You’re not an athlete, but January 2 found you in a Nike store, motivated by a New Year’s resolution to get fit. You’ve never been a soda drinker, but plans for a weekend barbecue now have your fridge stocked with Coke.

Brand awareness is a powerful thing. Sometimes, it’s all that is needed to spur a consumer to action. Of course, not every brand can be a Nike or a Coca-Cola, nor were Nike or Coca-Cola household names when they began. However, creating brand awareness is a critical part of business success. Once consumers know and trust your brand, they will continue to choose it over competitor brands. They will seek it out and recommend it. They will return again and again, making brand awareness the key to growing a company’s customer base and its profits.

Brand Awareness Matters

The bottom line is that brand awareness matters. Google it and you find that there is no shortage of how-to articles on increasing brand awareness. If you want a little help, there are companies you can hire or services you can buy to better promote your brand. No matter the strategy you take, how do you know if it is working? In other words, how do you know if your efforts to grow your brand awareness are doing just that — growing your brand awareness?

Why Measuring Brand Awareness Matters, Too

Though growing brand awareness is about gaining customers and increasing revenues, these are not goals that can be achieved overnight. Thus, measuring brand awareness becomes just as important as building it. Tracking what is working to raise your brand awareness among consumers allows you to create a more refined, more efficient, and ultimately more successful strategy. Besides, who wants to continue to invest in something that isn’t working?

How to Measure Brand Awareness

Unfortunately, there is no hard and fast answer, no single metric to tell you you’ve mastered the art of brand awareness. There are a multitude of tools available, however, to help you gauge the success of your efforts. Below are five recommended metrics for measuring brand awareness.

1. Surveys

What better way is there to understand consumer response to a brand than simply asking? Surveys typically attach to a particular interaction with your brand, for example, after a purchase or when a user visits a particular webpage. They can be tailored to capture the most relevant data (e.g., how did you hear about us?), and response rates can improve when incentives are offered. It’s not a perfect science, but surveys can collect important qualitative data that many other metrics miss.
Helpful tools: SurveyMonkey, Typeform, Google Surveys

2. Social listening

We all know the power of social media for promoting our brand, but how many people are really talking about you? What are they saying? And where are they saying it? Social listening allows you to hear what others — including potential customers — are saying about your brand, without actually asking them as you would with a survey. Paying attention to these unsolicited opinions allows you to take greater control of your online presence and craft content and messaging in a more targeted and effective way.
Helpful tools: Google Alerts, Hootsuite, Buffer

3. Website traffic

Tracking website traffic is a good place to start to see if your brand awareness-raising efforts are working. More traffic generally indicates an effective strategy, however, figuring out which tactic is having the greatest impact requires a deeper dive. Tracking backlinks and referrals, for example, can help you determine where this increased traffic is coming from. Once you understand why these other sites and articles are linking to your brand, you can focus more energy and investment there.
Helpful tools: Google Analytics, Backlink Checker

4. Brand impressions

Simply, a brand impression is made anytime your ad is viewed. Tracking impressions lets you see how often your content is appearing and if it is engaging the right audiences. If not, you can make the necessary adjustments.
Helpful tools: Google AdWords, Facebook/Twitter/Instagram (most social media platforms have built-in analytics tools)

5. Branded search volume

By tracking how many people are searching for your business name or associated keywords, you can keep a pulse on the general awareness of your brand. More importantly, you can see if your efforts to raise brand awareness are really producing results. Are more people reaching you by branded keyword search? While higher volume indicates greater brand awareness, keep in mind that branded keywords also lead to more conversions.
Helpful tools: SEMrush, Moz, Google Analytics

There is no one metric that can tell you whether your brand awareness efforts are a success. By paying attention, however, to some key metrics — surveys, social listening, website traffic, brand impressions, and branded search volume — you can see what is working to grow your brand awareness and what isn’t.

In the end, you cannot effectively and efficiently grow your brand awareness without also measuring your brand awareness. If you are going to invest time and resources on getting your brand noticed, make sure those investments are really getting your brand out there.

Author Bio:

Anna Bella Burjak is Director of Business Development for AdStyle, driving quality content recommendations around the web. She brings years of experience in the company’s advertising industry in direct sales, customer relations and marketing.