Brand research: What is it & why is it important?

Brand research is essential if you want to find out your brand’s health and get a better understanding of how your customers perceive it. By conducting continuous brand research you will gain a competitive advantage and can adjust the positioning of your brand to attract more customers.

What is brand research?

Brand research measures how consumers perceive your brand. You will get to know your brand’s reputation, visibility in the marketplace and get a clear picture of how strong your brand is compared to your competitors. In other words, you gain valuable insights on your brand health and what you can do to make it even stronger.

With brand research you will get answers to questions like:

How is my brand performing?
What differentiates my brand from the competition?
What are the weaknesses and strengths of my brand?
How is my brand meeting customer needs?

Why is brand research important?

Too often marketers rely on their gut feeling when making strategic decisions for their brand. But would you want a pilot flying you into your destination at night and land the plane based purely on his or her gut feeling? No, did not think so. Having a gut feeling based on solid data is one thing, but flying blind is totally different. That is why pilots use radar and GPS data to land us safely. With brand research you get needed data to not only land your brand right but also a platform to lean on, when applying your gut feeling.

Brand research gives you the tools you need to develop a strong brand value. A strong brand has several business advantages:

You attract more customers
Consumers are willing to pay more
Higher ROI from marketing activities
Possibility to launch other products/services around your brand

Different methods of brand research

There are several different methods of conducting brand research. The most common data collection methods includes:

Online surveys

Online surveys are maybe the most straightforward way to collect data. It is simple, fast and allows you to find out what your customers think of your brand and products. When using online surveys you can test how your image resonates with your target audience. Using scales in the survey you will find out what the average score is for your brand among different demographic segments.

Interviews

When you want a deeper understanding of how your consumers perceive your brand, personal interviews are the way to go. By sampling a subset and asking them to describe and share opinions on different topics you will find out more than from online surveys, but at the cost of not being able to ask as many consumers. Interviews are a great way to explore topics, ideas and feelings.

Focus groups

Focus groups will give you qualitative insights of a brand in a similar way as personal interviews. The difference is that you ask a subset of your consumers to participate in a forum where a moderator leads the discussions. When using a focus group you can have participants representing all genders, age groups and interests.

Continuous leads the way

To get the best results from your brand research you have to do it continuously. Otherwise you will miss out on a lot of movements and always feel that you are trying to catch up. By constantly analysing the market you can react in real-time. The investment you make into continuous brand research allows you to focus on strengthening your brand instead of trying to protect it.

Markets change, consumers change, competitors change – change is a constant. That is why we recommend to all our clients that they continuously measure their brands so that these changes become an opportunity and not a liability. We base this on our experience in working with leading brands from around the world. Independent of products, services, markets and consumer segments they all have one thing in common – they know how to drive their growth using continuous brand research.

Your next step to a strong brand

If you want to know more about brand research and how your company can benefit from these insights, please do not hesitate to contact our brand experts. Let us help you maximise your sales by understanding what attracts customers!

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