Measuring the Impact of Investing in Brand Awareness Campaigns: A Cross-Channel Perspective
Brand awareness – every digital marketer knows the importance of these two simple words. From the well-versed marketing manager to the in-touch influencer pushing the latest viral product, brand awareness is a vital cornerstone of any marketing campaign. On their own, brand awareness campaigns might show a negative return and the positive impact may not be easily attributable, meaning it can be tricky to convince the people who hold the purse strings. With this in mind, we’re going to break down some of the ways you can tell your campaign is working and more importantly, how you can evidence that brand awareness is worthwhile investing in.
Increased branded searches on Google Search Console
One foolproof way to measure brand awareness is to look at click and impression changes on Google Search Console. Usually, if campaigns are boosting your brand exposure, you will see an uplift in your performance across Search Console. For example, if you’re running an awareness campaign across YouTube, Facebook and Instagram around a new product launch, you’ll be able to check if impressions (and clicks) on the Search Console for branded queries are increasing.
According to Google, keeping track of impressions is critical in branding campaigns because it shows how many people actually registered your campaign enough to actively seek out more information. The catch is that campaign results won’t always show themselves within the first month – a campaign can take much longer (we’d give it at least 3!) to come to a head. As brand managers and marketeers, we have to be prepared to let the campaign run its course.
To put it in perspective, from running our most recent brand awareness campaign, we’ve seen an impressive 162% growth in branded searches as a result. This growth occurred over the course of a 3 month period at a time of year which would typically be a very low demand season for this client. The key is to think ahead when planning your campaign activity and to trust in the process. Do you want to increase awareness for a particular season? Maybe the summer Holidays, Black Friday, or Christmas? Plan in your awareness activity in advance to give your audience a chance to register and react to your message.
General traffic uplift from organic and direct
Another good way to tell if your brand awareness campaign is working is by assessing any general uplifts in traffic to your site through the organic and direct channels. If little has changed in terms of your SEO strategy, you can hang your hat on the fact that it’s likely to be linked to your awareness activity.
Again, this could be delayed impact, but you should see some additional sessions come to your site by taking a look at the channel breakdown on Google Analytics.
To bring it back to context – if you’re showing your audience that you’ve launched a brand new campaign – there’s a very good chance that they’ll not only see or click on your ad, but that they’ll also do their own research around your product and may conduct some longer-tail searches around reviews for demos of your product.
Track branded mentions on Google Trends
Google Trends is another valuable tool that can be utilised to track when people are mentioning your brand online. This is useful for providing up-to-date opinions and feedback from individuals that are coming into contact with your brand awareness campaign.
Not only can you see useful information such as interest by location, but you can also see related search terms to gauge the nature of the response from potential customers.
Google Trends can be a nifty tool to see, at a glance, if interest has piqued around both your campaign and your brand.
Increased profile visits or followers on social
You’ll likely see an uplift in profile visits, engagement or followers across your social profiles, off the back of your awareness activity.
As part of any good background check, when faced with awareness campaigns it’s likely that users will take a look at your profile to gauge more about you as a brand and the claims that you’re sending their way. 71% of consumers now prefer to shop with businesses that align with their values, so you can be sure that they’ll be checking out your social presence to see if you’re a good fit for them and their beliefs.
Uplift in social engagement
With any good launch, you’re likely to face lots and lots of questions from many new users to your site. That’s why measuring social engagements such as comments and DMs can be a good way to measure whether your awareness activity is having an impact. Whilst it may seem trivial to those higher up the ranks, this is a critical step in the user-journey, whereby your potential customers are reaching out to tell you they’re interested in buying from you and are seeking out your help to lower any potential barriers to purchase (sidenote: this is also why community management is key in supporting the customer journey).
Though it may take time and it’s not always as linear as you’d like, you can relax in the knowledge that the positive impact of brand awareness will be felt as your campaign comes to fruition. Not only that, but results can be tracked across channels, ultimately underlining the fact that brand awareness is something that your business needs to be investing in.
