Brand building—or improving your brand’s reputation—is essential for sustainable growth and long-term success. It involves creating a distinctive brand voice and personality, running memorable marketing campaigns, and nurturing customer loyalty. But how can you tell if your efforts are paying off, especially as consumer perceptions keep shifting? That’s where brand tracking comes in.
By measuring your brand’s health over time, you can stay attuned to these changes and adjust your course accordingly. Here are the key metrics and methods for effective brand tracking.
What is brand tracking?
Brand tracking measures your brand’s value over time by analyzing key metrics like brand awareness, customer preferences, and brand usage. Consistently tracking your brand provides valuable insights into your business’s overall brand health, so you can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and identify shifts in customer sentiment, and stay aligned with your business goals.
Brand tracking vs. brand monitoring
Brand tracking and brand monitoring are both essential for understanding brand performance, but they differ in purpose and approach.
Brand tracking is a long-term process that measures key performance indicators (KPIs) like brand preference, brand awareness, and market share. Through surveys and other quantitative data, it identifies trends in customer satisfaction, helping you evaluate the effectiveness of your brand-building and marketing efforts.
Brand monitoring, on the other hand, is more immediate and reactive, relying on real-time observations about how your brand is discussed across social media, news outlets, and review platforms. It can help you gauge public reaction to what your business is doing.
In short, brand tracking measures your brand’s health over time, while brand monitoring identifies issues as they arise.
Key metrics for brand tracking
- Net Promoter Score
- Customer retention
- Brand preference
- Brand awareness
- Brand associations
- Market share
- Brand usage
To start brand tracking, decide how to measure success. Here are seven key brand tracking metrics to consider:
1. Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a popular metric for assessing customer loyalty and satisfaction. NPS is measured by asking existing customers: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or colleague?”
Customers fall into three groups based on their responses:
- Promotors: Those who answer 9 or 10 are loyal brand advocates.
- Passives: Those who score 7 or 8 are satisfied but not enthusiastic enough to actively promote your brand.
- Detractors: Those who respond with a 6 or lower are unenthusiastic about your brand—and the lower the score, the more likely they may be outright unhappy customers who could potentially damage your brand’s reputation.
To calculate NPS, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Since passives are neutral, don’t factor them in. Here’s the formula:
NPS = % of promoters − % of detractors
For example, if 45% are promoters and 10% are detractors, your NPS is 35.
A positive NPS score is generally considered good, as it means that the number of customers who would recommend your brand exceeds those who wouldn’t, but standards vary by industry.
2. Customer retention
Customer retention rate (CRR) measures how well you maintain relationships with your existing customers over time. High retention rates indicate strong brand loyalty, consistent customer satisfaction, and a higher potential for maximizing customer lifetime value (CLV)—the total revenue a customer generates during their relationship with your brand. Retaining customers is typically more cost-effective than acquiring new ones, making customer retention vital for sustainable growth and profitability.
Customer retention is typically tracked over specific periods—such as monthly, quarterly, or annually. The formula is:
CRR = [(Customers at the end of period − New customers acquired during period) / Customers at the start of period] × 100
For example, if you start with 100 customers, acquire 25 new ones, and end with 115, your CRR would be 90%.
CRR standards vary by industry but tend to be pretty low—around 30%—in ecommerce.
3. Brand preference
Brand preference is when customers repeatedly choose and remain committed to your brand over competitors offering similar products. It reflects the emotional connection, perceived value, and trust your customers have for your company. A high brand preference indicates that you’ve built a strong brand that resonates with your target audiences.
While not easily measured, brand preference can be estimated by surveying your target audiences and analyzing your business’s market share.
4. Brand awareness
Brand awareness measures how well potential customers recognize and recall your brand. Strong awareness keeps your business top-of-mind, increasing the likelihood they’ll choose your brand when it’s time to buy.
Brand awareness can be broken down into two key components: unaided awareness and aided awareness:
- Unaided awareness. Measures how often customers spontaneously recall your brand, such as when asked, “Which brand comes to mind for [insert product here]?” This type of brand recall reflects the success of your brand campaigns.
- Aided awareness. Measures recognition when customers are shown a list of brands, indicating familiarity rather than spontaneous recall.
Measure brand awareness through surveys, focus groups, and digital data analytics to track search trends and social media mentions.
5. Brand associations
Brand associations are the ideas and emotions that come to mind when customers link to your brand. These associations shape brand perception, relevance, and uniqueness compared to other brands. Positive associations—like reliability, luxury, or ties to a beloved celebrity or cause—can enhance your brand image.
Measuring brand association requires research—through surveys, interviews, or focus groups—to understand which attributes customers associate with your brand and whether they align with your intended identity. Sentiment analysis of online reviews, social media mentions, and customer feedback can also be telling.
6. Market share
Market share uses sales data to measure how your brand compares to other brands in the same industry or category. A high or growing market share can indicate strong overall brand health.
To calculate market share, take your brand’s total sales revenue or volume over a given period and divide it by the total industry sales over the same time frame. The formula is:
Market share = (Your brand’s sales / Total industry sales) × 100
For instance, if your sleep lamp company generates $3 million in sales in a quarter while the industry totals $75 million, your market share would be 4%.
7. Brand usage
Brand usage measures how often and how customers use your brand’s products or services. It reflects customer engagement, loyalty, and market penetration.
To measure brand usage, track purchase frequency of repeat customers and conduct customer surveys.
Methods for tracking your brand
There are numerous ways to track your brand, and it’s usually best to gather data from multiple sources for a complete view. Here are four brand tracking methods to measure the efficacy of your brand strategy:
1. Customer surveys
Customer surveys are a valuable part of a brand tracking strategy, offering direct insight into customer perceptions, satisfaction, and preferences. When writing a brand tracking survey, ask questions that yield data aligned with your key performance metrics.
Then, consider distribution methods. For example, if your aim is to gauge customer satisfaction and calculate your Net Promoter Score, you can survey your existing customers via email or on your website. To assess brand awareness, use a third-party service to reach a broader, more diverse consumer sample.
2. Online monitoring
Online monitoring plays a crucial role in brand monitoring and offers valuable insights for brand tracking. If you track brand mentions on social media, news outlets, and review platforms over time, you can identify trends in customer satisfaction and consumer perceptions—data you can then use to inform your broader brand strategies.
3. Website traffic
Tracking your website traffic can provide valuable insights into consumer behavior and engagement. Through data analysis of metrics such as page views, bounce rates, and time on the site, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer journey, identify pain points, and optimize interactions for brand growth.
4. Sales analytics
Use sales data to measure customer demand and brand performance. For example, you can measure brand usage by looking at how often people buy your product, how loyal they are, and how much they use it in their day-to-day lives. As an alternative approach, you can measure market share by comparing revenue against competitors.
Brand tracking FAQ
What is an example of brand tracking?
If an ecommerce company sends out a quarterly survey to customers to gauge customer satisfaction, brand associations, and brand preference, they’re doing a basic form of brand tracking
How do you track a brand?
To track your brand, measure key performance indicators like Net Promoter Score, brand awareness, or market share by gathering data through surveys, other forms of user engagement, and online monitoring tools.
What tools can you use to track a brand?
Shopify’s analytics tools provide data on website traffic, sales, marketing campaigns, and more. Additional brand tracking tools include Google Analytics for website traffic, Hootsuite and Brandwatch for social media monitoring, and SurveyMonkey or Typeform for customer surveys.
