9 Key Brand Metrics to Track To Evaluate Performance

Creating a strong brand is powerful. Think about how certain brand names have become synonymous with their product, like Kleenex, Band-Aid, and Tupperware. Those companies have incredible brand strength, and it’s all down to paying attention to the right brand metrics.

By tracking your brand metrics, you can understand how people feel about your brand, your position in the market, and so much more. Therefore, tracking your brand's marketing metrics is key to building a solid customer base—and retaining it.

Read on to learn more about what brand metrics are, why they’re important, plus nine essential brand metrics to track.

Table of contents

What are brand metrics?
Why are brand metrics important to track?
What kind of brand metrics are most insightful?
9 essential metrics to track for business success
#1. Brand awareness
#2. Brand sentiment
#3. Brand engagement
#4. Brand loyalty and advocacy
#5. Brand equity
#6. Brand perception
#7. Conversions
#8. Content effectiveness
#9. Competitor benchmarks

What are brand metrics?

Brand metrics are quantifiable data sets that give you insights into how your brand is performing. The metrics data provide details into things like brand perception, campaign performance, and how effective your marketing strategy is.

The brand metrics you pay the most attention to will correlate with your specific business objectives. For example, newer companies looking to grow their initial customer base might look more closely at brand KPis like brand awareness, while a larger business looking to make more sales might pay attention to brand equity.

And a company resolving a recent PR crisis would be more interested in brand perception than anything else.

It’s important to track the right brand metrics so that you know where you stand with your target audience. Having this knowledge is key to growing your business.

Why are brand metrics important to track?

Before we dive into the brand metrics you might want to add to your monthly reports, let’s talk about why tracking this data is so important. There are five key reasons why.

• Know how people feel about your brand. Having the inside look into your audience’s feelings towards your brand can help you improve your positioning and run the right campaigns.

• Retain customers. Strong branding improves customer loyalty, so tracking your brand metrics can help you keep customers coming back.

• Understand your brand’s position in the market compared with competitors. Get a clear idea of how your brand is faring against competitors so you know if you need to improve your standing.

• Increase revenue. Better branding means more visibility. More visibility inevitably leads to more customers and more revenue.

• Catch problems early. Monitoring your brand and its key metrics will give you a quick heads up if you’re facing some kind of brand reputation crisis so you can easily handle it.

The bottom line is this: tracking your brand metrics gives you important insights that can help you make better business decisions.

What kind of brand metrics are most insightful?

There are four main types of brand metrics to track that can provide you with key insights about your brand health.

• Performance: Brand performance metrics lets you in on your overall brand health. This covers things like loyalty and effectiveness.
• Perception: Your brand perception keys you into how people feel about your brand with metrics like brand sentiment and awareness.
• Behavioral: Behavioral metrics let you know how people are interacting with your brand, focusing on metrics like engagement and conversions.
• Financial: Financial metrics pay attention to your bottom line and include metrics like brand equity.

The main metrics we’re going to cover all fall into these categories, and they all are helpful for gaining a closer look at your business performance.

9 essential metrics to track for business success

These nine brand health metrics are the most important to keep an eye on to understand how well your business is doing. Read on to learn more about what each metric tells you as well as how you can measure and analyze it.

#1. Brand awareness

Brand awareness refers to how familiar your target audience is with your brand. Can they recognize your logo or brand name? Can they recall your brand when thinking of your industry or product?

The more aware your target market is about your brand, the more likely they are to lean on your products when the need for them arises. But more than that, the more brand awareness you build, the more trust your customers will have in you.

Plus, as you become more and more recognizable in your industry, the harder your competitors have to work to keep up with you.

But how do you measure brand awareness? There are a few ways to keep track of how well people know about your brand.

How to measure brand awareness

Reach

Your reach tells you the total number of people who see your content or brand name. You can find this within your social media analytics as well as through analytics tools like Socialinsider.

Impressions

Impressions refer to the number of times your brand content is displayed. Because people may see your content more than once, impressions tend to be higher than reach. You can discover this data (as well as your reach) by using Socialinsider’s analytics dashboard. Connect your social media profiles, then click each one in the left hand sidebar to find your impressions data.

Top-of-mind awareness: Put out customer surveys to help determine if your brand is the first one that comes to mind in its category. Ask questions like:

• What brand(s) come to mind when you think of [your industry]?
• When did you first learn about our brand?
• Over the past 12 months, how often have you heard about our brand?
• Which product are you most familiar with from our brand?

#2. Brand sentiment

Brand sentiment is a metric that tells you how your target audience feels about your brand. Sentiment can be considered positive, negative, or simply neutral.

While you should always aim for positive brand sentiment, there’s usually nothing wrong with a neutral brand attitude. However, as I’m sure you understand, you want to avoid a negative brand sentiment.

Measuring brand sentiment helps you get a better idea of whether your customers have a positive experience with your brand. If you’re discovering a more negative sentiment, you want to get hold of it early so that you can respond to the issues and create a better experience and attitude towards your brand.

How to measure brand sentiment

Sentiment analysis

This type of analysis tracks the overall tone of mentions around your brand (whether positive, neutral, or negative) across social media and other digital channels, being crucial for understanding a brand's position on the market. Sentiment analysis tools help aggregate brand sentiment data, making it easier to analyze.

Customer feedback

Analyzing online reviews as well as direct feedback gives more personal insights into brand sentiment. Send out customer surveys to gauge their experiences with and feelings toward your brand.

#3. Brand engagement

Brand engagement refers to the total interactions that your customers have with your brand across your online presence. Your engagement typically stems from your own social media content, but the hope is that your customers start to generate engagement around your brand name as well.

While engagement isn’t always positive—after all, negative engagement can lead to a negative brand sentiment, like we just mentioned—the more engagement your brand builds, awareness typically grows alongside it.

How to measure brand engagement metrics

Engagement rate

Your engagement rate helps you measure KPIs like reactions, comments, and shares. This is another metric that Socialinsider can help you track, for effective brand performance measurement.

Social media share of voice (SOV)

Your SOV is a social listening metric that tracks how much of the conversation is dominated by your brand compared to your competitors. The formula for share of voice is: your brand mentions / total number of brand mentions (yours + your competitors’) x 100.

Audience growth rate

This tracks the speed at which your social media following grows over time. This is another one of the key metrics in marketing that you can track with an easy-to-understand graph from your Socialinsider dashboard.

#4. Brand loyalty and advocacy

Brand loyalty is when a customer chooses to come back to your business again and again instead of working with a competitor. Brand advocacy is when a customer promotes your brand, whether by sharing it with their friends and family or by mentioning it online.

Having loyal customers increases your revenue, but having brand advocates is even more powerful as it expands your brand reach and increases your customer base.

How to measure brand loyalty and advocacy

Net Promoter Score (NPS)

This measures how likely customers are to recommend your brand. You can track this by putting together simple NPS surveys that ask how likely customers are, on a scale of 1-10, to refer your brand to others, then categorizing those responses into three groups:

• Detractors: Those who answer 1-6 are detractors, likely being dissatisfied with your business and potentially leading to criticism of your business.
• Passives: Those who answer 7-8, meaning they’re likely moderately satisfied with your brand but less likely to actually recommend it to someone.
• Promoters: Those who answer 9-10 are promoters, and are not only extremely satisfied with your business, but are likely to share and recommend it to others.

Customer satisfaction score (CSAT)

This measures your customer satisfaction through another simple survey. With this, you ask your customers on a scale of 1-5, from very unsatisfied to very satisfied, how satisfied they are with your brand or the products/services you offer. To get your CSAT, use this formula: number of 4-5 responses / total number of responses x 100.

Repeat purchase rate

This indicates the percentage of customers who make multiple purchases. The formula for this is: customers who have made a repeat purchase / total customers x 100. You should be able to access this information within your store’s CRM.

Customer lifetime value (CLV)

This measures the projected revenue that a customer will generate over their lifetime. You’ll need a good bit of information about your customers to gather this metric. First, you need to know what your average purchase value is as well as your average purchase frequency. Multiply those together to get your customer value. You then need to multiply your customer value by your average customer lifetime to get your CLV.

Brand mentions

Monitoring your brand mentions tells you how many advocates you have. You can use social listening tools to help keep an eye on your brand mentions.

#5. Brand equity

Brand equity refers to the additional value your brand gains simply due to recognition. For example, Band-Aid has exponentially more brand equity than a generic brand called “Bandage Plus” would. The simple fact that the Band-Aid brand is so recognizable increases the brand’s value as a whole.

You want to build up your brand strength so that you can also increase your brand equity, ensuring you generate more value and more revenue simply because of who you are.

How to measure brand equity

Brand preference

This measures how likely consumers are to choose your brand over competitors. You can analyze this through qualitative methods like customer surveys and focus groups. However, you can also look at market share and sales data to determine preference.

Brand trust

Often measured through surveys, this metric captures customer confidence in your brand. Ask direct questions about how much trust your customers have in your brand.

Share of market (SOM)

Shows your brand’s market share, revealing its position and reach in the marketplace. Use the following formula to determine this: your sales / total industry sales x 100.

#6. Brand perception

Brand perception is, as you can imagine, how a customer perceives a brand—how they judge, think, and feel about a brand and its products. Does your target customer have a favorable opinion of your brand?

When you have a clear understanding of your brand perception, you know how you need to position yourself in the market. This helps direct your strategy and your overall content to better grab your target audience.

How to measure brand perception

Brand perception

Brand perception is a measurable metric in itself, something you can discover via market research methods like surveys, focus groups, and interviews.

Brand associations

Assess what traits or qualities people associate with your brand (like “innovative,” “reliable,” and so on). Again, this can be done with market research.

Brand attributes

This measures how well your brand delivers on specific promises or qualities you promote. Use surveys, social listening, and customer feedback to analyze.

#7. Conversions

Naturally, conversions are going to be a huge indicator of brand health. A conversion is when someone takes a desired action—most often this refers to sales—and you should always be working to increase your conversion rate.

The average conversion rate across all industries is 2.9%, but this can vary wildly depending on your company’s niche. However, if your conversion rate for generating leads or sales across your marketing and ads strategies is 3% or higher, you’re doing a pretty good job.

Let’s look at how you can measure your business’s conversions to ensure you’re bringing in enough new customers and sales.

How to measure conversion metrics

Conversion rate

This tracks how often a social media interaction or ad impression leads to a sale or other desired action. The formula for this is: conversions / total actions x 100.

So if you’re looking at how many sales a certain landing page got after sharing it on social media, you’d look at your sales / clicks to the page. Then multiply by 100 to get a percentage.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

Your CAC measures the average cost of acquiring a new customer through marketing efforts.

This formula is: cost of sales and marketing / total customers acquired x 100.

#8. Content effectiveness

Content effectiveness refers to how well your content works to help your company reach its goals. For example, do you want to generate more sales? Do you want to increase website traffic? And is your content helping you do that?

While the way you measure content effectiveness might depend on how you use your content, there are a few key metrics that every business can look to.

How to measure content effectiveness

Content engagement rate

For brand performance analysis, this is an essential metric. It tracks the performance of individual content pieces, showing what resonates best with audiences. The formula for engagement rate is: total engagement / total followers x 100.

Click-through rate (CTR)

When measuring brand performance, this KPI will provide you insights on how often users click on a call-to-action link in your social media or ad content. This formula is: total clicks / total impressions x 100.

Website traffic

Essential for evaluating brand success, this  metric refers to the number of unique visitors you’re getting to your website and its individual pages. You can use a tool like Google Analytics to find this number.

#9. Competitor benchmarks

Finally, we have the last major brand metric you’ll want to pay attention to: competitor benchmarking. Comparing how you fare against your competitors is a key part of understanding how you fit within the market.

Competitive insights let you know what your competitors are doing with their messaging, how much success they’re having, and how you can more effectively compete in your market.

How to measure competitor benchmarking

Competitive sentiment analysis

This examines sentiment around competitors’ brands to gauge relative public perception. Use sentiment analysis and social listening tools to track conversation around your competitor brands as well as your own.

Engagement metrics

Compare your engagement metrics with those of competitors to see where you stand. You can use a competitive analysis tool like Socialinsider to easily aggregate all of this data. Track things like engagement, top content, content pillars, and more.

Final thoughts

Keeping track of your brand metrics ensures you always have a thumb on your brand’s overall health. If sentiment dips or perception isn’t high enough, you can create a campaign to change that. But you need the right tools to help, and Socialinsider is the perfect social media analysis tool for your needs. Get started today.

FAQS on brand metrics

What kind of metrics can help with brand performance measurement?

Metrics that can give you a better understanding of your brand performance include brand awareness, brand loyalty, brand equity, and conversions.

How do you choose which brand metrics to track?

You can use the SMART framework to choose the best brand metrics for your team to track. This framework is outlined below:

• Strategic: Your metrics align with your marketing strategy and the business goals you’ve laid out.
• Market-driven: You look towards external metrics that let you know how your business is performing with your customers and against your competitors.
• Actionable: The metrics can be directly impacted by your actions.
• Repeatable: The metrics can be repeated in order to create patterns and trends to measure against.
• Touchpoints: Your metrics look towards customer touchpoints that give you an understanding of the customer experience.

If the metric hits each of those points from the SMART framework, it’s a good indicator you should add it to your overall report.

How do you measure brand value?

Metrics like brand awareness, brand perception, brand loyalty, and brand equity can give you a clear picture of your brand value.

What are the brand health metrics?

To gauge your brand health, look at metrics like:

• Brand awareness
• Brand reputation
• Brand perception
• Brand loyalty
• Conversions

What are the brand affinity metrics?

Brand affinity refers to how people feel about your brand. Essentially, brand affinity and brand sentiment are the same thing, so you’ll want to look towards your sentiment analysis and customer feedback.