you commit to measuring your brand performance, there are four steps to go through, as follows:

1. Conduct a brand audit: 

Before you get started, you need to put a stake in the ground and understand your original brand vision and how that translates to your current brand equity. A brand audit can be an informal process whereby you review your brand positioning strategy and explore your key brand touchpoints, both externally with customers and prospects and internally within your organisation. Alternatively, you can conduct a more formal audit which lists each of these touchpoints and evaluates how they are contributing to brand health.  If you have multiple brands, your audit should also consider your brand architecture and how all of these brands work together.

2. Be clear about your brand vision:

What is it that you want the brand to achieve? What is your brand purpose? The brand vision should align with the overall strategy of your organisation, but be at a higher level than strategy, and should be the guiding voice behind all decisions. Properly articulated, a brand vision can help to galvanise employees throughout the organisation, resonate with consumers and be instrumental in brand differentiation. As an example, Coca Cola’s vision statement is, “….. to craft the brands and choice of drinks that people love, to refresh them in body & spirit. And done in ways that create a more sustainable business and better, shared future that makes a difference in people’s lives, communities and our planet.” Ikea’s is “To create a better everyday life for the many people.” 

3. Set brand goals: 

Once you are clear about your brand vision and brand purpose, you can translate this into specific, strategic goals. What you measure subsequently needs to align with these goals. For example, if you have a relatively new and unknown brand, it is likely that your goal will be to drive brand awareness, whereas if you have a mature brand that is well known in your marketplace, you might need to update your brand personality to invigorate sales and build brand strength. Only once you are clear about what you want to achieve can you decide which brand metrics you need and how to define what brand health means to you.

4. Decide on your brand metrics: 

Once you are clear about your vision, you can choose the metrics you need to track to evaluate whether you are meeting those goals. These will vary but will typically include the following: brand awareness and salience measures, brand consideration and purchase intent measures, brand loyalty, brand positioning relative to competitors, brand sentiment and, potentially, brand advertising metrics. The decision about whether to measure brand advertising as part of your brand performance measurement as opposed to using a separate dedicated programme of research will depend primarily on the amount of advertising that you do.

We’ve written a full guide to brand metrics in another blog that you can use to help you decide what to measure.

5. Decide on your market research method: 

There are many ways you can approach measuring brand performance. You can gather brand metrics through various methods including social media listening, analysis of online reviews, qualitative interviews, focus groups, customer service feedback and website analytics. For example, social media listening will give you an unfiltered idea of the main ways your brand is discussed and the key topics you are associated with. 

Alternatively, if you are unsure about how your brand is positioned relative to competitors, you could conduct a qualitative brand mapping exercise. However, for the most effective and flexible way to measure brand health, we recommend using a purpose-built, quantitative, longitudinal brand tracking survey i.e a brand tracker.

Conclusion 

The chances are that your brand performance measurement challenge falls somewhere on the spectrum between needing to identify your cattle and having to mop up a $50 million packaging error. Whatever the size or shape of your brand measurement requirement, we can help.

For more information on how to measure your own brand’s performance, talk to one of Brandspeak’s brand research expert’s.

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What is brand tracking and how do you use it?

What do Dixons, Woolworths and Blockbusters all have in common? Once iconic brands, they have all now disappeared from our high streets. Why? Because things change. Brands fall out of favour for a wide variety of reasons – technological change, economic issues and competitive pressures to name just a few.

This is why it is important to be aware of the health of your brand – nobody wants to end up in a nostalgia blog about famous brands that no longer exist.  Brand tracking enables you to measure the performance of your brand over time and to use the insights gained to improve brand awareness, brand loyalty, perception, and market position. 

What is Brand Tracking?

Brand tracking is the process of monitoring and analysing the performance of a brand over time. It involves gathering brand-related metrics such as brand awareness, brand perception, brand loyalty, and purchase intent. Once you have collected the data, you can determine the brand’s strengths and weaknesses, identify areas for improvement and track changes in brand equity and value over time.

You can gather brand metrics through various methods including social media listening, analysis of online reviews, qualitative interviews, focus groups, customer service feedback and website analytics. However, for the most effective and flexible way to measure brand health, we recommend using a purpose-built, quantitative, longitudinal brand-tracking survey – a brand tracker.

Brand trackers enable you to tailor the metrics and the approach to your brand vision and to support the decisions you need to make about marketing, brand positioning strategy, product development, customer service and any other brand-related issue.

Why is brand tracking important?

Brand tracking will provide you with insight into how your brand is performing in the market and enable you to identify areas of strength and weakness so that you can adjust marketing strategies over time, leading to improved customer satisfaction, increased sales, brand loyalty, and overall business growth.

Key benefits of brand tracking include the following:

Measuring brand equity

Are people aware of your brand? Is it top of mind, or do they need prompting before they recall it? With what do they associate your brand? How positive do they feel towards your brand? And how likely are they to buy your brand?  A brand tracker can answer all these fundamental questions.

Targeting customer segments

You can use your brand tracker to understand how the brand performs in different parts of your market, which will enable you to fine-tune your approach. If you have an existing customer segmentation you can use golden questions to tag respondents within your brand tracker survey. You can also use any of the demographic or classification questions within the tracker to explore performance in different parts of the market. For example, if you discover that younger people are less likely to be aware of your brand than older people, you can start to focus your communication strategy on media that attract younger audiences.

Improving communications effectiveness

Brand tracking research can also help you measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. By tracking metrics such as ad recall, brand recognition and purchase intent, you can determine whether advertising is resonating with consumers and driving sales. This information can be used to optimise future advertising campaigns and maximise return on investment.

Comparing with competitors

Brand tracking research can help you understand your competitive positioning in the marketplace by comparing your performance directly with that of competitors. You can use pre-coded lists to compare against your key competitors, but using unprompted questioning can also help you define your competitor set by identifying the brands that consumers perceive as competing with yours – these are not always obvious. The insight gained can help you differentiate the brand and gain market share.

How to use brand tracking research

Brand tracking is, by definition, an investment for the long term. It can be daunting to embark on such a project, so we recommend keeping the following three principles in mind.

Focus 

Brand trackers are in many ways the ‘jacks of all trade’ of the research world. This is not, of course, to imply that they are masters of none, but simply that they can cover many elements of the product and marketing life cycle. This means that it can be tempting to load them with as many questions as possible. There is, however, a balance to be struck between trying to get more value from the tracker and overloading the questionnaire and risking losing respondents and degrading the quality of the responses.

We recommend keeping the brand tracker tightly focused on core brand metrics. These are the standard questions that you will continue to ask in exactly the same way to give you the longitudinal view that you need to understand how your decisions affect outcomes in the market. You can always add a small section to the tracker for new questions and issues as they arise.  

You also need to consider whether to include advertising and comms metrics in the brand tracker. If you have an extensive comms programme, it may be better to invest in separate advertising research; if not, then putting some ad metrics into the brand tracker is a legitimate approach.

Timing

One of the main things that you will need to decide about your brand tracker is the frequency with which you want to conduct the research and the frequency with which you need to report to your stakeholders. Again, there is a balance to be struck between measuring frequently enough to spot changes and measuring too frequently and overreacting to changes in the data which don’t signify a longer-term trend.

The category within which you operate will influence timing. If you have FMCG brands then, as the name implies, you need to be fast-moving yourself – we recommend collecting data monthly. If your brands are in high-consideration categories, such as automotive or financial services, you can collect data less frequently. 

You then need to consider how often and how you report to stakeholders. Some businesses want a dashboard where they can see the latest results and check KPIs at any time. Others are happy to have a regular report, whether that is monthly or quarterly.

There is also a balance to be struck between frequency and sample size in terms of how you spend your budget. You can choose a lower sample size so you can conduct the research more often, and then report a rolling average of results (such as a three-month rolling average). The advantage is that you have a larger base for analysis and that it smooths out blips in the data; the disadvantage is that you can do less analysis on each individual wave, and it can take longer to spot trends.

Relationship

When you invest in a brand tracker, your goal should be to work with your provider for the long term. The value in a tracker comes from consistency over time, so it is important to build a strong relationship with a research agency as you will be working together for the foreseeable future.

As well as the obvious criteria – experience with branding research, good reputation, affordable – we recommend you spend some time getting to know the people you will be working with. Do you get on? Do you trust them to tell you what you may not want to hear? Do they question your brief and push you to think harder about what you need? 

In summary

Brand tracking can make a huge difference to your business, so it is important to get it right. Don’t be like Rumbelows, C&A and Tandy. Who? Exactly!

Have a question?

If you would like to find out more about how brand tracking could be implemented for your organisation, visit our brand tracking agency services page, or get in touch today.

 

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Three ways to maximise your investment in market segmentation research

Market segmentation research should be an investment. But not an investment like gold or bonds, something that you stick in a dusty vault, or the digital equivalent, and try to forget about while hoping that its value will soar and make you rich.

Instead, market segmentation is more like a good watch, a made-to-measure suit or a designer handbag – something that you should use all the time so your cost per use is low and the value you derive from it – the job you got when you wore the Paul Smith suit, or the envy of all your friends when they saw your Louis Vuitton bag – is worth many times the original cost.

We’re going to assume that you have taken the advice in our previous article and have developed a great market segmentation, whether a priori or post hoc. But however elegant the analysis and interesting the individual segments, you will only see a return on your investment if you can use the segmentation to uncover opportunities and influence your marketing strategy, as discussed in our first article in this series.

Here’s three key ways to maximise the return on the market segmentation you have created.

Add your market segmentation to all research

Now you have created the segmentation, all your ongoing research and insight work should include it. Every piece of work should add to your understanding of your segments, and your segmentation should add depth and insight to every piece of work. In practice, this will mean that you need to derive a set of golden questions which enable you to replicate the segmentation without having to include the full segmentation questionnaire.

What are golden questions?

Golden questions are the ones in the original segmentation questionnaire that are most powerful in discriminating between the resulting segments. The goal for golden questions is to use as few questions as possible, so as not to take up valuable real estate on your quant questionnaires or qualitative research screeners, but to use as many as needed to discriminate effectively between segments.

In some cases, you may be able to get it down to a single question. For example, a travel firm who has segmented their customers by their preferred type of holiday may be able to use a question like the following:

Which of the following is closest to describing the perfect holiday for you?

  1. Sunny beach holiday with nightlife and entertainment
  2. Snow, skiing and winter sports
  3. Family break with sunshine, pool and kid’s club
  4. City break with galleries, shopping and restaurants
  5. Cruise holiday with food and entertainment on board plus excursions

However, many segmentations, especially those segmented across the globe are more complex and will require more questions. It can be helpful to create more than one set of golden questions: a shorter set for when there is not much space on your questionnaire and a longer set for when it is important to get an even more reliable allocation of respondents to segments.

How can I use golden questions?

You can use segmentation golden questions in all your surveys and qualitative research. Add the golden questions to your brand tracker or customer experience tracker to learn about how the segments interact with your brand. If you are conducting focus groups, you can recruit from your primary target segments. In the case of the travel company, that might mean bringing people together through an event, who are most likely to book a cruise holiday for a group to talk about destinations and entertainment options.

You can also use golden questions in customer-facing situations. If you have a short set of questions, or even a single question, call centre staff can use them to quickly classify incoming calls, and then select scripts that are designed specifically for each segment. If you have sales teams, they can use the questions in conversation with prospects to help qualify them.

Bring your marketing segments to life

It can be hard to retain the details of each segment, which in turn makes it hard to understand how and when to use them. It is particularly difficult for people who weren’t involved in the segmentation process to understand them and why they are valuable. The more you can do to bring your segments to life, the easier they become to understand and use.

Naming market segments

The first step is to give your segments a descriptive name. It’s so much easier to remember that a segment contains people who like holidays in the sun with nightlife if the segment is called ‘Sun Seekers’ rather than ‘Segment 1’.

Segment personas

Creating personas is another great way to bring the segments to life. The goal isn’t to represent everyone in the segment but to illustrate what someone who was right in the middle of that segment might look like. Take the key demographics that relate to the segment and create a persona. For example, a Sun Seeker might be in their early 20s, unmarried with no children, working in an admin level job, and living in rented accommodation, whereas someone in the ‘Family Funtime’ segment might be in their late 30s, married with primary-aged children, be in a middle management role and own a house with a mortgage.

You can conduct qualitative research to develop your personas and add detail and colour to them. Using your golden questions, you can recruit people for depth interviews or focus groups and use them to explore the characteristics of people in the segment.

Embed your marketing segments in your organisation

Many organisations today are attempting to become more customer-centric. To do so, it helps if people throughout the organisation should be focused on the customer, regardless of whether their role is directly customer facing. As discussed above, the segments shouldn’t just sit on a shelf in the insights or marketing department but should be woven through the fabric of the organisation and its processes and decision making. This requires good internal communications – the marketing or insight teams need to promote their work and the value of using the segments.

How to communicate about marketing segments

If you have created strong personas, you can use them to build an internal communications campaign. A great way to get the message across in a succinct and accessible fashion is to create a short explainer video. If you have used qualitative research to recruit exemplars of each segment you can include vox pops or images. You can also blog about the segments, create decks that show how the segments are relevant in different functional areas of the organisation, such as sales or customer experience, or even create posters that show the personas to put up in physical office spaces. Additionally, whenever you communicate insights findings, make sure you include how they link to the personas and how the segmentation is relevant.

In summary

Your market segmentation is an investment in your brand and your company. Make sure you work it to get the maximum return. If you would like any further information, Brandspeak are here to help. Get in touch below.

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