What Is Brand Tracking and Why Does Your Company Need It?
Your brand is arguably your most important asset. Naturally, a strong brand is good for business. But how do you know if your brand is strong? How do you even measure a brand? And how do you understand the effects of your marketing and brand initiatives? If the title hasn’t already given it away, the answer to these questions is simple: by tracking it. So without further ado, let's go through what brand tracking is, how it works and why it’s important.
What is brand tracking?
At its core, brand tracking is about continuously measuring what and how your consumers think and feel about your brand. So, when we talk about brand tracking, what we really are talking about is a range of different research and data gathering activities that help you to understand how consumers' feelings towards your brand change over time, which in turn help you to monitor your brand’s health, performance and success over time.
The ultimate goal with brand tracking is to present marketers with comprehensive information that helps them understand how different brand initiatives play out - what impact did they have on our consumers and how did that impact affect our sales? Or to put in more plainly: to understand which brand-building efforts are working, which are not, and why that is the case.
Consequently, brand tracking helps you to grasp what resonates with your customers, and how your brand is performing in the marketplace, both independently and relative to your competitors.
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How does brand tracking work?
Fundamentally, brands are built on perceptions, meaning it's every feeling, every attitude, thought, of every stakeholder that constitutes the brand - that decides what a certain brand is and stands for. This means that a brand is pretty much nothing without its customers. And if we want to understand how a brand is performing, we must first understand what its consumers think of it, and how those thoughts are developing over time.
Hence, brand tracking is about tapping into the minds of the consumers. Or with less fancier words, it’s about asking questions. Are your consumers aware of your brand? And if so, how strongly do they associate you with the things you want them to associate you with and, equally important, the things that you don’t?
On paper, not that hard. But to get precise insights you need to ask the right questions, to the right people, interpret and refine the data in the right way and draw the right conclusions. It’s usually somewhere in this funnel the wheat gets separated from the chaff.
Why is brand tracking important for my business?
To put it in concrete terms, brand tracking can help you to:
- Measure and assess your brand’s performance
- Evaluate brand strategies
- Discover new opportunities
- Keep track on your competitors
And to put it in more abstract terms:
As we have touched upon, due to the nature of brands - being (mostly) based upon intangible data - marketing, and especially brand initiatives, are hard to measure and follow up on. Often you are left with little more than gut feelings and crossed fingers when trying to understand how your brand building efforts are received and affect your business’ performance. And in times where your brand may be your best, and possibly only, competitive edge in the digital space the need for understanding how it’s performing is greater than ever.
This is where Brand tracking comes in handy, because if you are continuously tracking your brand, you will be able to turn this intangibility into something more tangible. Not only will you be able to evaluate how your brand is actually performing over time by understanding what is working and what is not, but also recognize how your brand investments affect your brand equity and ultimately what your return are on those investments.
Lastly, and this one may be pretty self explanatory, but if you make sure to ask your consumers what they think about your brand and your company on a regular basis, you will always be able to stay on top of new trends and shifting opinions. Thus, Brand Tracking can help you make better and more informed decisions, as it will bring light to issues before they become a problem, giving you the time to adjust your brand building strategies accordingly. And if you know that your strategies are moving your brand in a way that resonates with your consumers, you will be able to ensure the long-term growth of your business.
Our Brand Tracker gives you the edge
At Odyssey we are all about brand intelligence and helping our customers to unlock the potential in their brands. Our cost-effective and modern Brand Tracker, combined with our brand know-how, will help you gain the insights you need to drive more growth and stay ahead of your competitors.
Interested in Brand Tracking? Just give us a call or shoot us a message and we’ll tell you more.