“Is your marketing working?”
Every businessperson wants to truly gauge the impact of their marketing. And even in my capacity as a marketing agency CEO, I’ll admit that can be complicated.
But like you, I am a businessperson who needs to make investment resource decisions. So, I understand your desire to know the degree to which marketing is actually helping grow your business.
Two to the Point: Brand Awareness and Purchase Likelihood
In this series, I’m going to show how you can uncover two very simple ways to know whether or not marketing is helping your business grow:
- Brand awareness, sometimes known as “brand lift,” and
- Purchase likelihood.
Better yet, I’m going to include very intuitive visual examples of each below, so you can see with your own two eyes what marketing that makes an impact looks like.
Part I: Identifying Effective, Growing Brand Awareness
Quick definition: Brand awareness is the extent to which consumers are familiar with the distinctive qualities or image of a particular brand.
The simplest, most distinctive quality of a brand is its name itself. It’s unlikely for someone to find you — ie. buy from you — if they don’t know you.
And ultimately, a goal of many marketing campaigns is for a growing number of people to first know your name, and then seek you out by name…
…which is why growing brand awareness is often times direct and valuable proof that your marketing is working.
But how do you measure that? And what exactly does that actually look like?
Lincoln Digital Group is here to be your guide.
Brand Awareness Growth in Search Snapshots: Actual Client Results
A very intuitive way to gauge how many people know your brand name, and if they’re acting on it, is by viewing Google searches. You know, that thing we do every day to discover just about anything.
This screenshot is actual client results a free tool called Google Search Console. And the particular graph we’re looking at is searches over certain periods of time that only use the brand name.
The higher the solid purple line, the more the brand name has been used in Google searches.
Exhibit A – 16 Month Trend of Brand Search Growth
The reason we only review the brand name is because we’re seeking to isolate how much more known the brand name — and only the brand name in this case — has become.
Very simply, it’s how you assess the trend of brand awareness.
A move up and right to the right means brand awareness is growing. It means more people are searching using the brand name over time. And the more people that search using your brand name, the more likely your brand is to sell them something.
That’s what you want from your marketing, right?
But, of course, achieving it is very challenging.
It’s Not Easy to Grow and Capture Brand Awareness
Now that you know what growing brand awareness looks like for many modern businesses, you’re likely wondering how your business can achieve it.
The short answer is it takes a combination of eye-catching creative services and strong SEO performance to achieve the results you see in this post. It can be very challenging. You’re often competing with a number of other established websites and brands for visibility.
And if you aren’t working with a company that’s overcome those challenges before, you’ll likely be “stuck” for a long time.
But if you’re working with an experienced marketing agency like Lincoln Digital Group, it’s likely your brand’s story will be similar to the results you see in this post.
More Client Results Examples: Assessing Brand Awareness Growth Over Time for Relative Value
Here are more examples using the same free tool as was used above, and same “brand name only” viewpoint, that show you what growing brand awareness looks like.
In all cases, brand awareness has grown over time, as indicated by the more recent (top) figure in “impressions” table being greater than the previous (bottom) figure.
As you may imagine, a great way to use this tool to assess the impact of your marketing is to compare an active marketing time period to a time in which you were not marketing.
This will provide a clear idea for the relative value of “doing marketing” compared to not doing it.
Some additional actual client results are examples to the point below.
Exhibit B – 3 Month Comparison of Brand Search Growth
Exhibit C – 3 Month Comparison of Brand Search Growth
Exhibit D – 6 Month Comparison of Brand Search Growth
Visualizing and Assessing Marketing Impact Using these Steps
By this point, you’ve seen what effective, growing brand awareness looks like.
You know that the number of searches is a direct indicator of how frequently people are seeking your brand out.
You know a free tool you can use to measure whether those searches are growing.
And you know that if those brand name searches are growing, new value — aka “lift” — is being created for your brand name. You can visualize a difference being made.
More people know you, more people are searching you, and therefore, more people are likely to buy from you.
And isn’t that the advantage — the impact — that all businesses are looking for their marketing to create?
Finally, You can Answer “Is Your Marketing Working?” with Confidence
Check back soon for part two of this series on assessing the impact of your marketing. Or contact us for help getting started with marketing that makes a difference today.
