How to Track Brand Awareness Campaign Impact (And Get Leadership Buy-in)
November 28, 2024
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5 mins
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Last week, while searching for a body wash, I vaguely remembered seeing an influencer post about Dove’s body scrubs. Keen to try something new, I ordered the product.
I was thinking about this tiny purchase (a lot) while writing this article. I went on a hunting spree and found multiple posts recommending this scrub in the influencer’s feed.
The catch? There was no particular discount code or UTM link associated with their posts. It was a series of brand awareness posts. No marketer on Dove’s team could attribute my zig-zag purchase to the influencer.
Tracking the impact of brand awareness campaigns is one of the trickiest jobs on your to-do list. This article will help you understand how you can do that better.
What metrics should you monitor to track the success of brand awareness campaigns?
Performance campaigns and brand awareness campaigns have different DNA. You can’t measure the impact of brand awareness campaigns by direct conversions because that’s not their primary goal. In our survey, most marketers said they use visibility metrics like engagement, reach, likes, and clicks to measure their brand awareness campaigns.
Reach-related metrics are a snug fit for brand awareness campaigns because they’re tailored to the goal: you want more and more people to know about your company & its products. As an anonymous marketer in our survey explains:
“For brand awareness initiatives, the focus is typically on increasing visibility, reaching a larger audience, and building a strong, recognizable brand presence. The goal is more about long-term engagement and creating a connection with the audience.”
While engagement metrics are a straightforward way to measure brand awareness campaigns, also keep tabs on other metrics like website conversions. A customer’s journey is rarely linear, so keeping your eyes peeled for any proof of increased positive brand sentiment is a good sign that your brand awareness campaign is performing well.
For example, is there a sudden uptick in your brand’s Google searches, social media mentions, and (dare I say) even a specific product’s orders? Track all of this to accurately measure the impact of your brand awareness campaign. Influencer marketing coordinator, Fernanda Marques, shares more ideas to derive the complete picture:
I monitor brand sentiment through social listening tools to assess how the audience is reacting to the content, as well as any increase in brand mentions or conversations online. Surveys or polls can also provide insight into changes in brand recognition or perception pre- and post-campaign.
Anna-Maria Klappenbach, Community & Brand Marketing Lead at Aumio, also explains how she measured the impact of one of her brand awareness campaigns using a campaign-specific metric:
We offered free fairy tales in our app and our campaign was mostly about those. We measured any uplift in those stories being opened by our users.
But just because you focus on reach-related metrics to measure success doesn’t mean you shouldn’t track every metric possible. Nycole Hampton elaborates:
You should track every available metric regardless of goal. That way you can understand what they did throughout the funnel and any potential ways to work with them in the future. Just because your goal is awareness doesn't mean you don't care if they're amazing converters or traffic drivers.
So, track as many metrics as possible but measure the success using reach-related and campaign-specific metrics.
Measure the impact of repurposed influencer content to examine additional data points
If you’re getting usage rights to the influencer content and putting paid spend behind it, calculate how those ads are performing. If you repurpose the influencer content you get from brand awareness campaigns, part of any impact they generate can be traced back to your campaign’s ROI.
For example, Anna-Maria Klappenbach, Community & Brand Marketing Lead at Aumio, explains how she ran a brand awareness campaign for Mental Health Awareness Day and repurposed the influencer content:
We asked a handful of creators to talk about mental health in children and asked them to post a sticker to collect personal experiences from their audience. A while later, we took those answers and (anonymously) turned them into social media posts – where we had identified the most common themes and some techniques to meet those issues or challenges.
She continues to explain how she tracked the impact of this campaign:
The influencers then shared that post in their stories. We checked engagement of our social media posts, reach, and new followers.
Track every customer touchpoint for your long-term influencer partners to get more accurate metrics
You need to add more layers to your tracking method if you’re doing long-term partnerships with the same creators for brand awareness campaigns. As your brand awareness campaigns mature, you need more accurate methods to measure attribution.
For instance, you might notice that an influencer’s single post drives website visits for over two months while another creator helps you increase your newsletter subscribers. These insights can help you tailor your future collaborations. Influencer marketing specialist, Mark Dandy, explains:
The lead up process – how you're tracking every touch point that influencers have had with their audience, and then how they engage with you through ecommerce or email – will allow you to optimize everything.
He continues to share an example of how you can use these insights:
So, maybe the first email you'd send to that customer features other imagery of the same influencer wearing different clothing. This way, you've not only got brand recognition, but also influencer recognition.
The above methods are simple, but not straightforward. Try to track every single customer touchpoint when an influencer posts about you.
- Do you suddenly see a boost in search results every time a creator shares content about your products?
- Does that surge continue for a while?
- Does it increase even more if you add an influencer’s image on your product pages?
Do this examination for repeated partnerships and you’ll begin to see patterns emerge – capitalize on them to increase your ROI from brand awareness campaigns.
Having this extensive influencer marketing reporting will also increase your credibility with stakeholders.
How can you track the long-term impact of your brand awareness campaigns?
Brand awareness campaigns often get nourished by time. You repeatedly partner with a brand ambassador, and people start associating you with them, building an inherent association and trust. Or someone stumbles on a three year old evergreen YouTube video mentioning your brand, which leads to a new potential lead.
How can you measure the silent impact of brand awareness? Here are some ideas:
1: Post purchase surveys
A lead might need to be exposed to your brand awareness campaigns multiple times before they become a customer. Asking your buyers where they first heard about you can help you understand the scale of customers you’re acquiring via brand initiatives.
To track this, add a “How did you hear about us?” question in your post purchase surveys. Make “via an influencer” a dropdown option to improve the response rate. Give the choice to add the influencer’s name, too.
2: Track trends in brand sentiment
After running a few brand ambassador campaigns, do you monitor an uplift in positive brand sentiment? Are people leaving more positive reviews? Do you get more mentions on social media organically? Social listening tools can come handy here.
Monitoring these trends can help you understand how brand initiatives change your company’s market perception.
3: Examine if your performance campaigns are getting better results
No influencer campaign works in a silo – whether it’s a brand initiative or a performance campaign. Do you notice that your performance campaigns are getting better conversions (despite little changes) after running a few brand awareness campaigns? If yes, it might be a sign that your brand initiatives are holding the ladder down for your performance campaigns.
For this reason, Anna also suggests combining your brand awareness and performance campaigns:
Combine campaigns. Not all campaigns are ROI positive right away anyway. Use a select number of influencers that kick off with a brand awareness post and follow it up with a performance campaign. Chances are you’ll actually increase sales.
How to get leadership buy-in for brand awareness campaigns?
One of the biggest problems you might face with tracking brand awareness campaigns is presenting the impact to leadership. Here are four tips to make that job easier:
1: Run gifting campaigns to minimize the costs of brand awareness campaigns
If you and/or the stakeholders are hesitant to back brand awareness campaigns with a financial investment, it’s best to test the waters with a cost-effective influencer gifting campaign. Gifting campaigns were the most popular type of collaboration for brand awareness initiatives in our survey, too.
Gifting is easier to get buy-in for because:
- It only costs your COGS – which is ideal unless you’re marketing expensive products
- It’s easier to scale once you nail down the systems
- It’s low-risk if you vet influencer profiles properly
Cheyanne Pettyjohn, Director of Influencer Marketing at Rookie Wellness, also says it’s a good choice for beginners to ease into brand awareness campaigns:
I would recommend starting with gifted brand awareness campaigns. So many creators make their name off of "haul" videos, and would be open to receiving and promoting products for free if they like it. Work out a budget based on gifting products to get your feet wet before diving into paid collaborations.
When you’re seeing success, you can also use gifting campaigns to market your unique products that need a little push. For example, if you market a slow mover product and see an increase in its product page visits or conversions, you can attribute it to your gifting campaign. Moving a bottom performer can help you get more endorsement from leadership, too.
2: Create an omnichannel strategy to present a holistic picture
Creating an omnichannel strategy will extend the shelf life of your brand awareness campaigns and also allow you to present a more holistic strategy to your leaders. Nycole also says measuring in a silo gives you an incomplete picture of your awareness campaign:
Influencer metrics cannot be in a silo to prove true value. You need to plug into your broader marketing metrics and compare influencer results against other marketing channels. This will help you understand what is succeeding and why.
The reach you get from brand awareness campaigns is valuable. But all that effort goes to waste if that reach is confined to social media.
- Do you ensure that your website has an amazing experience that nudges a buyer’s journey in the right direction?
- Do you ensure that the reach you get is relevant by selecting the right influencer partners who resonate with your ideal customer profile?
- Do you have brand awareness campaigns for middle of the funnel customers who know of your brand but need more education or exposure to buy?
Kat LaFata, Founder of NY&Bagles, says it best:
Make sure that once the reach is achieved, there's an omnichannel strategy to keep those people seeing your brand and eventually converting! Go for reach, but also make sure the reach is relevant.
When you have this data and an omnichannel strategy, you can present it to stakeholders to add more context to your reports. Instead of saying, “We reached 10k people via this brand awareness campaign,” you can emphasize, “We reached 10k of our ICP, 30% of whom also signed up for our newsletter, increasing our cross-channel touchpoints.”
3: Schedule brand awareness campaigns during the off-season
Most businesses have parts of the year that are off-season. This is the time you can persuade leaders to get the green light for brand awareness campaigns. Anna from Aumio explains how this can help you stay top of mind for potential buyers:
Identify which months or periods of the year are off-season for you. Focus on brand awareness in those months – tell a story people will remember. So when buyers hear about your product next with a great discount, they’re ready to buy.
Sandwiching your brand awareness campaigns after an aggressive sales period might also help you get backing from management. Look at the big picture of the whole year and sprinkle brand initiatives when there’s a breather in performance campaigns. Anna explains how she does it at Aumio:
After an aggressive sales period, we turn down the volume of campaigns and the budget. That budget is more for brand awareness campaigns – where the code redemptions (our main KPI) don’t matter as much. However, we’re also not burning cash because we’ve lowered the volume anyway.
This also fits well with Andreea Moise’s advice to not go big with awareness campaigns from the beginning. You can also emphasize how the influencer content you get from awareness campaigns will be valuable once you repurpose it to stakeholders:
The easiest way to get buy-in for awareness is not to go big right from the start and do a mix of both. Have influencers who sell and are great at that and have influencers who reach your audience to keep you top of mind. You can license the awareness content for whitelisting and UGC, too.
4: Understand your leadership’s concerns
If you’re struggling to get a go-ahead for brand awareness campaigns, it’s best to understand why. Are stakeholders worried about burning money? Can you convince them you aren’t losing any? Knowing the root cause of hesitancy can help you nip the objections in the bud.
Anna expands:
If leadership doesn't let you run brand campaigns, try to find out why. What are their concerns? Do they have data to back their assumption up? If you work in influencer marketing, you’re probably great at negotiating. See what else you can do to meet in the middle.
Even with all the tracking models, brand awareness creates a silent, long-term impact
Even the fanciest multi-attribution models can’t 100% accurately measure the impact of a brand awareness campaign. Customer journeys are a messy graph – no one and no tool can track the effect of every little thing.
But brand initiatives are one of those things that work like a 24*7 assistant in the background. Silently and slowly, brand awareness campaigns can help you get more brand visibility and even nudge more conversions in your performance campaigns.
Want to learn more about how other marketers run brand awareness campaigns? Check the results from our survey.
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