How To Measure Brand Success (and ROI)
Measuring brand success isn’t just about tracking sales—it’s about understanding how your brand is perceived, recognized, and valued in the market. Strong branding drives customer loyalty, boosts recall, and ultimately impacts your bottom line. But how do you quantify something as intangible as brand success?
In this guide, we’ll break down the key metrics that help you measure brand success and calculate your return on investment (ROI), so you can make data-driven decisions that fuel long-term growth.
How To Measure Brand Success
To measure brand success, you’ll first need to define which quantitative areas of success matter most to you as a brand, and then track relevant metrics over time. For a comprehensive measurement of the success of your branbding efforts and brand campaigns, you can track metrics including:
- Brand awareness & recognition metrics
- Brand health & equity metrics
- Brand sentiment metrics
- Brand lift study results
- Branding ROI
Measuring key performance indicators in all of these areas provide a data-driven approach to measuring brand success, helping you refine strategies and maximize brand impact over time without worrying that your efforts are going to waste.
20 Key Metrics To Measure Brand Success
Brand health & equity metrics
Example NPS Survey Question — WPForms
Brand health and equity measure the overall strength and value of your brand in the marketplace. Here are some key metrics to help monitor your brand’s market position and long-term performance:
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): This metric measures customer loyalty and satisfaction by asking how likely they are to recommend your brand to others. A higher NPS indicates a strong base of brand advocates who can drive positive word-of-mouth and organic growth.
- Brand loyalty: This metric assesses the likelihood of customers repeatedly choosing your brand over competitors. Consistent loyalty signals that customers trust your brand and value your offerings, supporting sustained revenue over time.
- Average Transaction Value (ATV): Your Average Transaction Value or ATV tells you how much each customer is spending on average, and works particularly well for e-commerce brands. To measure your ATV, divide your Total Revenue by your Number of Transactions over a specific period of time.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): This metric estimates the total revenue a business can expect from a single customer account throughout their relationship. A higher CLV suggests that customers not only continue engaging with your brand but also contribute significant value over time.
- Market share: This metric tracks the proportion of the total market that your brand occupies relative to competitors. Monitoring market share over time helps you gauge your competitive positioning and informs strategies for market expansion.
- Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): This metric evaluates how satisfied customers are with your brand through surveys and feedback forms. A high CSAT score is a strong indicator of positive customer experiences and can lead to increased repeat business and referrals.
Example NPS Likert Scale Survey Question — Survey Sensum
Brand awareness & recognition metrics
Aided vs unaided brand recall – Segmanta
Brand recognition and awareness gauge how well consumers know and recall your brand’s name, logo, and messaging. Here are some key brand awareness metrics to track for your brand:
- Aided recall: Evaluate how many people recognize your brand when provided with cues. For instance, surveys can list several brands and ask, "Which of these brands have you heard of?"
- Unaided recall: Determine how many individuals can recall your brand without any prompts or hints, as this is a strong signifier of increased brand awareness. Survey tools can also support collecting this data from your target audience.
- Reach: Measure the total number of unique individuals exposed to your brand’s content. You can do this by analyzing data from your digital channels—for example, reviewing social media insights, website analytics, and ad platform reports to capture the full scope of your audience's exposure.
- Website traffic: Track the number of visitors to your website, which reflects interest and engagement. Do this by tracking detailed page event insights in Google Analytics or track ‘Clicks’ in Google Search Console for a detailed view of your brand's performance in web traffic.
- Brand impressions: Count the total number of times your brand’s content is displayed, regardless of interaction. This can be a good indicator of how far your brand’s message is being seen and can help gauge the overall visibility of your campaigns. You can track this using URL impressions in Google Search Console, or through ad impressions on any paid campaigns you may be running.
Where to find URL impressions in Google Search Console (GSC)
Brand sentiment metrics
Brand sentiment evaluates the tone of conversations about your brand across various channels, helping you gain a clearer view of your brand reputation. Here are some top brand sentiment metrics and how to measure them:
- Brand attributes: This metric tracks how well specific characteristics and brand values (e.g. quality, trustworthiness, innovation) are associated with your brand. Measure brand attributes through consumer surveys, sentiment analysis, and brand perception studies.
- Perceived quality: This indicates how consumers view the quality of your products or services compared to competitors. You can assess perceived quality by thoroughly reviewing customer reviews, surveys, and social media sentiment analysis.
- Unlinked mentions: This tracks instances where your brand is mentioned online without a direct link to your website. Monitor unlinked mentions using tools like Google Alerts, Brandwatch, or Mention to identify opportunities for engagement and link-building.
- Backlinks: You can track backlinks, referring pages and the text used to link to your website with tools like AHRefs. This measures the number and quality of external websites linking to your brand, which can impact both brand credibility and SEO.
Example of Backlinks & Referring Anchor Text in AHRefs
Brand Lift study metrics
Brand Lift measurement data helps you identify how specific campaigns affect your brand. Here are some key metrics you’ll want to include in your Brand Lift Studies to gauge brand campaign success:
- Ad recall: This measures how well consumers remember seeing your ads or marketing campaigns. It is typically assessed through post-campaign Brand Lift surveys, asking respondents if they recall seeing your brand’s ad within a specific timeframe.
- Brand awareness: This tracks any increase in consumer awareness resulting from the campaign. This might be measured through pre-campaign and post-campaign studies to compare the percentage of people who recognise your brand.
- Brand favourability: This evaluates shifts in how positively consumers perceive your brand after being exposed to the campaign, using survey responses to gauge changes in brand perception before and after a campaign.
- Purchase intent: Assess the likelihood that consumers will buy your products or services following interaction with marketing efforts through Brand Lift studies. Do this by tracking conversion rates from campaign-driven traffic to help you measure purchase intent.
- Message association: This checks how well consumers associate your ad’s message with your brand. You can track this through surveys by asking consumers which brand they believe the ad represents and analyzing response accuracy.
Example Brand Lift Studies — Gupta Media
Branding ROI
The ROI of branding is the return-on-investment created by branding campaigns in your business. It is calculated by deducting the amount spent on branding efforts from the overall revenue created by those campaigns.
You should take all of the above categories of brand success into consideration when calculating branding ROI, as the impact of brand campaigns can be far-reaching, and often seemingly intangible, but the results are most definitely there.
Closing Thoughts
By measuring factors like brand awareness, ROI and more, you can quantify the success of your branding efforts and brand campaigns. To transform your business into a successful brand, our full suite of branding services is the ideal solution.
From brand strategy to brand identity, storytelling and even brand activation, we’ll get you set for success, every step of the way.
Brief us today to get started
Quantifying Brand Success FAQs
What is brand awareness ROI?
Brand awareness ROI refers to the return-on-investment created by brand awareness campaigns in your business. Key performance indicators or metrics to track returns here could include improved aided and unaided recall data, boosted reach and impressions on digital channels and higher website traffic.
Identify sales from these acquisition channels and track conversion data to translate that into a revenue or monetary value over a period of time, then minus the amount spent on brand awareness campaigns to calculate your ROI.
Why are metrics important for measuring brand success?
Key metrics (brand awareness and recognition, brand equity, brand perception) help quantify brand success in order to be measured. They allow you to get a snapshot of how successful each aspect of your brand is, so you know where to place future branding investments.