A branding report or a brand performance report helps you understand the impact of your marketing and branding efforts.
Regardless of which term you use, this comprehensive analysis enables you to evaluate the effectiveness and success of different strategies so that you can make better informed decisions.
Whilst this might sound simple, many brands struggle to analyse their performance, which can lead to a whole lot of guessing. Not only is this risky, but also very costly as you could spend a lot of money on something that just isn’t working.
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There are a few reasons why companies struggle to create a brand performance report, one of which involves not knowing which key performance indicators (KPIs) to track.
There are also so many different metrics related to branding that it can be difficult knowing where to start.
For instance, do you need a brand equity report or a brand awareness report?
It all depends on what you’re trying to measure and what your business quantities as ‘successful’.
In this post, we’ll be looking at brand performance reports in full, covering the various ways to effectively analyse your brand performance. We’ll also be providing a brand report example to give you an idea of how to compile your own.
Let’s get started.
What Is a Branding Report?
A branding report, or a brand analysis report, is an evaluation of any branding strategies and methods implemented. By using key metrics, companies can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the brand.
The goal of a brand report is to make improvements where necessary and to identify what works.
“Brand is a long term sustainable competitive advantage that any business can create that is really hard to unseat. Whereas somebody else can copy your feature, someone else can copy your sales model. These other things are all short term, whereas brand is a long term, durable, sustainable competitive advantage.”
– Brad McGinity, CRO of 15Five
Keep in mind that branding isn’t limited to just a name and a logo. It covers every touchpoint – from brand identity all the way through to web presence.
That being said, not every brand report needs to be as comprehensive as it sounds. You might choose to hone in on one particular area, such as social media marketing and analyse your performance on specific platforms to then compare with others.
Why Is a Brand Performance Report Important?
A brand report helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your brand efforts, so you know what areas to improve.
In the same way you would compile a marketing report to analyse your marketing activities, a branding report is essential for understanding the brand’s current state.
Other reasons why a brand performance report is important are:
Performance Evaluation
A brand report provides a comprehensive assessment of a brand’s performance, allowing stakeholders to gauge the effectiveness of their branding strategies and initiatives.
Insight into Consumer Perception
A brand analysis report includes consumer perception data and feedback, providing valuable insights into how the brand is perceived in the market. Understanding consumer attitudes and preferences helps refine brand messaging, positioning, and customer experience.
Competitive Analysis
Companies can compare the brand’s performance and market position against its competitors. This helps identify competitive advantages, market gaps, and potential threats, informing strategies for differentiation and market positioning.
Strategic Direction
By evaluating key metrics, market trends, and consumer insights, a brand performance report guides the formulation of strategic decisions and plans. It helps define future goals, objectives, and initiatives to enhance brand equity, expand market reach, and drive growth.
Communication and Alignment
A brand report serves as a tool for communication and alignment among stakeholders. It provides an overview of the brand’s identity, positioning, and performance, facilitating a shared understanding across teams.
Measuring Brand Performance Effectively
Time to get down to the nitty gritty. It’s time we talk about measuring brand performance effectively in your branding report.
This is crucial for assessing the effectiveness of branding strategies, understanding customer perception, and driving strategic decision-making.
You might think that branding is next to impossible to measure; after all, how can you really quantify certain aspects of branding?
You measure performance through specific metrics, which include:
- Brand Awareness
- Brand Equity
- Brand Sentiment/Perception
- Brand Consideration
- Brand Loyalty
- Market Share
All of the above are key KPIs that will help you evaluate your brand effectively and help you structure your reports.
Top tip: For B2B businesses, these metrics often behave differently. Sales cycles are longer, decision-making units are larger, and brand consideration happens well before a sales conversation begins. That means tracking perception, trust, and authority becomes just as important as tracking direct conversions.
Let’s begin by breaking down the importance of measuring brand awareness.
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness is what you might call a ‘cornerstone metric. ’ It tells you how recognisable your branding is currently. Knowing your current positioning is incredibly important as it underpins every decision moving forward.
To measure brand awareness you need to be using the right tools and metrics. Choosing the right KPIs will allow you to measure this effectively. These include top-of-mind awareness, unaided awareness and aided awareness.
- Top-of-Mind Brand Awareness: Is your brand the first people think of when they think of a certain product or service (i.e. coffee = Starbucks)?
- Unaided Brand Awareness: Will your target audience name your brand without a prompt (i.e. tech company = Samsung)?
- Aided Brand Awareness: Does your target audience know your brand at all when asked direct questions?
Aided brand awareness would involve questions like:
‘Have you heard of Nike?’
These questions will give you a pretty good idea of where you’re at. The goal of every brand should be a top-of-mind option. If you’ve hit that peak, then it might be worth focusing on brand consideration and usage.
How to Measure Brand Awareness
To measure brand awareness, businesses can use surveys, brand recall tests, social media reach, and website analytics. Tracking metrics such as brand mentions, search volume, social media followers, and website traffic can all provide valuable insights into the reach and visibility of the brand.
Brand Equity
Brand equity represents the intangible value associated with a brand, including consumer perceptions, brand loyalty, and brand associations.
Including this in your brand report is important because it provides a measure of your brand’s strength and influence in the market.
It reflects consumer trust, preference, and loyalty, allowing you to assess your competitive advantage. By tracking brand equity over time, you can identify areas for improvement and make more informed decisions.
An example of a B2B brand with a lot of brand equity is Adobe. It’s well known for offering a wide range of software products and services for creative professionals and businesses.
In B2B markets, strong brand equity reduces perceived risk. When procurement teams are choosing between similar providers, recognised brands with established credibility often win, even at a premium.
Ultimately, Adobe has built a strong brand equity based on creativity and innovation, making the brand highly regarded in the design, marketing, and content creation industries.
How to Measure Brand Equity
To measure brand equity, businesses can employ various approaches such as brand equity surveys, customer loyalty metrics (repeat purchase rate, customer retention), and brand perception studies. These methods help measure the emotional connection and loyalty consumers have towards the brand.
Analysing Brand Sentiment and Brand Knowledge
Brand sentiment is how people feel about your brand and the emotions they feel when they interact with it.
Brand knowledge refers to how familiar people are with your values, products, messaging, and positioning.
Brands that excel in this department will always have the upper hand, as customers will have formed a deep connection with the brand. In fac,t they’ll often think of you even when you’re not directly marketing to them.
For example, they might see a colour or hear a certain phrase and automatically make that connection.
How to Measure Brand Sentiment and Brand Knowledge
SurveyMonkey is an email marketing tool that allows you to be direct in your questioning, distributing surveys directly to the source. Surveys and online focus groups are still just as viable in the digital age, if not more.
Another option is a platform known as Awario, which tracks every time your brand is mentioned across the web – everywhere from Reddit to blogs. One of the best things about the platform is that it highlights potential influencers.
Brand Consideration
Brand consideration measures how often consumers think about a brand when deciding what to buy in a particular product category.
Including brand consideration in a brand report is important because it provides valuable insights into a brand’s competitive position, purchase intent and brand perception.
By understanding how often consumers consider a brand and the factors that influence their consideration, businesses can develop effective competitive strategies and identify opportunities for brand growth.
How to Measure Brand Consideration
Businesses can use surveys, questionnaires, and consumer polls to ask respondents directly about the brands they typically consider when making purchases. They could also conduct focus groups or interviews to delve deeper into consumers’ thought processes and understand the factors influencing their brand consideration.
Additionally, monitoring online discussions, social media mentions, and online search behaviour related to brands within the product category can provide valuable insights into brand consideration levels.
Brand Loyalty
Retaining business from your target audience has a lot to do with brand loyalty, which determines how well your brand is doing.
A loyal base will do most of the selling for you, either by buying themselves or encouraging others to buy your products by word of mouth.
How to Measure Brand Loyalty
To measure brand loyalty, you should be looking at the following metrics:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS)
- Repurchase Ratio
- Loyal Customer Rate
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer Lifetime Value is a key financial metric that helps you assess the long-term profitability of your customer base. By analysing factors like average customer lifespan, churn rate, and customer interactions, you can gauge how much revenue a customer is likely to generate over time.
Customer reviews and social media mentions are also quality signs that your brand is establishing loyalty in the areas that matter. Remember, a loyal customer is one that will choose you over a competitor every time.
Do keep in mind that there are factors that can negatively affect brand loyalty and brand usage. A poorly built website, for example, will undermine sales and even damage the image of the brand despite other areas being strong.
The bounce rate will give you an idea of how your website is performing, including which pages work better than others. Heat maps are also very helpful as they outline the areas of your site that people interact with most.
Market Share and Share of Voice
Brand loyalty is great, but how do you stack up against the competition?
Market share shows what portion of total industry sales your brand accounts for. It’s a clear sign of how well you’re performing in the market and whether you’re gaining ground or losing it.
To measure it, compare your sales revenue with overall industry sales. This helps identify your competitive position and where there’s room to grow.
Then there’s Share of Voice (SOV). Basically, how much of the conversation is about you compared to competitors. This includes everything from ads and PR to social media and blog mentions.
Together, these metrics give you a high-level view of brand performance across the market — not just with your existing customers.
How this Applies to Brand Performance
Brand performance has a lot to do with your overall branding goals. How well you generate sales, increase awareness, grow brand equity and increase engagement will determine how you’re performing.
Sales volume and frequency are two of the most common brand goals. In this instance, your brand is running at optimal levels when your audience is buying your products, using them, and recommending them to others.
If your goal is to increase brand awareness, then looking at the number of engagements on social media platforms will help determine performance. Just remember to check the quality of these engagements, as negative comments could mean you aren’t performing as well as you’d hope.
Whether you’re tracking brand awareness through social engagement or looking at sales performance and marketing ROI, it’s all about connecting your brand efforts to tangible performance indicators and quantifiable benefits.
We can’t stress the importance of Google Analytics enough for gathering key data and metrics. And let’s not forget about SurveyMonkey in the gathering of qualitative data to run alongside anything quantitative.
Once you have everything you need, it’s time to wrap it all up in a branding report!
What To Include In a Branding Report
You’ve done the research and you’ve effectively analysed your brand’s performance in line with your goals and objectives.
Now comes the fun part!
A branding report needs to be focused, presenting relevant information in line with whatever you’re reporting on.
Here’s a quick rundown of what you should include in a branding report:
- What Worked
- What Didn’t
- Statistics
- Recommendations
Brand Reports are numbers-focused, so it’s important that you include percentages to highlight performance.
Try to also include takeaways or context to the statistics if you can, as this will help those reading the brand report understand it better.
Brand Report Example
Now that we’ve explored what makes up your brand performance report, it’s time to look at a brand report example.
We’ve based this on a fictional tech company to give you an idea of how to compile your own brand report and the level of detail to include.
Executive Summary:
The brand report for Tech X Solutions provides a comprehensive analysis of the brand’s performance, market position, and key metrics. The report highlights the brand’s strengths, areas for improvement, and strategic recommendations for enhancing brand impact and growth.
Brand Overview:
Tech X Solutions is a leading technology company specialising in innovative software solutions for businesses in various industries. The brand has a strong reputation for its cutting-edge products, exceptional customer service, and commitment to technological advancements. Tech X Solutions’ brand values revolve around reliability, expertise, and driving digital transformation for its clients.
Key Metrics:
Brand Awareness: Tech X Solutions has achieved a significant level of recognition in the target market. Surveys and market research data indicate that the brand enjoys high levels of aided (80%) and unaided (60%) brand recall. Furthermore, website analytics show consistent organic search traffic, with a year-over-year increase of 25%, and increasing brand mentions on social media platforms, with a 40% rise in brand-related discussions.
Brand Perception and Image: The brand perception of Tech X Solutions is positive and aligned with its desired positioning. Customer feedback, focus groups, and sentiment analysis indicate that the brand is perceived as innovative (85%), trustworthy (90%), and reliable (88%). Customers appreciate the brand’s user-friendly products (92%), excellent customer support (95%), and continuous efforts in delivering cutting-edge solutions.
Brand Consideration: Through market research surveys and competitor analysis, Tech X Solutions has a strong brand consideration among target customers. Consumers consistently include Tech X Solutions as one of their top options when considering technology solutions within the industry. Factors such as product quality, reputation, and customer satisfaction contribute to the brand’s high consideration levels, with a 70% consideration rate among the target audience.
Brand Loyalty: Tech X Solutions enjoys a significant level of brand loyalty among its existing customer base. Customer retention rates stand at 85%, indicating a strong affinity for the brand. Repeat purchase behaviour further reinforces brand loyalty, with 70% of customers making multiple purchases from Tech X Solutions. The brand’s focus on building long-term relationships, personalised customer experiences, and ongoing support contributes to fostering brand loyalty.
Recommendations:
Based on the findings of the brand report, several recommendations are proposed to further enhance Tech X Solutions’ brand performance.
These recommendations include:
- Strengthening marketing efforts to increase brand awareness, aiming for a 10% growth in aided brand recall within the next year.
- Leveraging customer testimonials and case studies to build credibility.
- Investing in ongoing customer relationship management to further increase brand loyalty by 10%.
- Exploring partnerships and collaborations to expand the brand’s reach and market presence, targeting a 15% increase in market share over the next two years.
The Difference Between a Brand Report and a Brand Audit
Anyone familiar with running a brand audit might be unsure how this differs from a brand report.
Whilst both are tools used in brand management, they each serve a unique purpose.
A brand report typically provides an overview of a company’s brand identity and performance, focusing on key metrics such as brand awareness, market positioning, and customer sentiment.
It often includes quantitative data gathered from market research, customer surveys, and competitive analysis. This report aims to give stakeholders a snapshot of the brand’s current state and may offer recommendations for improvement.
On the other hand, a brand audit is a more in-depth analysis of a brand’s internal and external components. It delves into the brand’s history, values, messaging, visual identity, and overall consistency.
A brand audit also scrutinises the brand’s alignment with its target audience, market trends, and competitors, aiming to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This process involves a qualitative assessment and provides a deeper understanding of the brand’s essence and its growth potential.
While a brand report summarises data and suggests strategies, a brand audit offers a holistic perspective on the brand’s health and guides long-term brand development efforts. Essentially, the former is a snapshot, while the latter is a diagnostic tool for brand enhancement.
Still not sure how to discern one from the other? Not to worry, our next two points should help make the difference.
Brand Audits Can Be Handled Externally
Both are weighted the same in terms of importance, but not every marketer/marketing manager will be asked to pull together a brand audit. Sometimes, an external party steps in to gather the relevant data for you.
Why they do this comes down to how unbiased marketing folks can be when evaluating their own performance. Brand reports, on the other hand, are typically handled and shared internally.
That’s another one of the differences:
Brand audits apply to specific departments, whereas a brand report can be shared throughout the company.
Brand Reports Are More Common
Ask any marketing manager or gun-ho marketer which they do more – a brand report or a brand audit – and they’ll almost always say the former.
Circle Research found that 77% of marketers feel branding is a crucial factor in future growth. It’s an eye-opening statistic, one that explains perfectly why things like personalised billboards, social media campaigns, and email marketing are all promoting brands.
And with every effort comes a branding report that follows. Otherwise, how would you know to do the same method again? You’d just be spending money without any regard for growth if you never reported on it.
The Branding Report: How to Analyse Your Brand Performance
We’ve covered a lot in this post, enough for you to form reports of your own based on your own experiences in the branding department. Just remember to focus on the KPIs that align with your goals, as this is how you monitor performance effectively.
More and more businesses are understanding the power that branding has over long-term goals. It’s why creating effective branding-based reports are so important to ensure that all strengths are capitalised on and all weaknesses have solutions.
Branding reports and brand audits are both paramount in understanding your current positioning, plus the room for growth in your respective market.
Staying on top of branding will also ensure that you’re ahead of your competitors, as you’re constantly adapting to engage your target audience. Branding that stagnates will almost always have a negative impact on the business as a whole.
