Try this: Think of three ketchup brands. Does your list include Heinz? Could you think of two more? The food-processing mega brand has achieved universal awareness—they’re the dominant name associated with ketchup.
On a surface level, brand awareness seems like a self-explanatory subject—it’s the degree to which consumers know, or are aware of, your brand. It’s established through advertising and marketing campaigns over time.
Although the concept is simple, evaluating brand awareness can be tricky. The process involves setting goals, defining measurable key performance indicators (KPIs), and even circulating a brand awareness survey. This article will focus on one effective tactic—brand awareness surveys—and how to develop surveys to help clarify your brand awareness metrics.
A brand awareness survey is a questionnaire and market research tool designed to assess a brand’s reputation and renown. Conducting a brand awareness survey can reveal how familiar your target audience is with your brand, as well as any feelings or associations they may have.
Measuring brand awareness helps you evaluate your marketing efforts. Strong brand awareness suggests that your key messages are reaching the right people. Limited brand awareness might indicate the need for a strategy shift.
Brand awareness surveys often include multiple types of questions designed to evaluate different levels of brand awareness. Questions with a clear focus help brands generate detailed, actionable insights. Here are some of the most common brand awareness survey question categories:
Brand awareness surveys can generate a blend of quantitative and qualitative data. Open-ended questions generate qualitative feedback—the “why” behind customer perceptions. To process this feedback, brands compile survey responses, review suggestions, and look for themes. AI tools can speed up bulk response analysis and trend spotting.
To sift through a lot of information quickly, you can collect numerical responses and calculate a score for each question. Ranking questions, such as “On a scale of 1 to 5, how familiar are you with our products?” are a popular way to solicit a numerical answer. To analyze this data, simply calculate the average consumer response to each question.
Binary questions, such as yes or no questions, also lend themselves to quantifiable data, as you can convert these responses into a percentage for each category. Binary questions help calculate brand awareness metrics like brand recognition rate and brand preference rate.
The best audience for your brand awareness survey depends on your goals. Before you decide who to target, ask yourself what you hope to learn and consider what type of consumer holds relevant information. These are some potential target groups and use cases for brand awareness surveys:
Consider surveying your existing customers if you want to evaluate customer loyalty or awareness depth. This group already knows your brand and might be able to provide valuable insight about consumer perception. Surveying loyal customers can help businesses understand how well different aspects of their product strategy are working. A consumer packaged goods (CPG) company well-known for its dish soap, for example, might survey existing customers to see how many are aware that it also sells hand soap and dishwasher pods. Brands can use social media followers and email subscriber lists to disseminate current customer surveys.
Target market surveys evaluate how well your message is reaching and persuading your intended audience. These are potential customers—they’re part of your target audience, but haven’t tried your product yet. Surveying these customers is key to fine tuning your messaging and positioning so that you can reach them more effectively.
Connecting with your target market often involves targeted advertising. Use demographic information to target your ideal customers with paid ads on social media platforms or search engines. Third-party survey companies, like Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey, offer targeted survey services as well.
General population surveys measure current brand awareness. This group includes all consumers—even if they don’t fit within your target audience. Surveying the general population can help businesses develop a big-picture understanding of brand recognition and understand how they’re ranking compared to other brands. Broad advertising and third-party survey companies can help you reach the general population for brand surveys.
Once you’ve crafted your questions and selected your audience, it’s time to share your survey. Distribution is the process of getting your survey in front of the right audience and collecting their responses. A strong distribution strategy can help you get the most out of your brand awareness survey. Try these tips:
Survey incentives like freebies or sweepstakes can increase completion rates. Offering a reward provides motivation and shows customers that you appreciate their time. Survey tools like Gojiberry make it easy to provide custom incentives for survey participants.
Make sure that your survey displays properly on both mobile and desktop devices. A clunky design or illegible questions could lead to consumer drop off. Working with a survey platform that provides responsive design templates, like Zigpoll or UserLoop, can simplify this process.
Sharing your survey on several different channels, including social media, display ads, and promotional emails, can help attract a diverse test group. It also makes it easier for customers to engage with you from their preferred platform, rather than having to migrate from social media to email to give their feedback.
The most effective brand awareness survey questions are clear, concise, and targeted. Focusing on short and simple questions helps keep readers on the hook.
Design a clear target for each question to ensure that you get the information that you need. Here are some examples of brand awareness survey questions targeted for specific aspects of brand awareness:
Questions about recognition can include:
You could ask participants questions about your identity, like:
Questions related to your image may include:
Consider questions like these about recall:
To know how loyal your customers are, consider asking the following questions:
Brand awareness measurement involves surveying consumer groups. Brand awareness surveys can generate both qualitative data, such as feedback, and quantitative data, such as the percentage of respondents able to identify a logo.
Good brand awareness questions are reader-friendly and designed with specific KPIs in mind, but they don’t have to be complicated. A simple question like “How many of these five brand logos can you identify?” can generate quantitative data to help measure awareness.
Businesses can use owned channels, like email distribution lists and landing pages, or paid third-party platforms to distribute surveys. The best distribution technique depends on your target audience. Offering an incentive in exchange for participation, such as a discount code or sweepstakes entry, can help boost survey completion rates.
