Measuring Brand Performance - The Hard Truth
Our obsession with performance started with the rise of the internet and software startups.
Technical founders (especially) are obsessed with spreadsheet numbers. And, they have been the drivers behind the wheel for many of the past three decade’s top companies.
The internet, helped measure everything:
clicks,
impressions,
view time,
scrolls, etc…
What it does not measure, gets cut from the budget.
Proving Revenue vs The Reality
The biggest ask from the boards, the CEOs, and CFOs is proving the ROI of each activity.
The hard reality is that some of the best actions will not have measurable results.
Quoting (roughly) Rory Sutherland here, “us, marketers are opportunists, while CFOs care about performance optimization”.
We are diametrical opposites, who need to work together
P.S.: The above interview with Rory Sutherland is incredible, and I quoted a part of his interview, it’s worth listening to the full one.
Marketing ROI
Marketing ROI may be realized 1-2 years after the actions taken.
Similarly, blind budget cuts will hurt your brand months after they took place.
Measuring Brand Performance - Realistically
There are multiple ways to measure brand.
To choose a method, you need to ask a few questions:
How do you define brand?
What are you looking to achieve?
In the following examples, I will be going through a few methods with their actual usage. Most examples will be focused on Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, as they differ from industry to industry.
Software tends to measure results in sign-ups, demos, trials, and online purchases. While retail would measure results in foot traffic, store purchases, online orders etc.
Important Note
All ways of measuring brand are using owned and third party data, but measure brand effects in an indirect way.
The proper way to measure brand would be to survey a large number of your audience.
Brand Spikes
A brand spike is related to increased searches, online chatter, and visits to a website which is unusually high for the time-period.
Questions they answer
Was a short-term activity successful?
What did we get from attending XYZ event?
How to measure
Website Analytics: Organic visits to the home page or total direct traffic increased for a short period of time i.e. 1 day or a few days, then dropped near to normal.
Google Trends / Google Search Console: Google trends is a few days behind in data, but shows a relative increase in searches of the brand name on Google. Similarly, increases of the brand name in Google Search Console. I prefer using Google Trends as it can be compared with competitors’ changes at the same time period.
Social Listening Tools: Your brand and hashtags are being used more than usual. People are talking about your activity, using your hashtag, or talking about you online.
Cyberbit’s recent acquisition of Salesforce created a spike in both brands at the same period after the announcement. Screenshot is taken from Google Trends.
CRM Performance
Looking at your own data is the best way to prove direct ROI impact, especially if you are trying to prove revenue or lead generation impact!
Questions they answer
What was the revenue impact from XYZ activity?
What was the trial/demo/leads impact from XYZ activity?
How to measure
You can simplify the measurement by counting only leads coming from the Direct Channel to your CRM.
Activities without any UTMs/tracking like an offline event, banner ads, or radio ads will need to measured indirectly.
Measuring the differences of direct inbound leads/revenue compared to the average of the period.
Example:
Your average is 10 leads per day, but for Tuesday and Wednesday you have 15 leads per day, then Thursday drops to 12 and Friday to 10 again.
The brand activity brought 12 additional leads 5 on Tuesday, 5 on Wednesday, 2 on Thursday.
Sentiment Analysis
One of the goals of brand activities is to change the sentiment of the users, usually positively, but you may have a different goal like associating the brand with a feeling, action, or vague positioning.
Questions they answer
Does our audience view our brand more positively?
Did our message resonates with the audience?
How to measure
Sentiment analysis can either be measured by social listening tools or by running surveys.
A polling software in your platform to ask questions (i.e. user pilot).
Having feedback surveys with users.
Running surveys using a specializing polling company (for B2C).
Analyzing support tickets.
Monitoring social media and running sentiment analysis using social listening software.