Large companies like Coca-Cola demonstrate to businesses everywhere the importance of brand awareness. Coco-Cola is an instantly recognizable brand to nearly everyone, and in turn, a leader within their industry. Many businesses look to achieve similar success, but building and measuring awareness can be difficult. Awareness marketing is often only seen as successful when its directly attributed to a customer’s choice to purchase. The problem with this methodology is that it on average takes 7 touch points before a customer makes a purchasing decision. You can instead make a more accurate assessment of your awareness campaign’s success by investigating other available direct and indirect KPIs.
Awareness marketing covers several different mediums, each with its own version of reporting. Traditional advertising, like billboard advertising and radio, offers little in the way of measurable results. While on the other hand, TV advertising may offer viewership numbers but do little to inform you about who those viewers are. At Awarity, we provide daily performance metrics for both banner ads and Connected TV campaigns. Reports on impressions and CPM show exactly how many times your ad is being seen by your target audience and at what cost. Unique reach and frequency reporting work to give you a better understanding of how many estimated unique customers saw your ad and how many times. These performance metrics provide valuable insights into the success of your campaign to reach your target customers.
To get the most accurate picture on the impact your brand awareness campaign has on your business, it’s important to make a conclusion with your whole marketing funnel in mind. Below are indirect metrics you can track to see if your campaign is moving the needle across your whole marketing strategy:
· Total new website visitors: Brand awareness campaigns that encourage audiences to visit your website can play a role in changes to total and direct new user traffic reported in Google Analytics. Increased direct entry into your website can suggest that messaging around your brand name is working to encourage users to visit your website
· Bounce rate of direct traffic: You may see that new user direct traffic has increased on your site but bounce rates have also increased. This could mean your awareness messaging is not cohesive with the rest of your branding and may need refining.
· Cost metrics for lower funnel tactics: Judge your current awareness campaign’s pricing against alternative advertising channels. How does your CPC and CPM compare to other offerings? See if your current performance cost continues to outweigh other prices.
· Overall engagement with other ad strategies: Building awareness influences all aspects of your marketing strategy. Decreased CPC and CPA in your social media and SEM campaigns during and after your awareness campaign could mean your awareness efforts have helped produce increased engagement with your brand.
These performance indicators will help you judge if your campaign is working. Brand awareness isn’t built overnight though. It’s important to keep in mind that by continuing to reach the right people with the right message, you will reap the benefits over the long term. To learn more about building awareness for your brand, schedule a meeting today
