Menu
Today, businesses are going head-to-head in a bid to capture their prospective customers’ attention and become a leader in their specific industries. For this reason, many companies are working towards achieving top-of-mind awareness by using different marketing strategies. One of the most effective strategies that can help build brand awareness is content marketing.
So what are the common metrics that can help measure content marketing success in creating brand awareness? Businesses can measure the results of their content marketing and brand awareness campaigns using a combination of qualitative and quantitative metrics. Some of the key metrics that can be tracked are branded search volume, direct traffic growth, brand mentions, customer feedback, earned media coverage, and social media engagement.
A business’s success can be measured in more ways than one. It isn’t always about increasing profits, growing market share, opening new store locations, or expanding your service and product offerings. Having a strong brand awareness is also an essential indicator of your company’s growth.
It might seem like a broad and vague concept, but brand awareness is an important aspect of every business’s life cycle. In a nutshell, brand awareness refers to the extent to which potential and existing customers are familiar with a business and its unique qualities, values, and products or services.
It also gives marketers and entrepreneurs a picture of how popular their brands are and how well they’re faring against their competitors within the industry. Having an established brand awareness means that your company name is at the top of the minds of your target consumers. So for example, when someone is asked about a popular or leading shoe brand, they’ll likely think of Nike.
There are many other benefits that your business can enjoy from having high brand awareness. Here are some of the reasons why you should invest in brand awareness campaigns:
The best brand awareness campaigns can help customers create a strong affinity with your business and develop brand trust. When you’ve established positive brand awareness, people are more likely to interact with your business repeatedly and make purchases without any second thought.
A loyal customer also won’t think twice about paying more for your products and services as long as they believe in your brand and what you stand for. In fact, a report shows that almost 90% of consumers are willing to spend more for a brand that they can easily recognize and trust.
Brand awareness campaigns are also helpful for strengthening your reputation and credibility in the industry. If you’re a new business, it can be difficult to attract your target audience, especially if you’re reaching out to a niche group. There are probably already existing players that are dominating the market and it’s up to you to think of innovative ways to grab their attention.
With a well-thought-out brand awareness strategy, you can better connect with your prospects and communicate your unique brand story and value proposition. When running a brand awareness campaign, it’s important to stay consistent with your messaging and marketing efforts to build your image and help your existing customers remember your name in the long run.
Brand equity is defined as the value of a business which is determined by the customer’s existing perception of their brand. When you have positive brand equity, it can mean that people generally associate your products and services with high quality and desirability.
One of the factors that can contribute to your brand equity is awareness. Building brand awareness is the first and critical step to achieving positive brand equity. The more people are able to recognize your brand, the more likely they are to choose and support you among the other brands in the market.
Strong brand awareness can also positively impact your online visibility. In an increasingly digital world, businesses can develop brand awareness campaigns to promote their products and services in various online channels. Social media is one of the most powerful tools that brands can utilize for their marketing and awareness efforts.
It’s also more convenient and cost-effective to run online brand awareness campaigns. Aside from cementing your digital presence, brand awareness strategies can also help grow your fans and followers. It can likewise start an online discussion and encourage higher engagement with your target audience.
Creating a strong awareness for your brand can also help you get more leads. In fact, it's usually one of the most crucial steps in generating leads and pushing them to convert. The way it works is like this—your brand awareness campaign is like a large net that you cast over a target group in hopes of attracting them into your sales funnel.
Once you’ve captured their attention and piqued their interests, they become leads and you can nurture and educate them with consistent brand awareness campaigns. The more they see and hear about your brand, the more they’re likely to move toward the next stage of the funnel and become paying customers.
Then when people are happy about your brand and can easily recognize you, they can become more than just loyal consumers but also advocates for your business. They can help grow your community by mentioning your name in daily conversations and letting their family and friends know about your brand. In a way, building strong brand recognition can help drive your word-of-mouth marketing.
If you’re launching your business or announcing a new product line or service, there are many tactics that you can use to promote your brand online. One of the common brand awareness strategies used by digital marketers is content marketing.
You’ve most likely heard the phrase ‘content is king’ one too many times. The quote was actually mentioned in the 1990s by Microsoft founder Bill Gates. He used the phrase to describe the Internet as an emerging marketplace for content, and years later, it has indeed become one of the tools used by marketers to generate organic traffic and increase their leads.
Today, many marketing professionals can attest to the effectiveness of producing content for brand awareness. According to a report, increasing brand awareness is a top priority for many B2C marketers and content marketing can help them meet that objective. Content has also helped them establish their credibility, educate their audience, and build their subscribed community.
Here are some of the benefits of content marketing for improving your brand recognition:
Referral traffic describes the visitors that come to your website from direct links or backlinks from other pages rather than the search engines. When you publish great content, there’s a chance that you’ll be featured on review websites or mentioned on other companies’ pages that find your content highly relevant.
This can result in increased online brand mentions and better exposure for your business. It can also help your content reach new audiences, bringing potential leads to your website and earning more opportunities for conversions. Earning backlinks can also help your business improve its search engine rankings.
While it doesn’t always translate to conversions, having a high social media engagement helps you improve your brand awareness. That’s why it’s become a common practice for marketers to distribute different types of content on various social media sites.
People are more likely to interact with and follow a brand with a strong and active social media presence. Creating high-quality content can help you make noise online and bring more people to notice your brand. The more you share social media content, the more likely you are to grow your brand and accumulate a million followers.
Content marketing doesn’t directly boost your business sales, but it does provide great opportunities for lead generation and conversion. As part of your marketing strategy, content reinforces your overall branding and showcases the value that your products and services have to offer through informative and relevant posts.
For example, your content marketing team can educate and nurture leads through blog posts, videos, infographics, or emails that address their questions and help fulfill their search intent. You can also use entertaining content to provide a positive experience to existing customers which can encourage them to make repeat purchases.
What also makes content marketing great for increasing awareness is that it harnesses the power of storytelling. Nowadays, people want to hear your brand story rather than just be presented with promotional ads or facts about your products and services.
According to a report, brands that can tell a good story are 22 times more likely to be remembered and favored by consumers. That’s why if you want to get the attention and support of your target audience, you should share your brand message and communicate your value through an engaging story.
Measuring the results of your brand awareness efforts can depend on the channels and type of content that you used for the campaign. Here are some of the standard ways that you can track the success of your content marketing strategy for brand awareness:
One of the common ways to assess your brand awareness is to gather direct feedback from your customers and this can be done by distributing surveys. Brand awareness surveys are specially-designed questionnaires that can measure how well your target audience perceives your brand and how familiar they are with your products and services.
If you already have a subscribed community, you can regularly check in with them and ask about their experience with your brand by sending online customer surveys to their emails. You can also directly call and interview select people to ask about what they think about your brand. You can use the data from a brand awareness survey to update your marketing campaign and improve your strategies for positioning your business and targeting your prospects.
Another important metric that can signal an improvement in brand awareness is your web traffic growth. Website traffic is simply referring to the volume of users who are visiting your business webpage. When assessing your web traffic, you can look at two things:
Keeping tabs on your web traffic can give an insight as to how effective your current content marketing strategy is in driving people to your webpage. Consistent web traffic growth is also a good indicator of strong brand recognition and high customer retention.
You can also track your brand mentions in other blogs, online review sites, and industry publications. There’s a possibility that these mentions can provide a link back to your own page, which can result in an increase in backlinks and referral traffic. Having more direct blog referral sources can also help boost your SEO performance and improve your visibility and ranking in search engines.
Your social media engagement and presence can also indicate how well people are aware of your brand. For one, you can gauge the success of your social media content by looking at how much your following has grown over a certain period of time. The more you consistently and frequently upload new social media content, the more followers you can get on your page.
In addition to your social media followers, you can also track your brand awareness by looking at the number of social shares, likes, and comments under your posts. If more people are interacting with your content, it means that you’ve done a great job at attracting their attention and keeping them engaged.
Branded search traffic, or volume, is a measure of how many users are searching for your business or looking for related terms and keywords in the search engines. When you have an active brand awareness or content marketing campaign, it’s important to keep track of how many people are coming to your website from search engines.
If you see an increase in branded search, it means that consumers have a strong awareness of your business and they’re highly intent on learning more about you. It can also suggest that they have a likelihood of becoming paying customers.
Any type of unpaid or organic promotion is called earned media. This brand awareness metric refers to free, earned media coverage that your business gets from organic means. This can be from reviews, guest blog posts, brand mentions, and social shares. You can also get earned media coverage by pitching your content to industry publications in hopes of them churning out a good news story or press release.
If you have numerous earned media coverage, it means that your content marketing efforts are relevant and interesting enough for other publications to share it on their pages. It can also affect conversations surrounding your brand, which can have a direct impact on your brand reputation.
Reach refers to the number of people who have seen your content or ads in their social media feeds. Let’s say another site mentions your brand on their post, your total reach will be equivalent to the number of existing followers or subscribers that page has. So if they have 100,000 followers, your content reach is 100,000.
Content reach is an important aspect of your brand awareness campaign since it indicates your overall brand presence online. It also provides more opportunities for you to engage more audiences and drive more traffic to your own website.
Another key metric that you should track for determining brand awareness is organic share of voice. Also known as SOV, this measures the amount of your brand’s market share compared to your competitors. It also gauges your overall brand recognition, visibility, and popularity with your target audience.
Share of voice can be measured in several ways, such as:
Google Alerts is a free content analytics tool that can help track the number of mentions or searches for your branded keywords. When you set up an alert for your business, you can receive regular emails or notifications whenever your brand name is mentioned in a conversation or post. It can also be useful in helping you discover topics or blog post ideas that other content marketers haven’t written about yet.
Another excellent way to measure brand awareness is to create attribution reports. It’s a type of reporting strategy that provides an overview of the impact of your content marketing and brand awareness efforts. It can give you insights into which aspects of your current marketing strategy are effective in pushing users to convert. It also tells you how your prospects interacted with your ads or content before making a purchase.
Building brand awareness is a must for any business that wants to succeed and make a lasting impression on its target audience. While it can be tricky to measure and understand brand awareness, there are several tools that can help keep track of the success of your content marketing campaigns. Here are some helpful tools for monitoring brand awareness:
Whether you’re an established or start-up business, brand awareness is an essential metric that can determine your position in the competitive market. It also gives insights into what your target customers think about your brand and your offerings. Once you know how brand awareness works and how to measure it, you can create a comprehensive marketing strategy that can make you a memorable name for your target audience.
