The final step in the brand development process is tracking performance. A commitment to measuring performance can help drive implementation amid day-to-day operational priorities.
Branding is not something that will have overnight success. However, successfully building a recognisable reputation can lead to greater sales and engagement by your current and potential customers.
Measurements of success can include:
- Investigating if the brand strategy was fully implemented.
- Auditing the level of brand placement and investigating if application of branding complied with guidelines.
- Analysing offline and online sales and leads figures over the long term.
- You can identify consumer attitudes to the brand by actively seeking qualitative feedback through such tools as focus groups and online and phone surveys. The topics covered could include: The position of the brand in your customers’ minds, what customers think makes your brand unique, loyalty to your brand, emotional connection to the brand and price sensitivity.
- You can also get a good picture of customer attitudes towards the brand through feedback about product and service, which both impact the brand. This information can be captured through a dedicated feedback email address, feedback from staff or any call centres.
There’s also a range of quantitative data that can help you measure your brand’s success, including:
Sales figures and market share: Greater awareness, trust and familiarity of a brand can help ‘automate’ the consumer’s buying decision and influence greater sales and improved market share.
Engagement and leads: Check your website usage and social media metrics to see how many people from your target audiences are engaging with the brand. You can also use web analytics software to measure the number of soft leads generated by visitors providing their name and contact details.
Electronic systems are also available to count customer traffic of your physical shop. This information can be used to identify the conversion ratio (total sales transactions divided by total traffic).
Price: Were you able to charge more than your competitors? Price elasticity is one of the benefits of branding.
Spending: Well-conceived and executed branding plans can ultimately save you money on your sales promotions budget because people already know who you are, trust you and are predisposed to buying your product.
