Brand Trackers: What and Why You Need Them
In this article, we will discuss what brand trackers are, why you need them, and how to get started with brand tracking.
What Is a Brand Tracker?
Brand Tracking is the continuous measurement of brand health that empowers companies to make better decisions.
You’ve probably heard the term “brand tracking” before, but what does it actually mean? Brand tracking is the process of monitoring specific key metrics tied to a brand’s health and performance over time. By tracking progress, brands can better understand how they are perceived by consumers and take these analytics to make informed business decisions.
What is a Brand Tracking Survey?
A brand tracker is a type of market research used to measure brand awareness and analyze brand health against competitors. A brand tracker continuously measures brand perception, brand health, customer loyalty, and brand awareness metrics. Ultimately brand tracking helps companies for a stronger brand strategy and deliver greater ROI on marketing spending. This type of research essentially tracks consumer sentiment and the pulse of a brand.
Traditional brand tracking is slow, expensive, and overcomplicated. Many times marketers or insights professionals brands, also known as end-clients, don’t have direct access to their data. Now, many leading companies require a more frequent and dynamic brand-tracking solution.
By using a real-time solution like PureSpectrum, you’re able to keep a continuous pulse on your brand, competitors, and industry trends. Data can be viewed anytime in dashboards and exported for use in reports and presentations. These real-time insights enable brands to maintain a competitive edge and make the most informed decisions possible.
Is Brand Tracking Qualitative or Quantitative?
Brand tracking is typically collected using a quantitative research survey. However, it can provide qualitative and quantitative responses from customers and target markets. Trackers are essentially surveys that ask consumers various questions to measure familiarity, perception, and purchase intent toward a brand and its competitors. The responses are then analyzed to provide insight into a brand’s performance and general health.
Why Is Brand Tracking So Important?
In today’s world, it seems like every industry is fast-moving, especially with world events like COVID-19 and its different variants. Frequent brand tracking is very helpful in identifying and predicting market changes and social media trends. It is more crucial than ever to gather intelligence or data as quickly as possible to be able to make the best decisions possible.
“Surveying with regular cadence is key to monitoring your brand’s health, studying consumers, and getting feedback quickly. Regularly collecting important analytics helps a brand pivot before sales decrease.” – Brynn Gasparino, Senior Insights Account Manager
An advantage of brand monitoring is that trackers provide a quicker feedback loop than sales data. If a company or brand is spending a lot of budget on a marketing campaign, they could judge its effectiveness on sales data, but usually, they won’t get that data back in any sense of real-time. With a brand tracker, companies can get a sense of where they’re positioned in the market and analyze real-time updates on their marketing strategy and efforts.
How Do You Create a Brand Tracking Study?
Are you looking to start measuring your brand’s health and performance? You will need research and planning before you can launch a tracker. The first questions you need to answer are:
- Who makes up the key segments you want to measure? Where do they live? How old are they? What other demographic information is important to collect?
- Who’s your competitive set aka other brands that you want to measure your own performance against? You will need to make a list of competitors and/or products.
- What marketing assets do I want to test? You and your team should assess what marketing initiatives can be measured and analyzed throughout the year.
- Who will be using this data internally? Knowing this can help form all the questions and the outputs that colleagues can digest. If you don’t know how to share data or articulate metrics with the rest of the organization, your research won’t carry as much weight or have as much analytical value.
“Don’t be afraid to get started with brand monitoring. Setting up a brand tracker isn’t hard. Companies, especially PureSpectrum, will offer a lot of consultative advice and probably have the best practices already figured out to help you.” –Nick Teckman, VP, Research and Insights
Once you have aligned your performance KPIs and key metrics, you are ready to start a brand tracking study. Next, you will need these three essential components:
- Software to program the survey on
- A panel of respondents to take the survey
- Survey questions that need to be answered
What Are the Advantages of Working with PureSpectrum for Brand Tracking?
PureSpectrum combines a quality first sample marketplace with an easy-to-use insights platform, all supported by a professional services team of seasoned market researchers. These brand tracking tools allow anyone to program studies, quickly source respondents within a global marketplace, and analyze data on a single dashboard.
We at PureSpectrum know that your time is valuable and want to ensure you get the most out of your research. That’s why our world-class support team offers a flexible support model. Our professional services group not only offers help designing questions but can also provide advanced analysis after completing fieldwork.
Recently awarded Market Research Supplier of the Year, the PureSpectrum Marketplace is equipped with PureScore™, the industry’s leading respondent-level scoring system. The PureSpectrum Marketplace currently fields in 60+ countries with targeting capabilities for consumer, B2B, and healthcare research.
“Bad data impacts more than just business decisions; it also leads to time lost and money wasted. With PureScore™, brands can trust that data they are getting matches actual consumer sentiments.” –Mike Wilner, VP of Insight Sales
Having a tracker is essential for understanding how your customers interact with your brand. Not only does it give insights into customer behavior, but it also allows brands to track marketing efforts and quantify their effectiveness. PureSpectrum offers reliable and easy-to-use tools and solutions.
Ready to get started? Download our Top 10 Brand KPIs You Should Be Tracking & Why