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What is brand awareness? 

Brand awareness is the level of recognition and familiarity that a target audience has with a particular brand. It represents the extent to which consumers can recall, recognize and/or associate a brand with specific characteristics or values. Brand awareness can be influenced by various factors, such as brand interactions, exposure to brand messaging and brand identity.

The importance of brand awareness 

Building awareness keeps brands top of mind and helps differentiate them from competition. And ultimately, people are more likely to buy from a brand they know and trust. Brand awareness has the power to drive audience growth, top-of-funnel leads, product recognition, brand loyalty and purchase consideration. 

• Audience growth: Brand awareness campaigns can increase brand exposure in target markets, generate positive word-of-mouth and build engaged social media communities.
• Top-of-funnel leads: Brand awareness campaigns that leverage SEO, content marketing and social media generate a steady stream of new leads and build a pipeline for future sales.
• Product recognition: Brand awareness helps drive product familiarity in target markets. Consumers may recognize a brand name or visual identity, such as a logo, colors or typography. And when consumers recognize your product, they’re more likely to choose it over competitors.
• Brand loyalty: Brand awareness drives brand loyalty by increasing recognition, creating positive brand associations, building trust and fostering an emotional connection between the brand and its customers.
• Purchase consideration: Similar to product recognition, brand awareness helps drive purchase consideration through increased trust and familiarity, which acts as a differentiator between your brand and competitors. When consumers are already familiar with your brand, they’re more likely to consider buying from it.

How to measure brand awareness

Once you have a firm understanding of brand awareness and the benefits it can bring to your business, it’s important to explore the most effective ways to measure it.

Survey research

Survey research is one of the most reliable and accurate methods to measure brand awareness. A strong and effective survey method can help inform an organization’s overall brand strategy by providing valuable insights into the minds of consumers.

By conducting survey research, businesses can obtain data on how well their brand is known, how it compares to competitors and what factors may be contributing to or hindering its success. This information can help businesses make informed decisions about branding and marketing strategies, as well as identify areas for improvement in order to increase brand awareness and ultimately, drive sales. Some companies may opt to build their own questionnaire and distribute to a hand-selected survey pool, while others choose to partner with a reputable company for even further analysis.

Morning Consult, for example, gives companies a competitive advantage when measuring their brand awareness. We survey tens of thousands of people across the globe every day to provide real-time insights on what consumers think about thousands of brands and products. These insights help professionals build a strong, more effective brand strategy. Learn more.

Website traffic

Measuring website traffic provides insight into the number of users visiting your website and how they’re doing so. Website traffic increasing over time is a strong indication that your brand is becoming more well known. Here’s where you can find this information:

Google analytics: Explore overall site traffic, direct traffic (when a user navigates directly to your site) and referral traffic (users that visit your site through another source) to understand what sources are driving users to your site.

Google search console: Filter out branded organic traffic to understand the extent users are visiting your site via branded keywords on search engines.

Branded search volume

Measuring branded search volume can provide insight into what branded keywords are driving traffic to your site and roughly how many times users search those keywords on a monthly basis. It is generally viewed as a trend over time, giving insight into how your brand awareness is growing. There are many keyword research tools that can provide this information, such as:

Keyword planner: A powerful keyword research tool that requires a Google Ads account to access.

Google trends: A search trends tool for comparative keyword research and uncovering spikes in topic search volume.

Social listening

By definition, social listening is the practice of monitoring social media platforms for brand mentions, related keywords, social engagement and competitor activity. Through social listening, companies can track social mentions of their brand in real time, providing useful insights into consumers’ attitudes toward services and products.

Earned media coverage

Earned media is a reference to the exposure that a company has earned through word of mouth and media outreach and is a valuable tool in improving brand awareness.

Comparing this data against other brand awareness metrics provides solid insight into the success of your efforts.

Measure more than brand awareness with Morning Consult’s Brand Intelligence

While the above tactics are an effective way to boost your brand awareness efforts, partnering with Morning Consult can take your brand strategy to the next level.

Our custom brand tracking solution allows you to understand and measure the associations that customers have with your brand. This type of study suggests how likely a consumer will choose your brand over competitors and provides you with a road map for growth.

Professionals across the globe rely on Morning Consult’s state-of-the-art brand research and analysis technology to deliver real-time, intelligent data on all the most important brand metrics to drive strategic decisions.

Complete list of brand awareness metrics

Refer to this list to ensure you’re uncovering the most valuable insights from your brand awareness efforts.

Survey research brand awareness metrics

Public relations brand awareness metrics

Website traffic brand awareness metrics

Social media brand awareness metrics

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