12 Brand Metrics You Can Measure with Brand Tracking

Brand tracking metrics are the measures, taken from a survey repeated at regular intervals, that show how a brand is performing in the minds and behaviour of its target market over time. They fall into three groups: awareness (whether people know and recall the brand), closeness (how they feel about it and whether it meets their needs) and behaviour (whether they prefer, buy and use it). This article sets out 12 of the most widely used brand metrics, with example survey questions, and explains which of them should become your brand tracking KPIs.

12 important brand tracking metrics

First, here’s a quick list of the 12 important brand 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 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. Running those projects well is what our brand tracking services are designed to do.

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 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, without the insights required to target the issues that are undermining your brand’s ability to grow.

In addition, your brand is more likely to be susceptible to targeted activity by competitors that are closely monitoring it, as part of their own brand tracking activity. In other words, 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 from InMoment’s 2018 Retail CX Trends Report, a survey of 1,300 US consumers, demonstrate the importance of managing these issues closely:

• Nearly 50% of customers say they have left a brand to which they were loyal, to go to a competitor that is better at meeting their needs

• 75% of loyal customers will recommend a brand to friends and family

How to choose the right brand metrics

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 with that 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, and the 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.

What are examples of brand metrics?

Core brand tracking metrics can be divided into three 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. 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. Behavioural brand loyalty

2. Brand preference

3. Brand purchase

4. Brand usage occasions

Not all of these metrics will 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.

Many trackers also measure consideration (whether the brand would be on the shortlist next time the respondent buys) and purchase intent (how likely they are to buy it in the near future). Both sit between awareness and preference in the purchase funnel, and they are often where a growth problem first becomes visible. A typical consideration question would be:

Which of these brands would you consider the next time you buy [CATEGORY X]?

Brand awareness metrics

In this and the next two sections, 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, which were you aware of before today?

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 a brand. 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 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 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [BRAND X] 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 those attributes 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, they explore whether the brand is perceived as ‘warm’, ‘caring’ or ‘smart’.

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 also shows the extent to which your brand is seen as 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 consumers’ 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 wellbeing, 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 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 for managing 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?

If 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 usage occasions question would be:

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

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.

Diagnostic Metrics vs Growth-Driving KPIs: Understanding the Difference

The twelve metrics above do not all play the same role, and understanding the distinction between diagnostic metrics and growth-driving KPIs is fundamental to designing a tracker that delivers commercial value.

Diagnostic metrics provide context and monitoring. They track visibility and presence and are useful as background measures, but they rarely drive decisions on their own. Common examples include prompted and unprompted brand awareness (also known as aided and unaided awareness), advertising awareness, brand familiarity, and trial or usage figures. These measures correlate heavily with media spend and tell an organisation relatively little about why customers choose or reject its brand in real buying situations.

Growth-driving brand KPIs explain customer choice and competitive position. They are the metrics that shift when brand strategy is working and decline when it is not, in ways that connect directly to commercial outcomes such as acquisition, retention, pricing power and market share. The most influential among them, in many categories, are mental availability and meaningful differentiation.

Mental availability is the ease and speed with which a brand comes to mind across relevant buying situations. A brand with high mental availability is thought of readily when a purchase need arises. One with low mental availability is simply absent from the consideration set, regardless of how well regarded it may be among those who do consider it. As Byron Sharp’s work at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute established, improved mental and physical availability are the main real-world causes of brand growth.

Meaningful differentiation is the extent to which a brand is perceived as distinct, relevant and worth choosing over alternatives. It is not simply about being different; it is about being different in ways that matter to the target audience. Kantar’s longitudinal BrandZ research consistently shows that meaningfully different brands command a price premium, encourage repeat purchasing and prove more resilient in difficult times.

Alongside these two anchors, other metrics play important supporting roles depending on the commercial context: emotional affinity, perceived value, experience delivery, brand trust, purchase intent and propensity to choose. Effective brand tracking is not about elevating one metric above all others but about understanding how different brand perceptions combine to drive choice and behaviour in the specific category being tracked.

How to read brand metrics together

Individual metrics are most useful when read as a sequence, because the point at which they fall away shows where the brand is losing buyers. Common patterns include:

• High prompted but low unprompted awareness: the brand is known but rarely thought of at the moment of choice.

• High awareness but low consideration: buyers know the brand but do not see it as relevant to their needs, which usually points to a perception or positioning issue.

• High preference but low purchase: the brand is liked, but something at the point of sale, often price or availability, is getting in the way.

• Strong emotional loyalty but weak behavioural loyalty: as in the iPhone example above, attachment is not turning into repeat purchase.

Read in this way, a tracker becomes a diagnosis rather than a scorecard. Our guide to understanding brand health looks at how these measures combine into an overall picture.

Where do share of search and digital metrics fit?

Survey-based brand metrics can be complemented by behavioural data that is collected without asking anyone a question. The best known is share of search: a brand’s share of all branded searches in its category. In Les Binet’s analysis for the IPA, share of search correlated with market share in all three categories studied (automotive, energy and mobile phone handsets), with a lead time of up to a year for cars. Whereas share of search shows that interest in a brand is rising or falling, only a survey can explain why. The two work best together, alongside the wider sales and marketing measures covered in our article on how to measure brand performance.

How to Link Brand KPIs to Commercial Outcomes

For brand tracking to justify its investment, it must be possible to answer a direct commercial question: if this metric moves, what happens to the business?

The reason most traditional trackers cannot answer this question is that they are designed to measure brand perceptions in isolation from commercial behaviour. They tell an organisation that consideration is up three points or that differentiation has weakened, but they do not connect those movements to acquisition rates, churn, revenue or pricing power.

This disconnect is the main reason some marketers have begun to ask whether brand tracking is dead. The answer lies less in abandoning tracking than in designing it differently.

Closing this gap requires explicit linkage work: driver analysis that identifies which brand and experience perceptions have the strongest statistical relationship to buyer behaviour and commercial outcomes. This typically involves understanding which brand perceptions are associated with customer acquisition, retention or competitive switching; how those relationships vary by audience segment; and which factors carry the most weight at the actual point of purchase decision.

This is the analytical logic that underpins Brandspeak’s GrowthTrack brand tracker. Rather than simply measuring which perceptions have shifted between waves, GrowthTrack models the relationship between brand and experience metrics and commercial outcomes, identifying the drivers with the greatest effect on future performance and enabling organisations to prioritise investment on that basis. Used in this way, brand tracking becomes a forward-looking strategic instrument rather than a historical record.

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 funnel chart earlier in this article 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.

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.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are brand tracking KPIs?

Brand tracking KPIs are the specific brand health metrics an organisation selects to monitor how its brand is performing over time, measured consistently across research waves and compared against competitors. They are distinct from brand metrics generally in that they are deliberately chosen because they have a clear relationship to a business objective and the power to prompt a commercial decision when they move.

What is the most important brand tracking KPI?

There is no single most important brand tracking KPI, but two measures are consistently influential across categories: mental availability, which measures how easily a brand comes to mind in relevant buying situations, and meaningful differentiation, which measures whether the brand is perceived as distinct and worth choosing over alternatives. Both have established relationships to commercial outcomes including market share, pricing power and long-term sales growth.

What is the difference between brand health metrics and brand KPIs?

Brand health metrics are any measurable attributes of brand performance, including awareness, consideration, preference, trust and emotional connection. Brand KPIs are a subset of these: the specific metrics chosen because they have a clear link to business objectives and will prompt action when they move. Not all brand health metrics qualify as KPIs; the distinction lies in their relevance to commercial decisions.

Why do brand tracking programmes fail?

Brand tracking programmes most commonly fail because of metric proliferation (measuring too many things), weak links between brand data and commercial decisions, template-led design that does not reflect the specific brand context, and agenda creep as different teams add questions over time. The result is trackers that generate activity without impact: data that is collected, reported and largely ignored.

How many KPIs should a brand tracker include?

Effective brand tracking programmes typically focus on a small number of headline KPIs, usually three to five, supported by a wider set of driver metrics that explain movement on those headlines and a selective layer of diagnostic metrics for context. The governing principle is that every metric tracked should have a clear reason for being there: either it tells the organisation how the brand is performing at a headline level, explains why it is performing that way, or provides competitive context.

What is the difference between brand awareness and mental availability?

Brand awareness measures whether people know a brand, either unprompted or when shown its name. Mental availability is broader: it measures how readily the brand comes to mind across the different buying situations in which the category is used, usually by asking which brands respondents link with each category entry point, such as a quick lunch at work or a gift for a host. A brand can have high prompted awareness yet low mental availability if it is linked to only a few of those situations.

About the Author

Jeremy Braune is Managing Director and Head of Research at Brandspeak, a global market research and brand strategy agency. With over 30 years of client- and agency-side experience, he has led B2B and B2C research projects in more than 40 international markets for Diageo, Nintendo, AXA, General Motors, British Airways, Santander, Muller Dairy and Lloyds Bank.

Before founding Brandspeak, Jeremy held senior roles at Millward Brown (now Kantar) as Global Account Director for Diageo, at Detica (now BAE Systems) as Head of Customer Experience, and at EHS Brann (now Helia) as Head of Insight. His career spans qualitative and quantitative research, brand strategy, CRM and general management, and he lectures on London Business School’s MBA programme.

At Brandspeak, Jeremy’s approach is built on the conviction that research should be a strategic growth engine, not a reporting function. He and his team are focused on delivering commercially actionable insight that enables clients to make better decisions, build stronger brands and grow their businesses profitably.

Jeremy is a member of the AQR and MRS. Contact: 0203 858 0052 / enquiries@brandspeak.co.uk.