Once you’ve got the right tracking methods in place, measuring sales and conversions from your SME’s website can be pretty straightforward.

But measuring brand awareness- the extent to which customers are aware of and recognise your brand- tends to be a little more complicated. Unlike with conversions, there’s no one specific figure that correlates with your brand awareness.

That’s not to say it’s impossible to measure brand awareness. There are a number of ways you can keep track, and in today’s blog, we’ll be looking at some of the most effective ways you can measure the public’s awareness of your brand.

1. Social listening

Social listening means tracking mentions of your brand across social media. If your business is in its infancy, you may be able to do this manually, simply by searching for your brand or your services on Facebook, Instagram, X, Reddit, and other social media sites. But if you’re keen to conduct social listening on a larger scale, and on a regular basis, there are a number of tools available to help you do exactly that.

By monitoring social media mentions, you’ll be able to see how many people are talking about your brand online, whether the sentiment of those mentions is positive or negative, and which audiences are most vocal about your brand.

As well as tracking the number of mentions, you should also take reach into consideration. If a positive mention of your brand was posted by someone with a large social media following, for example, it’s more likely to increase the number of customers who are aware of your brand.

2. Run brand awareness surveys

It’s now easier than ever to run online surveys to measure brand awareness. You’ve probably received plenty of brand awareness ads yourself, across social media and on platforms like YouTube (‘Which of these brands are you familiar with?’). You can send your own similar surveys directly to your target audience via email.

You can come at these surveys from a number of angles. If this is your first survey and your email list is small, you might not get many people opening your email- and you’ll get even less actually completing the survey. But this is true even for large email lists. That’s why it’s crucial that your survey questions are as straightforward as possible, and require minimal thought. Every answer counts!

3. Track search volume

There are a wide range of SEO (search engine optimisation) tools available, such as SE Ranking and Moz, which allow you to track the monthly search volume for specific words or phrases. This data can help steer you towards the kinds of keywords you should be targeting in order to rank highly on SERP (search engine results pages), and maximise your website’s visibility. But you can also use it to track searches of your brand’s name, and the names of the products or services you’re providing. If search volumes are increasing for these search terms, it’s a decent indication that your brand awareness is on the rise.

4. Track your followers on social media

In recent years, many businesses have dramatically upped their brand awareness with effective social media campaigns. Of course, not many companies can pull off the likes of Duolingo’s unhinged TikToks, but by giving your brand some personality, engaging with consumers, and posting on a regular basis, your follower counts will ideally get higher over time.

Conclusion: 4 ways to measure brand awareness

There’s never been one surefire way to measure brand awareness, but the internet has made the process far more doable. Surveys can be done via email rather than in person, you can quickly gauge public sentiment of your brand through online reviews and mentions on social media; certainly takes a multi-pronged approach. But with the methods covered in today’s blog, you should be able to measure, and gradually increase, your brand awareness.

Need to build your brand awareness? We’re a creative company with an extensive range of services geared to brand building. Let's raise your profile together – get started now by messaging Graeme!