Brand Health Measurement: Developing Your Brand’s Core Strength

Performance marketing KPIs get a lot of attention these days, and that’s understandable. But, if that’s all you’re looking at, you might remind us of the guy at the gym who only works on his biceps. Real strength is core strength, and the right way to improve it is through brand health tracking.

1. Strong brands = efficient sales

A brand with core strength creates many benefits: premium pricing power, a loyal cohort of repeat customers, strength in retail partnerships, and more. A consistent finding in our Marketing Effectiveness work is that a strong brand can command premium pricing, withstand competitive pressure, and deliver efficient growth. While the way brands and consumers interact each other is certainly changing, the benefits of strong brand will remain constant.

2. Consumers establish personal relationships with brands

For modern consumers with nearly unlimited choice, brand preference is influenced by elements beyond the product or service. Today, a brand may represent personal topics like social values and politics in more personal relationships with consumers. This is a great opportunity for brands – but it also makes them more susceptible to reputational threats. In the social media age, where one tweet can erase millions of dollars from an established brand’s equity, it’s critical to continuously measure a brand’s health.

3. Challengers are threatening established brands on more fronts and at a faster pace

Established brands that have been on shelves for decades, or even centuries, are now forced to adapt to ecommerce. Adding to the complexity is the rise of private label competitors, delivery services, and third-party sellers. Technology enables brands to be created at an unprecedented speed – crowdfunding campaigns, easier access to manufacturing and direct to consumer distribution have reduced barriers to enter almost every product category. A name drop from the right social media influencer can catapult awareness to millions of followers.

In this environment, both established brands and the challengers that are looking to unseat them need to cultivate the health of their brands.

4. Choosing the right brand-building media mix

The media landscape today is a beast – aptly described as a “spaghetti bowl” by one of our clients – and more dollars are being allocated to performance channels that are unproven for brand-building. These changes in marketing channels and allocation of marketing spend will have a profound impact on a brands’ reputation. Smart marketers are incorporating metrics that allow them to measure the effect that their media mix has on brand health.

Is it time for a brand health check-up?

There are many reasons that brand health is more critical than ever as challenger and established brands alike navigate a new business environment that is unfolding at an incredible speed. Maintaining a healthy brand requires reliable measurement tools to track important brand KPIs.

We’ve created this brand tracking assessment to help you determine if you’ve got the right tools in place.