According to new research, a large number of UK brands are finding it difficult to measure the impact of their branding.
The survey was carried out by Visual IQ, makers of cross channel marketing intelligence software. Over 150 brand marketers in large organisations (of 200 employees or more) were asked how easy they find it to measure and quantify branding performance.
The results, published as part of Visual IQ’s study – “Branding Measurement in Today’s Accountable World: A Tale of Two Marketers” – showed that 83% are finding measuring the impact of branding more challenging than that of direct response.
Just 20% of the UK marketing community were able to confidently rate their organisation as very good at measuring which combination of techniques, tactics and digital marketing channels produced the most positive effects on branding metrics. This is despite the fact that a massive 71% said that they believed branding metrics were crucial to measuring the success of a campaign.
KPIs and metrics – are they actually working?
What this research flags up quite clearly is that UK brands don’t appear to have much confidence in the key performance indicators they are using to measure the success of branding and digital marketing campaigns. If you can’t measure accurately, or interpret the data in any meaningful way, or perhaps you’re measuring the wrong things entirely – your brand has little chance of making any progress or identifying areas for improvement.
As for what could help to improve the situation for brand marketers, the survey again seems to suggest a solution. Around half of all the marketers working for UK companies said that they needed advanced measurement tools to help them make sense of the data they’re producing, while a further 37% admitted being unable to calculate a single engagement score metric.
This isn’t surprising, as measuring and analysing the impact of branding can be a very tricky and complicated feat to achieve. It’s all well and good having access to the data – which, thanks to ever advanced and powerful analytics tools – brand marketers are now inundated with, but it is a very different thing to make sense of it in any tangible way. Vanessa Tadier, Visual IQ’s European manager, explains:
“As branding initiatives don’t necessarily result in conversion, measuring their success has always been far more tricky than with direct response tactics, as it’s harder to link to real business outcomes”
“This study has made it clear that the industry has significant work to do in addressing the challenge of accurately measuring the impact of branding initiatives.”
How do you measure the success of branding campaigns? Do you simply launch a new campaign and hope for the best, or do you have clear KPIs you keep a close eye on? Do you think it’s even possible to measure and analyse the impact of branding in any meaningful way? Please feel free to share your thoughts.
