From sales and revenue to sentiment and share of voice, there are plenty of ways to measure your brand’s impact. Metrics matter in brand management, but you also need to be selective about what you’re measuring to avoid getting lost in a sea of data (and not being able to make sense of any of it).
You can’t steer a ship while blindfolded. That’s why it’s important to choose the right brand metrics to help you stay the course and know where you stand at all times.
Instead of getting bogged down by vanity numbers (hey there, 10K Instagram followers), you can use real metrics that give you insights into how your customers think, feel, and act toward your brand.
Without focusing on what truly defines your brand's identity and goals, you're just bobbing around aimlessly. So, let’s dive deep into brand tracking metrics and the most important ones that illustrate your success.
Contents:
What are Brand Metrics?
Key Brand Metrics to Measure
How to Use Brand Metrics to Drive Growth
Choosing the Right Brand Metrics
Measuring Brand Metrics with Meltwater
What are Brand Metrics?
Brand metrics are the vital signs of your brand's health. They’re pieces of data that combine to show how others perceive your brand. It’s like checking the pulse of everything from awareness to loyalty—your brand marketing metrics will show you whether your brand is thriving or getting lost in the noise.
With brand tracking, it’s not enough to look at sales figures alone— they tell part of a much bigger story. That’s why you also need to consider other metrics like brand recall, customer engagement, and net promoter score.
These metrics expose nuances about the why behind your sales, giving you an inside look at where your brand excels and where it might fall short.
Key Brand Metrics to Measure
Brand marketing metrics can take many forms. We’ve narrowed down the 11 most essential brand metrics examples to track as part of your bigger brand strategy.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness metrics show you how familiar people are with your brand. If they don’t know you, they can’t buy from you. And if they do know you, they also need to trust you before they’re willing to purchase.
High brand awareness indicates your marketing is effective and reaching the right people. This will help you attract new customers and stay top-of-mind when customers are ready to buy.
Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score (NPS) measures a person’s willingness to recommend your brand to others. It rates willingness on a scale of 1 to 10, where 9 or 10 indicate high loyalty and satisfaction. A score of 6-8 is considered neutral, while scores of 0-5 indicate dissatisfaction.
The higher your NPS, the stronger your customer experience and brand advocacy. This is usually good news for organic growth through word-of-mouth marketing.
Brand Sentiment
People feel a certain way about your brand, and measuring brand perception metrics like brand sentiment can reveal these feelings. Understanding public perception can help you manage your brand’s reputation and potentially get ahead of bubbling crises.
You can track brand sentiment via surveys, social media, and online reviews. Brand tracking software like Meltwater can monitor consumer sentiment in real time and show you how people are talking about your brand online.
Brand Loyalty
Measuring brand consideration metrics like loyalty matters because the data reveals how much work you might have to do to get customers to keep buying from you. Loyal customers are those who consistently choose your brand over another option.
Typically, loyal customers are less price-sensitive and will provide consistent revenue. They’re also more likely to advocate for your brand and share it with others, which can help you drive more organic growth.
Customer Satisfaction
Customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys tell you how satisfied customers are with your product, service, or a recent experience. Your satisfied customers are more likely to stay loyal and share their positive experiences with others.
CSAT, brand loyalty, and brand sentiment all fall under the brand reputation management umbrella. Comparing these metrics can give you a better idea of whether your reputation may be at risk and help you figure out how you can get ahead of it.
Share of Voice
Share of voice refers to how much of a conversation you command compared to other brands. We measure share of voice using social media mentions, PR coverage, and advertising.
A higher share of voice can indicate how much you dominate your industry. The higher the share of voice, the greater the brand awareness and influence.
Brand Recall
Another slice of the brand consideration metrics pie, brand recall refers to your customers’ ability to remember your brand when they’re ready to make a purchase. The higher the brand recall, the more likely you are to be the first company a customer thinks about when making a purchase.
Customer Lifetime Value
One of the most overlooked brand measurement metrics, customer lifetime value (CLV) measures the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer over the life of the relationship.
A high CLV indicates your brand is doing well at retaining customers. This is key for long-term profitability and reducing customer acquisition costs.
Brand Trust
Customers need confidence in the products and services you sell. Measuring brand trust will help you see where you stand in building long-term relationships with customers.
When customers view you as reliable and authentic, they’re more likely to continue buying from you and may even stand by you in the event of a crisis.
Social Media Engagement
Engagement metrics can help with measuring brand awareness. Things like likes, shares, and comments show you whether your marketing is resonating with your audience.
Even better, engagement can also help you grow brand awareness. When people engage with your content, it signals to social media algorithms that people found your content valuable in some way. This can encourage the algorithm to show your content to more people, giving you more opportunities to grow your audience and gain even more engagement.
TIP: Check out our blog for a deep-dive into the social media metrics you need to keep an eye on.
Conversion Rate
Brand health metrics like awareness, sentiment, recall, and engagement give you context about another essential metric: conversion rate.
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors or leads that complete a desired action, such as purchasing a product or signing up for a service. A high conversion rate indicates you excel at convincing customers to take the next step. They see something special in your brand and want to be part of it.
Choosing the Right Brand Metrics
Of these brand metrics to track, you’ll want to choose the ones that are the most relevant to your strategy. We recommend dialing in on a few key metrics that give you the most complete picture of your brand health without weighing you down in numbers and data points.
Ultimately, you need to decide why these brand metrics matter and how they can help you improve your brand’s performance.
First, we suggest starting with a goal. What exactly about your brand do you want to change?
Increase your social media followers?
Rebuild trust after some bad PR coverage?
Send your conversion rate soaring?
You might not use all of these brand metrics at once, and that’s okay. Choose the best metrics that tie back to your goals, then track those metrics as your campaign progresses.
How to Use Brand Metrics to Drive Growth
Brand monitoring tools can centralize your efforts and make brand tracking metrics a breeze. Tools like Meltwater do all the heavy lifting and can monitor online conversations you didn’t know were happening.
Once you have the data in hand, there are a few things you can do to improve your brand’s performance.
Identify any weak areas
Brand metrics can help you spot areas that need improvement, such as a low follower count, subpar customer satisfaction, or low conversion rates. Use your brand KPIs to figure out what type of campaign to run next so you can start working toward a specific goal.
Compare your brand metrics to competitors
It’s always helpful to know where you stand compared to your competitors. For example, if a competitor has a bigger share of voice on a product, you can work backward to find out why. It might have better reviews, or they might be getting more press coverage, for example.
Use your metrics alongside a competitive analysis to see where you might be able to get ahead.
TIP: Check out our blog explaining how to perform a competitor analysis and download our free template!
Create targeted campaigns to address specific goals
Once you have an idea of where you need to move the needle, start developing campaigns that target those areas.
Let’s say you want to gain a greater share of voice for a product category. You might work with influencers to go viral on social media or connect with journalists to gain some positive coverage.
As you work through your campaign, keep an eye on your brand KPIs to see how they change. This will give you an idea of whether your efforts are paying off.
Measuring Brand Metrics with Meltwater
Meltwater offers comprehensive social listening and consumer intelligence solutions that tracks important brand metrics in real time. Keep tabs on the data that matters most to you and get alerts when trends or conversations shift.
Different metrics inform different aspects—while social media engagement rates may tell you how much people love your posts, conversion rates show if their interest translates into action. Meltwater uses the power of AI to dissect what these metrics mean and give you spelled-out insights you can use.
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