Brand perception directly impacts brand health. Customers that feel positively toward your brand will buy your products or services—and likely remain loyal for years.
Brand health and brand perception impacts your sales directly. In addition, these measures dramatically increase your return on ad campaign investment if utilized correctly.
Additionally, a history of positive brand perception helps companies avoid or survive PR crises.
Vital internal data for a good model includes customer transaction history, conversion rates, and number of returning customers. In a similar vein, data on users of loyalty programs improve these models.
Additional brand health data includes website traffic and social media engagement as well as detailed information on previous ad campaign successes.
Essential external data for a good brand perception and brand health model is share of voice. That is to say, external social media sites and keyword usage do not provide an accurate view of customer perceptions of a brand without understanding the size of their standing within an industry.
Specific health care brands, for example, may not be discussed much on social media sites due to users’ privacy concerns; this does not mean that the brand is not held in high esteem.
Additional external data that companies use include product reviews, focus groups, and surveys. These sources, surveys in particular, generate Net Promoter Scores—which essentially measures the likelihood that a person will recommend a product or brand to someone else.
One of the challenges of measuring brand perception is, as noted above, the potential disparity between positive feelings toward a brand and mentions online.
Another of the challenges of measuring brand health which affects companies in all industries is the fact that developing a positive reputation takes time. In short, a few positive interactions or ad impressions does not lead to a positive brand perception by customers immediately. And in the same vein, new campaigns do not show positive or negative effects right away. Measuring the effectiveness of a campaign and perception of a brand, therefore, becomes tricky.
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“According to our research, when it comes to an emotional connection with brands the consumer goods sector scores the highest—29% of respondents said they felt passionate about these companies.”
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