The Role of Brand Awareness in Lead Conversion
With studies showing that up to 9/10 of consumers would buy from a company that has gained their trust, it’s evident that building a great relationship with a customer is key to business success.
One key way of gaining and building this trust is through brand awareness.
In fact, this is one of the key reasons why strong brand awareness is a primary objective for 89% of companies.
But brand awareness isn’t something you achieve overnight. It takes time, effort, a forward-thinking mindset, and meticulous attention to detail to achieve, and measuring it can be an incomprehensible task as many of the metrics that make up brand awareness are unquantifiable (and sometimes even immeasurable).
However, you can use certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to gauge an understanding of your business’s brand awareness and its impact on lead conversion, online visibility and the wider industry. Keep reading this post to learn more.
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Why Is Brand Awareness Important?
Brand awareness plays a crucial role in business success and growth, serving as a vital component of 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 cultivates trust and credibility, influencing purchasing decisions and fostering customer loyalty.
Moreover, high brand awareness can lead to effective word-of-mouth marketing, as customers who have positive experiences with a well-known brand are likely to recommend it to others.
It also facilitates the introduction of new products or services, as consumers already have a predefined perception of the brand’s quality, reducing the risk associated with trying something new.
How SEO Improves Brand Awareness
We would argue that the best way to organically boost your brand awareness is through search engine optimisation (SEO), a method of digital marketing where all your digital assets are optimised in order to get your website noticed on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
A good SEO strategy starts with thorough keyword research. The right keywords should be included in your website’s content, titles, meta tags and alt text. This will help search engines understand what your website is about and potentially increase its ranking for relevant queries.
Additionally, you should update the content on your website regularly and create backlinks from other sites to boost its search engine authority.
For example, if you’re a law firm utilising an SEO strategy, you would 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.
By optimising for both Google and Bing SEO (and local SEO), you maximise your online reach and visibility, opening your business up to a newer and larger audience.
How To Measure Brand Awareness
As great as strong brand awareness is, it’s a pretty difficult thing to accurately measure.
There are so many intangible elements of brand awareness, such as the emotional connection customers have with a brand, that can’t be easily quantified.
Fortunately, there are some indicators and metrics that you can use to gain an understanding of the success of your branding efforts. By tracking these KPIs (key performance indicators), you can gain insight into how well your brand is performing in terms of visibility and recognition.
However, much like when setting smart SEO goals, you must have a clear and defined objective before you can start measuring your brand awareness.
11 Crucial KPIs For Measuring Brand Awareness
Depending on what KPI you’re tracking, the metric you measure your brand awareness in can vary.
From our years of experience boosting brand awareness and increasing trust with customers, we’ve found there are 11 important KPIs to consider when measuring brand awareness. They are:
1) Website Traffic
To gauge an understanding of the strength of your online presence and brand awareness you could use website traffic as an indicator.
Website traffic statistics provide an immediate, quantifiable measure of how many people are engaging with your brand online. An increase in visitors to your website generally indicates that more people are becoming aware of your brand, especially if they arrive via search engines or direct input of your URL, showing that your brand or products are top of mind.
Moreover, analysing the demographic and geographic details of your website traffic can offer valuable insights into who your brand is reaching, supporting the refinement of your marketing strategies.
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 is vital in gauging how visible your company is, as 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 enhance 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.
Essentially, 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 prominence and relevance on the web.
If other high-quality websites are linking to your content, it not only signifies that your brand is recognised but also suggests that it is respected as an authoritative source within your industry.
This in turn increases your brand’s visibility and credibility, contributing to improved brand awareness.
Furthermore, backlinks are an important factor in search engine optimisation, as search engines often perceive sites with a high number of quality backlinks as more relevant in search results, enhancing your visibility and reach.
5) Blog Traffic
Similar to overall website traffic, blog traffic is an important KPI for measuring brand awareness, especially given the increasing popularity of content marketing.
The number of visitors to your blog posts directly represents the extent of your brand’s reach and visibility past your initial services.
Engaging, high-quality content attracts readers and keeps them on your site longer, enhancing their familiarity with your brand.
Furthermore, if your blog posts are shared on social media or other platforms, this can significantly increase your brand exposure to potential customers.
6) Social Listening Metrics
Whilst on the topic of social media, let’s explore social listening metrics as one of the key KPIs for brand awareness.
Social listening metrics are simply the number of people talking about your business, brand, or products on social media, with these figures reflecting the number of conversations happening about your brand across social media platforms and the wider internet.
By monitoring mentions of your brand, products, and even competitors, you can gauge the volume and sentiment of these conversations.
This gives you invaluable insight into your brand’s reputation, how far your marketing efforts are reaching, and how engaged your audience is.
For example, an increasing number of brand mentions, especially positive ones, indicate rising brand awareness.
7) Social Media Engagement
Social media engagement is another crucial KPI for assessing brand awareness.
The interaction between your brand and your audience on social media platforms – through likes, shares, comments, follows, and other forms of engagement – provides a clear indication of the interest and recognition your brand commands.
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.
Furthermore, every interaction your posts receive increases your visibility on the platform, as these posts are more likely to appear in other users’ feeds, thereby extending your reach and contributing to increased brand awareness.
8) Share of Voice
Share of Voice (SoV) is a significant KPI for measuring brand awareness as it provides a comprehensive overview of your brand’s visibility in comparison to your competitors.
To put it simply, 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, thus enhancing your overall brand awareness.
9) Brand mentions
Brand mentions serve as 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. This could range from social media platforms, blogs and forums, to news articles.
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.
Remember, even neutral or negative mentions can provide an opportunity for customer engagement and reputation management, turning potential crises into trust-building dialogue.
Thus, 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
Customer surveys unequivocally stand as a robust KPI for brand awareness.
Using websites such as Typeform or SurveyMonkey, you can provide a direct line to your audience that opens up an avenue for customers to express their recognition and perceptions of your brand.
By asking targeted questions pertaining to brand recall, recognition, or associations, you 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, inclusive of features in news articles, publications, podcasts, or television shows, serves as one of the most powerful KPIs for brand awareness.
This indicator is particularly valuable as each 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.
Furthermore, being featured in trusted media outlets enhances your brand’s credibility and reputation, reinforcing positive perceptions among consumers.
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 needs to be an ongoing, dynamic process 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 entails 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
Some would argue that you need to fake it till you make it, but this method of boosting your brand awareness is not only unsustainable but also unhealthy for your business.
Additionally, paying for endless ads or sponsored social posts can have diminishing returns and can even have a negative effect on your brand awareness – especially since 70% to 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements on search engines.
Instead, placing this time, money and effort into more organic and effective methods, such as SEO, will help you create a solid foundation for your brand and aid in boosting your visibility on relevant search engine results pages.
This progressive strategy can provide long-term results for your business, allowing you to thrive in this ever-changing digital landscape. However, it’s a difficult one to master and requires planning and considerable effort.
Being a forward-thinking Design and SEO agency, Inc Studio can help you increase your online visibility and brand awareness through strategic and comprehensive SEO.
We will identify industry-relevant keywords and optimise your website’s content and structure for maximum search engine visibility while avoiding costly, ineffective black-hat techniques you could implement if doing it yourself.
However, our comprehensive approach to SEO goes beyond affecting your website ranking and helps you create an effective online presence that will result in increased visibility, reach and engagement over a prolonged period – leading to improved overall brand awareness.
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!