Written in partnership with Alisha Shibli of Radix

It’s impossible to discuss brand growth without looking at “brand measurement”. Measuring a brand can be a rather challenging process as there isn’t one fixed method to do so. As a result, many marketers tend to skip this process.

One of the most popular metrics used to measure a brand is called “Key Performance Indicators” or more commonly referred to as KPIs. These indicators are used for tracking and analyzing factors that are crucial to the organization’s success. Some common KPI goals include the average time for a conversion, growth in revenue or inventory turnover.

The blind spot for KPIs is that they focus on ROI (Return on Investment) but don’t put much emphasis on the qualitative impact of the marketing team. For this, we need to apply focus on other forms of brand measurement.

Categories of Brand Metrics

Brand metrics act as diagnostic, predictive, and prescriptive tools to help understand if the brand is on track and to gauge its performance in terms of customer expectations and against the competition. Being an integral part of the brand strategy process, they help understand the drivers of brand strength and equity.

Below are the common categories of brand metrics.

1. Behavior Metrics (What You Do)

Focused on what employees do to build the brand, it incorporates both internal (management and employees) and external (market) factors. However, here the internal team’s enthusiasm in the brand goes a long way in impacting the external factors. If the team believes in the brand, it translates into the external growth of the brand.

2. Perception Metrics (How You’re Viewed)

Perception measures the customer’s satisfaction and a positive association with the brand. Do they like the brand enough to be loyal to it and advocate for it? With the exponential growth of social media, brands need real-time data to measure their online efforts and analyze its impact on brand performance, awareness, consideration, and trial.

3. Performance Metrics (What You Achieve)

This considers if positive behavior and perception actually convert into something substantial. Some of the key elements it includes are lead generation, purchases, market and wallet share, profit margin, revenue uplift, premium pricing, lifetime value, and conversion rate. It is a significant measure for organizations to monitor the brand’s performance with its overall business goals. It takes into consideration both financial and customer perspectives.

Metrics to Consider For Brand Growth

1. Web Traffic

Measuring your website traffic can reveal insights about brand awareness, but it’s important to look in the right places. Google Analytics helps in analyzing organic, direct and referral traffic to your website. It also gives you the necessary insights about the number of people being directed to your website as a result of your PR and social media efforts.

2. Blog Conversions

Blogs help generate tremendous traffic. However, it’s important to understand how many visitors were converted into customers with their help. Looking at the top content downloaded from a blog and the sources driving those conversions give an insight into the type of content that is being consumed the most. It also gives you an understanding of how to best promote such content.

3. Social Media Shares

One of the things that help in generating traffic and creating good brand value is the shares the content receives on social media. The more social shares, the better your social brand awareness.

Analyzing the number of social shares and what platforms they’re being shared on will help you determine the best way to promote those posts. If the nature of the posts is to be a call to action, then the social media shares would act as a very important metric.

4. Referral Traffic & Quality of Visits

Not only does social media help with brand awareness but it’s also an excellent avenue for driving people to your website. You can dig into the top-performing posts that have driven traffic to your site and the social platform that is driving good quality traffic by looking at average session duration and bounce rate.

Social referral traffic is tied to both sales and marketing goals and hence major business goals. To track those efficiently, you can use a publishing strategy that incorporates UTM tracking and website analytics program like Google Analytics.

5. SOV & SOI

Share of Voice (SOV) is one of the most popular metrics in public relations. It is also used as part of a competitive analysis or paid advertising campaign. SOV basically focuses on how much of the online sphere your brand has participated in.

You need to determine the percentage of the overall conversation about your industry that is focused on your brand. It gives you a comparison with your competitors and since most social media conversations are open to the public, it helps you learn from their successes and measure their impact.

Share of Impressions (SOI) is the percentage of the number of people who had the opportunity to be exposed to your company’s coverage, compared to your competitors. Analyzing the two simultaneously can help you measure the quality and quantity of coverage. Having a low SOV but high SOI would mean that you aren’t securing as much coverage as your competitors but you’re securing articles in publications with a high level of readership and better quality.

Final Thoughts

Among the dozens of social media metrics that are available, these are some of the most essential ones that would make the biggest difference to your business and its goals. Metrics play a huge role in informing you about the success of your campaign and strategy. Combining the above-mentioned metrics will give you a 360-degree picture of your social media performance.