How to Effectively Use Online Surveys to Track Brand Awareness

The benefits of online surveys are never-ending. You should note that online surveys are one of the most natural, most convenient means to create brand awareness. Be it an old or new business; every organization is in the rat race for brand recognition. Brand awareness is difficult to measure, but the ability to recall your brand by your customers, their perception towards your brand, and brand loyalty make the difference. This is one of the reasons why brands spend millions of dollars in celebrity endorsement, social media & marketing influencers, and other PR agencies.

Brand awareness studies play a vital role in educating the brand manager about the way the brand is performing and how to shape brand messaging as per organizational objectives. It’s easy to track brand awareness these days through online surveys and know what your customer thinks about your brand. Online survey software companies such as SoGoSurvey have outlined surveys that enable analysis of how customers view your brand and how to improve your positioning among the audiences.

Why evaluate Brand Awareness?

Why? Because customers prefer brands they are familiar with, and whose products and services are on top of their minds. Being keen on brand awareness means increasing your net-worth in less time. Increased brand valuation has a twining effect on customer retention, improved business performance, and increased sales.

If you genuinely want to know how your brand is doing, it’s relation with your customers, and so on, it’s advisable to run a survey. A brand awareness survey can help you with:

Brand Recognition:

How well your audience know your brand amongst other brands. Do they recognize your brand instantly, or there is a lag? List your product with different brands and ask questions ranging between “very familiar” to “not familiar at all” to know your brand’s popularity.

Brand Image:

How do customers perceive your brand and what they think about your brand? Having a sharp brand image ultimately impacts customer buying behavior and results in more sales. Brand image brings an emotional connection to your product since customers are willing to shell out money to purchase your product.

Brand Identity:

Do your customers understand all the visible elements of your brand? A brand identity differentiates yourself from the competition and creates a positive brand experience. A unique brand identity help in brand awareness and customers remember your product for a more extended period.

Brand recall:

How many times will customers pick your brand if given an option? Brand recall is qualitative of how well a brand name connects with your product or service. Brand recall is best known as spontaneous recall and creates a strong link between a category and brand.

Brand Trust:

Do your customers trust your brand? In this period of trust & belief, building positive reviews is difficult. If your customers find you less credible, then you should do something to make them devoted to you. Your brand image has to creative, appealing, and worthy to the audience to create valuable brand trust.

Brand Loyalty:

When your customers buy the same product from the same brand continuously, for some time, it’s brand loyalty. Brand trust and brand loyalty complement one another. If your customer has no faith in your brand, they won’t remain loyal to your brand, either.

Customer Profile:

Has your organization identified customer profiles as per different segments or groups? Does geography matter to your brand? If a customer persona changes, brands have to tweak their offerings too. Your target customer profile will help you build sales and increase revenue.

Which avenues of Brand Awareness should you track?

Factors like utilization, purchase behavior, brand personality, are recommended to be tracked.

Ways to measure Brand Awareness?

Surveys:

Through an online survey, you can ask your customers how they know about you, irrespective of which channel they heard about you. Be it an online survey, traditional marketing survey, web survey, or phone survey, ask your customers if they are familiar with your brand. Try to gauge what’s in the customer’s mind when you speak about your brand.

Website Traffic:

Playing with the content on your website can be a bit challenging, especially during times when customers are used to your offerings. Analytical tools like GA, Tableau gives you the right insight into your customer’s journey. They even tell you niche behavior of your customer’s page visit, email link clicks, submit a form, etc. These small behavioral changes give you an idea about your brand awareness.

Search Volume Data:

Top tools like Google Keyword Planner & Google Trends helps to check the volume of searches for your brand name. They keep a track if your search volume is increasing or decreasing.

Social Influence:

The best way to catch your customers is where they spend the time most? Social Media! Online platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or any review site lets your customers speak their minds out. You can listen to their conversations to understand what they think about your brand. Are they happy or sad? Do they talk about any of your competitors? These are thoughts naturally expressed.

How to create a useful Brand Awareness Survey?

Being on top of your customer’s mind is one task that you need to perform continuously and consistently. No matter your business size, customer feedback is essential to know how your brand is performing and if they are any areas of improvement. There is a lot of marketing efforts that go into creating brand awareness, and you should know which one is performing and which is not. Sending out online surveys to your customers and prospects is the best way to measure awareness.

Outcomes of a brand awareness survey

1. If you’ve rightly identified your target audience.
2. Understand areas of improvement and find solutions to tackle them
3. Monitor different marketing channels
4. Venture into different spectrums to do business.
5. Measure customer satisfaction
6. Maintain a consistent presence in your target market
7. Marketing messaging and its effectiveness

These outcomes are time-based and can change as per the marketing objectives decided by the management.

How to run a brand awareness survey

According to SurveyDolla, through effective online surveys, knowing about brand awareness is an ideal method to get customer feedback in a minute. Depending on your survey goals, you can identify your target market, target audience, formulate the right questionnaires, and use the right distribution channels to send it across. When you get the correct feedback, you automatically know how aware customers are of your brand. It lets you focus on your efforts and strengthen your marketing position.

The brand generally conducts brand awareness surveys on current internal and external customers. But to know about market situation & competitors offering, brands do conduct brand awareness surveys on non-customers too.

Example of a Brand Awareness Survey.

Let’s consider an airline company (XYZ) who is conducting a Brand Awareness Survey to all frequent and infrequent flyers to raise the brand profile.

  What is the first company that comes to mind when you think of XYZ airlines?

  When was the last time you traveled?

• One week ago
• 1-3 months ago
• 3-6 months ago
• 6-9 months ago
• 9-12 months ago
• Never

  Which are the airlines have you traveled so far?

• British Airways
• Lufthansa
• Emirates
• None of the above

  How did you come to know about XYZ airlines?

• Social Media
• Blog Post
• Magazine
• Travel Agency
• Others

  Have you used XYZ airlines before?

• Yes
• No

  How favorably do you think of XYZ airlines?

• Unfavorably
• Neutral
• Favorably

  Any other comments?

Conclusion

Brand awareness should be the core objective of your marketing team as it builds a strong foundation for your brand. Evaluating brand strategies at a regular interval will help raise your brand and make your customers stick to It for eternity. More customer engagement, brand trust, and brand loyalty; more is the sales and profit margins. There was a time when measuring brand awareness was difficult, but due to advanced marketing & analytical tools, it’s quite easy.

Brand awareness is a concept on its own. It can bring you customers or even make you lose a few. Using brand awareness guidelines at every step of branding helps eliminate the risk on time without waiting for future threats. Once you draft the steps, you can grow your audience like never before.

So, what are some of the brand awareness guidelines do you use or know. Small companies turn big and perform well in the market only because of some of the best brand awareness strategies in place.