9 Ways to Measure Your Brand for Optimal Profitability

Strategic branding is all about creating a strong, memorable, and positive impression on your target audience and turning them into loyal customers. But how do you know if your branding efforts are paying off? 

By tracking metrics.

With countless metrics out there, won't you get overwhelmed trying to track them all? Which do you focus on? And what are the benefits anyway? In this article, we'll explore brand measurement metrics and discuss nine of the metrics you should monitor to drive your business growth. 

Why does brand measurement matter?

You might have an excellent product or service, a fantastic marketing team, and top-tier operational processes. That’s great - but it’s not enough in today's saturated market.

Thanks to digital advances, brands are gaining newer ways to communicate with existing and potential customers, and that affects how the broader audience perceives and interacts with brands. 

You’re expected to be on multiple channels, and available across a range of social platforms. So how can you know for sure that your strategies and efforts are hitting their marks?

That's where brand measurement comes in.

If you want to know how well your audience is responding, whether they’re engaging with your content, and how well they recognise your brand, then monitoring brand measurement can help.

1. Tracking your position and progress

Brand measurement offers a comprehensive approach to understanding your brand's health and performance. Tracking relevant metrics helps you to answer these (and many other) questions:

• Where does your brand stand relative to your competitors?
• Are you meeting your growth targets?
• Are you meeting customer expectations?
• What's your brand's customer lifetime value?
• What's your market share?

After all, before you make any changes you need to know where you currently stand. By keeping tabs on the right metrics, you can understand how you’re doing, as well as clearly see any improvements (or failings!) over time.

2. Provides insights for strategy and marketing decisions

Measuring your brand isn't just about racking up the numbers. Unless you're applying those insights, you're essentially shooting in the dark. 

Here's an illustration: Let's say you sell eco-friendly home products. You're gearing up for a big promotional push for a product launch of your new line of reusable kitchen items. You also have this lofty idea of grabbing a large slice of the market share for your new product.

But you decide to track your awareness metrics first. You gather the data and sync it up with other tools like:

• OneStream-integrated ERP systems,
• Sales automation software,
• Google Analytics,
• And your CRM.

And, surprise, the results are eye-opening: you don't have the strong brand presence you thought you had. Based on this, shifting your focus to raising brand awareness before launching your new product may make more sense. 

3. Helps identify areas for improvement

Thanks to brand measurement, you get to celebrate wins when your performance metrics show that efforts are hitting targets. Conversely, it spots those areas where you're not doing so well that need some extra work.

For example, if your online store is making decent sales, you may be tempted to rest on your laurels.

But what if analyzing your SEO metrics shows that your site is struggling with keyword rankings? Doing nothing about optimizing your content marketing strategy for relevant keywords could quickly affect those short-term gains as the level of interaction with your website declines. 

4. Communicates your brand value and impact

Sometimes, your stakeholders, decision-makers, and team need the "hard numbers" to appreciate your brand impact. This can come in handy both internally and externally.

For instance, sharing detailed performance metrics with your marketing team can help to align their efforts with your goals. Whether it’s demonstrating the impact of using LinkedIn for lead generation or how SEO performance has improved, sharing these details and how it’s impacted the business can boost morale and show that you're appreciating their efforts.

And say you're a growing tech startup looking to secure extra funding or partnerships. Presenting concrete evidence of your growth and achievements can justify your valuation and help you land new investors. 

Criteria for selecting brand measurement metrics to monitor

Unless you're deriving the right insights, you're not going to drive any meaningful brand growth. Here are some factors to consider when choosing the brand metrics to track and analyze:

• Alignment with business goals: You want to track relevant metrics that directly align with your objectives and strategic priorities. This can serve as critical data points for anything from strategic decision-making to writing business proposals. Otherwise, you're just gathering data for its own sake. 
• Customer-centric: Your brand metrics should help you understand how your branding efforts resonate with the people who matter most: your customers. Why? Their perspective matters more than what you assume internally.
• Actionability: Vanity metrics, such as social media follower growth, look spectacular but can't be acted on. Focus on metrics that can be acted on. 

Metrics or KPIs?

You often see metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used interchangeably in day-to-day business contexts. But just because they work together doesn't mean they serve the same purposes. 

On the one hand, metrics are general quantitative measurements that track your performance or brand health.

On the other, KPIs are made up of metrics and are key strategic indicators that are directly linked to your business goals. Notice the emphasis? They're critical for the success of specific business objectives.

Here's a rule of thumb: KPIs are all metrics, but not all metrics are KPIs. 

Whether a metric counts as a KPI depends on what you're trying to achieve. For instance, if you're trying to acquire new customers, your KPIs could include outbound lead generation and conversion rates.

9 brand measurement metrics to drive profitability

The nine metrics we'll discuss below will offer much-needed context for data-driven decisions that maximize profitability. 

1. Brand awareness

Brand awareness measures how familiar people are with your product or service.

Coca-Cola. Apple. Google. Nike. Toyota. That's not a bunch of random words. When people think about soda, technology, sneakers, and cars, they are some of the first names that pop up.

Why? Because those brands have achieved remarkable levels of brand awareness. They've set the bar, and customers in their target market are familiar with them and trust them more than others.

Even the most concerted marketing efforts won't yield much results if your brand isn't on your target market's radar. 

Each industry demands its own distinctive approach to branding; the strategies that resonate in technology branding are distinct from those effective in restaurant branding, reflecting their unique market dynamics and customer expectations.

So, how do we measure awareness? You can use aided and unaided methods, with tools like:

• Customer surveys
• Social listening tools
• Search volume analysis with tools like Google Trends

2. Brand perception

Brand awareness is about familiarity with your brand. Perception, on the other hand, focuses on how they feel about it.

Positive feelings point to all the good stuff, like

• Loyalty,
• Higher customer retention rates,
• And higher spend.

On the other hand, if the sentiments are negative, you're looking at customer churn and a negative image. All that awareness you've been building can actually work against you here.

This metric is especially important because it measures sentiment - something notoriously hard to quantify! Luckily, you can use the same tools as monitoring awareness. The right questions can help break down customer feelings into numbers. 

For instance, you can ask "On a scale of 1-5, where 1 is not at all and 5 is completely, how positively do you feel about [brand]?" The higher the average score, the more positively you’re perceived.  

Tools like B2B CDPs can also help you visualize the customer journey, meaning you can start to see where exactly a positive response might turn negative. 

For instance, if there’s a high bounce rate at the checkout page, you can use social listening tools to figure out what exactly it is that’s turning people away.

3. Brand loyalty

One-off purchases are okay, but wouldn't you prefer that buyers choose your brand over competitors time and time again? Brand loyalty measures how willing customers are to make that choice repeatedly over time. That way, you gain a competitive edge over the competition.

A business without loyal customers must work overtime to find new prospects and push them along its marketing funnel. As you can imagine, that's hardly the most sustainable strategy. 

Measuring brand loyalty is particularly important for SaaS products, like financial consolidation services or customer relationship management platforms.

Brand loyalty is a great metric because it can indicate long-term business success. With strong loyalty results, you're in a great position to take advantage of opportunities like cross-selling, upselling, and bulk-selling. But if customers stop coming back, watch out. You should be looking to pinpoint and mitigate the underlying issues. 

4. Share of Voice (SOV)

Thanks to this marketing metric, you can find out how prominent your brand is on a channel relative to your competitors.

It measures how much of the conversation is directed your way. It also shows you which channels need work on your brand visibility. For instance, if your marketing analytics show you have a high SOV in organic traffic, but your social media metrics show the opposite, you know where to focus your efforts.

5. Market share

Market share measures your brand's share of the overall market for your products or services. 

(It shows your brand's position compared to your competitors.)

It's a fundamental metric that's similar to Share of Voice, except, in terms of scope, it considers the entire market or industry while SOV focuses on a channel.

In addition, the market share has to do with your actual sales and revenue performance, while the other has to do with brand visibility.

You commonly hear that Google or Walmart or Toyota have a dominant market share. That simply means that they've cornered the lion's share of their markets or industries. 

6. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Some people will like and even recommend your product or service. Others will criticize it. You probably already know that this is true, no matter how good what you're offering is.

The Net Promoter Score measures how likely customers are to fall on the former side. 

How does it work? It's pretty simple. You just ask customers this single question:

"On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [your brand] to a friend or colleague?"

Here's how you categorize the answers:

• Promoters: Those who rate 9-10 (likely to recommend)
• Passives: Those who rate 7-8 (neutral)
• Detractors: Those who rate 0-6 (unlikely to recommend)

Based on your results, the NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors

A high NPS indicates that your brand is healthy and vice versa. If it's low, you need to work on customer satisfaction.

7. Brand salience

Also called Top-of-Mind Awareness (TOMA). It measures how quickly and easily your brand jumps to mind when customers consider products or services in your category before making a purchase decision.

Randomly say "smartphone" in the United States, and Apple's iPhone pops into most consumers' minds. That's the idea. Same thing for McDonalds when it comes to fast food - or Disney for theme parks.

As you can imagine, a high TOMA level can grant you an incredible competitive advantage.

You can directly measure Brand Salience using market research surveys.

8. Purchase intent

Purchase intent measures how likely your audience is to buy your product or service in the near future. Why is this such a powerful metric? Because it gives you a glimpse into potential sales before they happen.

Now, you could run a campaign and notice high click-through rates but low conversion rates. That could mean that your target audience is aware of your brand (good) but isn't necessarily set to make purchases soon (not so good).

However, if the purchase intent metrics are high, you know there's a strong potential for future sales.

9. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

This metric looks at the long term. It measures how much total revenue you can expect from a single customer throughout their relationship with your brand.

Mathematically:

CLV = Customer Value x Average Customer Lifespan

Say your customers spend an average of $100 a year on your financial analytics software and typically remain loyal for three years.

Using that formula, your CLV = $100 x 3 years = $300

You're on your way to long-term profitability with high CLV because you can rest assured you have a loyal customer base. And they're not just happy with your brand and sticking around — they're actually spending more.

And that can justify higher customer acquisition costs (another metric that measures how much you spend to acquire new customers).

Maxing profitability with brand measurement metrics - final thoughts

In this article, we've explored how brand measurement can give you the clearer picture you need to inspire data-driven decision-making and fix low-performance areas for a juicier bottom line. We walked through nine of those actionable metrics.

Remember that collecting the data is only the first step. Long-term profitability demands that you break it down, take action, continue monitoring, and adjust where needed.