The Role of Brand Awareness in Lead Conversion
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Did you know that in the last year, 54% of consumers have stopped buying from a brand because it’s lost their trust?
This could be due to a number of factors, but one of the most common is a decrease in brand awareness.
The less your business is seen online, the less you’re trusted by consumers.
After all, there’s a reason why strong brand awareness is a primary objective for 89% of companies.
Unfortunately, brand awareness isn’t something you achieve overnight. It takes time, effort, a forward-thinking mindset, and meticulous attention to detail to achieve.
But what’s more difficult is measuring brand awareness.
What good brand awareness means to one business can be completely different to its definition in another.
Luckily, there are certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that allow businesses to set goals, monitor progress and increase their brand’s visibility.
Want to know more? Well, let’s get into it.
Why Is Brand Awareness Important?
Brand awareness plays a critical role in a company’s marketing strategy.
When consumers are familiar with a brand, they’re more likely to choose its products or services over an unknown competitor.
Strong brand awareness also cultivates trust and credibility, influencing purchasing decisions and fostering customer loyalty.
However, great brand awareness doesn’t always need to relate to online marketing. Word-of-mouth is arguably the most powerful form of marketing, with your existing audience organically growing your brand and encouraging increased leads and sales.
Once the trust between the brand and the consumer is established, it becomes much easier to upsell existing services or products. The basis of trust created by your brand awareness and quality of services means that the consumer will feel a reduced level of risk when choosing your business for their needs.
How to Increase Brand Awareness
We would argue that the best way to boost your brand awareness organically is through search engine optimisation (SEO).
SEO is a popular digital marketing strategy focused on getting your website seen on competitive SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
A good SEO strategy starts with thorough keyword research. By identifying the right keywords, you can optimise your content to be seen on the SERPs of industry-related queries your audience is actively searching for.
For example, if you’re a law firm, you’d want to make sure that you use keywords such as “legal services” or “attorney in [your city]” in your website content and titles. Doing so could help potential customers find the law firm when searching for legal services online.
There’s much more to SEO than just keywords, but we won’t get into it all here.
Just know that you need to optimise for all search engines to maximise your online reach and visibility, opening your business up to a newer and larger audience.
How To Measure Brand Awareness (11 KPIs)
Brand awareness is difficult to measure as it means different things to different people.
Some businesses value website traffic above anything else, while others see brand mentions as the most important KPI.
The truth is neither of them are wrong.
Each business is unique and success means different things.
The best brand awareness KPI for your business depends entirely on your business goals, the aims of your brand strategy and how you want to grow as a business.
Using our years of experience boosting brand awareness and increasing trust with customers, we’ve compiled a list of the 11 most common brand awareness KPIs so you can get a deeper understanding of how to monitor the growth of your brand.
1) Website Traffic
Website traffic is probably the easiest place to start. The more traffic your website is receiving, the more your business is being seen.
That’s why many businesses use website traffic as an indicator to measure brand awareness.
Tools such as Google Analytics or Google Search Console provide businesses with immediate, quantified data that shows how your website is performing in real time.
Looking at the traffic source also provides a great indication of where your brand is most visible.
For example, is all the traffic coming from a competitive SERP ranking or an Instagram post? Or are people coming to your website directly?
Each traffic source tells a completely different story and can help businesses better grow their brand online.
These tools also provide in-depth data on audiences, allowing businesses to analyse the demographic and geographic details of their website traffic and refine their strategy accordingly.
2) Website Impressions
While website traffic provides insight into the number of people engaging with your brand, website impressions are just as significant.
Impressions are the number of times your site appears in search engine results, serving as a direct measure of your online visibility.
This brand awareness KPI tells a more comprehensive story about your brand’s visibility than website traffic, simply because it reveals how frequently your brand is being exposed to potential customers during their online searches.
Even if they don’t click through to your site, seeing your brand’s name appear in search results can increase brand recognition over time.
If the same user sees your website across numerous searches, they may be more inclined to click through in the future. Therefore, a higher number of impressions typically indicates greater brand awareness.
3) Leads and Sales
Leads and sales serve as tangible indicators of brand awareness. The reasoning is straightforward: the more people recognise and trust your brand, the more likely they are to become leads or make a purchase.
In other words, increased brand awareness often correlates directly with an upswing in leads and sales.
This KPI doesn’t just signify a momentary interaction with your brand, such as a website visit or impression, but indicates a deeper engagement that could potentially result in a long-term, profitable customer relationship.
Tracking the volume of leads and sales can therefore offer valuable insights into the impact of your brand awareness strategies and the extent of your brand’s reach in the market.
4) Backlinks
Backlinks, or inbound links, can serve as a powerful brand awareness KPI as they can demonstrate your authority within a certain field or sector.
A backlink is a hyperlink on another website that leads back to your site. The number and quality of backlinks your site receives signifies its importance and relevance on the web.
Receiving a backlink from a website with high domain authority indicates to search engines that your website is trustworthy and of value.
In turn, this can increase your brand’s visibility and credibility, contributing to improved brand awareness.
However, it’s important to know that search engines prioritise quality backlinks over quantity. It’s much better to have three backlinks from authoritative websites than 100 from spammy websites.
5) Click-Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of impressions to clicks from search engine results pages.
You can measure CTR by dividing the number of clicks by the number of impressions you have. Some platforms do this automatically, while others might require you to calculate it yourself.
A higher CTR means that users are actively engaged with your content and find it relevant to them. However, the figure for a good CTR varies depending on the industry you’re in and the platform the traffic is coming from.
Below is a guide to what a good CTR looks like on different platforms:
- 2 to 4% for organic search
- 5 to 20% for YouTube
- 6 to 7% for Google Ads
- 2 to 5% for email marketing
- 0.5 to 5% for Facebook and Instagram ads
6) Social Listening Metrics
Social listening metrics are the number of people talking about your business, brand, or products on social media.
These figures reflect the number of conversations happening about your brand across social media platforms and the wider internet – essentially telling a story of your brand awareness on these platforms.
Monitoring mentions of your brand, products, and competitors can help businesses gain a better understanding of the volume and sentiment of these conversations.
In return, this gives you invaluable insight into your brand’s reputation, how far your marketing efforts are reaching, and how engaged your audience is.
Simply put, increased positive brand mentions on social media platforms indicate rising brand awareness.
7) Social Media Engagement
Social listening metrics aren’t the only KPI you can use to measure your brand awareness on social media.
Likes, comments, shares and follows on your social media platforms provide a clear indication of the interest and recognition your brand has with your target audience.
High engagement rates often reflect a deep connection with your audience and a prominent brand presence. This is because users are more likely to engage with brands they recognise and trust.
Every interaction your posts receive increases your visibility on the platform, further promoting your brand and content to new audiences, and extending your brand awareness.
8) Share of Voice
Share of Voice (SoV) is an important KPI for measuring brand awareness as it provides a comprehensive overview of your brand’s visibility in comparison to your competitors.
SoV calculates your brand’s proportion of the total mentions within your industry or niche. This includes everything from social media mentions and hashtags to online reviews, blog posts, and even news articles.
A higher SoV indicates that your brand is dominating industry conversations, establishing a strong brand presence and recognition.
It serves as an effective tool for understanding your brand’s position in the market and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies in amplifying brand awareness.
Monitoring and improving your SoV can help you identify opportunities for increasing visibility and influence, enhancing your overall brand awareness in the process.
9) Brand mentions
Brand mentions are one of the most fundamental KPIs for brand awareness, acting as a direct measure of how frequently your brand is being discussed on various online platforms.
Every mention, whether tagged or not, signifies a conversation happening around your brand, and each one has the potential to increase your visibility and reputation.
What separates brand mentions from SoV is that a brand mention is a singular instance of your brand being mentioned, while SoV is a metric that compares the total number of brand mentions with the rest of the sector.
Remember, even neutral or negative mentions can provide an opportunity for customer engagement and reputation management, turning potential crises into trust-building dialogue.
That’s why tracking brand mentions can offer you a real-time barometer of your brand’s standing and reach, supporting the effective measurement and enhancement of brand awareness.
10) Customer Surveys
Surveys offer businesses a direct line to their audience, opening up an avenue for customers to express their recognition and perceptions of your brand.
Using websites such as Typeform or SurveyMonkey, you can ask targeted questions relating to brand associations and recognition. This will then allow you to gain valuable insights into your brand’s market penetration and overall image.
Moreover, regular surveys can track changes in brand awareness over time, providing a clear measure of the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Given their direct nature and the qualitative data they offer, customer surveys are an indispensable tool for understanding and enhancing brand awareness.
11) Extended Media Coverage
Extended media coverage, such as features in news articles, publications, podcasts, or television shows, can help reinforce positive perceptions among consumers and increase brand awareness.
A mention or feature in the media can dramatically extend your brand’s reach and visibility, helping you tap into new audience sectors that may be difficult to reach otherwise.
This is further amplified when this coverage comes from a highly trusted media outlet. Similar to a backlink, this coverage acts as an endorsement from the outlet to your business (granted that it’s good news).
Simply put, the more your brand is seen on trustworthy media outlets, the higher your brand awareness will become.
Tracking this brand awareness KPI can help you understand the effectiveness of your public relations activities in contributing to brand awareness, and strategise on how to maximise this further.
Real-Time vs. Point-In-Time: Which is Best To Measure Brand Awareness?
Measuring brand awareness isn’t a one-time and done job. It needs ongoing monitoring and to achieve this, businesses often use two key approaches: real-time and point-in-time measurement.
Both methods are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of brand awareness and their combined use can guide effective, data-driven marketing decision-making.
Real-time measurement
Real-time measurement involves continuous monitoring of your brand’s performance across various touchpoints.
This could include tracking social media engagement, brand mentions, website traffic, and other KPIs in real time.
This approach offers immediate insight into your brand’s visibility and the effectiveness of your marketing strategies, allowing for quick adjustments to optimise your brand awareness efforts.
Point-in-time measurement
On the other hand, point-in-time measurement involves assessing brand awareness at specific intervals, such as quarterly or annually.
This method is particularly useful for evaluating long-term trends and the overall impact of your marketing campaigns.
While it offers less immediate feedback, it provides a broader perspective on your brand’s standing and growth.
Effectively & Organically Boost Your Brand Awareness
Increasing your brand awareness takes time. But what’s the best way to do it?
Paying for endless ads or sponsored social posts can deliver results but it’s not sustainable. Considering 70% to 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements on search engines, you might actually damage your brand’s perception if you lean too heavily into a PPC strategy.
Instead, we recommend placing this time, money and effort into more organic and effective methods, such as SEO.
These proven strategies help you create a solid foundation for your brand and start building up your visibility on relevant search engine results pages. It’s not a quick fix but it can provide long-term results.
If you don’t have the time, expertise or experience to deliver a successful SEO strategy, you should consider partnering with a forward-thinking design and SEO agency – like us!
Inc Studio has years of experience helping clients increase their online visibility and brand awareness through strategic and comprehensive SEO.
By partnering with us, we can help you take back control of your online presence and put your brand ahead of the competition. Reach out to us today and together we can take your business to the next level!