How to Measure the ROI of Brand Awareness
ROI is return on investment. Which means did the money and time spent on building your brand awareness – fill your calendar with new clients or boost your sales?
- Did you get new visits to your website?
- Did you get new followers on social?
- More importantly, did you book a new client or sell to a new customer?
In our previous volumes, we established the framework for building a market identity and the architectural blueprint for a brand program.
However, for many business owners or bosses, one looming question remains
How do I justify the spend?
The common misconception is that brand awareness is a “soft” metric that is too difficult to measure.
In reality, in an era of big data and sophisticated tracking, brand awareness is a profit center that can be valued with precision.
The Engagement Score Card: Valuing Anticipated Actions
While a direct sale or booking is the ultimate goal, it is rarely the first step.
To understand the true return on your investment, you must develop an Engagement Score Card. This allows you to assign a specific dollar value to the “anticipated actions” your potential clients takes before they buy/book.
List & Rank Actions
Identify every touchpoint a customer has with your brand – social media, when they see your work car, website, google, just to name a few options.
Model Behaviour
Analyse your existing sale path trends.
If you know that 10% of people who follow you on Instagram become clients, you can work out how much on average 1 client brings to your business.
Allowing you to determine the dollar amount each Instagram follower creates for your business.
Track Consideration
Consideration means when a customer has a need, they are thinking of your brand. Ways you can track consideration is:
- How many likes on your social posts do you get from the same person before they follow you?
- How many new people came to your website, but didn’t make a booking? Did they come back?
The 3-step ROI Framework
To measure the success of your program, follow this logical progression from initial contact to final revenue, following these three steps
Step 1
Awareness Equals Consideration
You have high brand awareness when someone has a need and they think of your business to be the one that fixes that need.
The thing you need to work out is how many other brands do they think off too and how do you get to the top of the list?
Step 2
Consideration Drives Conversion
Once they’re thinking of your brand, when they need what you’re offering.
You have captured their attention through consistent, relevant messaging.
Now will they act how you want them to?
Step 3
Conversions Equal Sales and Revenue
Every completed booking, enquiry, or sale goes directly to your bottom line.
Closing the loop on your initial marketing spend and growing your business.
The Results: Conversion and Growth
When your marketing activities work together seamlessly, you move from acquiring strangers to building an existing customer base.
This is where the ROI of brand awareness truly starts to be noticed.
As I often remind my clients, an existing customer is your lowest-cost acquisition channel. When you deliver the value you promised, when they found your brand, those customers will become advocates who feed back into Step 1 of the cycle.
Test & Learn
The secret to a high-performing brand is to never stop optimizing.
Monitor your how your new customers are finding you. What are more people interacting with – your social post or google ad?
Remember: Brand awareness is a long-tail tactic, it takes time to see results.
Monitor your engagement measures, and when your calendar starts booking up, you’ll know your program is working and you can then keep doing more of what works – but better, every time.