Brand Awareness Tracking
Vision One: one of the UK’s top-rated brand awareness research companies
Brand awareness, measured properly
What is brand awareness tracking?
Brand awareness tracking measures how many people know your brand, prompted and unprompted, and how that changes over time against competitors. Vision One runs brand awareness research for UK and global brands as part of brand tracking, so you can see whether marketing is building memory, not just impressions.
Our brand awareness metric, Mindshare, combines spontaneous and prompted awareness into one score. It is one of the eight metrics on the Brand Equity Wheel, and it highly correlates with purchasing.
Why is Mindshare so important?
It is the best measure of how immediately your brand springs to mind, and one of the best indicators of familiarity and interest. A brand that is recalled first in its category is on the shortlist before any comparison starts.
Mindshare and the availability heuristic
People judge a brand partly by how easily it comes to mind. Brands people recall most readily are generally the ones they prefer and use. Tracking brand awareness tells you whether your brand is winning that mental shortcut or losing it to a competitor.
Aided, unaided and top-of-mind awareness: what each tells you
Brand awareness is not a single number. Spontaneous (unaided) awareness, prompted (aided) awareness, top-of-mind awareness and brand recognition each answer a different question, and the gaps between them are where the findings are. Research also shows that awareness alone does not grow a brand: the most effective campaigns build awareness and interest together.
Mindshare: spontaneous and prompted awareness
Spontaneous awareness asks people to name brands in the category unprompted; the first brand named is top of mind. Prompted awareness shows a list and asks which they recognise. Mindshare combines both, so you see how front-of-mind your brand sits.
Brand recognition: logo and identity
How big is your awareness gap? Years of brand tracking show that logo recognition and brand awareness are different measures. Strong brands have a close fit between identity and name; a gap means people see your brand without connecting it to who you are.
Brand salience: awareness in context
Awareness is context-specific. It varies by category, market, region and buying occasion, so a national figure can hide a region where you are unknown or a segment where you lead. Tracking by segment shows where the next point of awareness is cheapest to win.
Why tracking brand awareness matters
- Shows whether campaigns build memory, not just reach: awareness that moves after a burst of media and holds afterwards
- Separates awareness from interest, so you know whether the next job is reach or relevance
- Finds the segments and regions where awareness is low and where the budget should go
- Benchmarks your awareness against competitors on the same questions, in the same wave
- Feeds BrandVision: Mindshare sits alongside Magnetism, Momentum and the Brand Equity Score
How do you measure brand awareness? The brand awareness survey
Brand awareness is measured by surveying your target market, not among your customers, so the people who have never heard of you are counted.
The questions are short, but the order and the sample decide whether the numbers mean anything. These are the five steps in every Vision One brand awareness tracker.
Ask the market, not your customers.
Define the market and the sample
Who should know you: category buyers, decision-makers, a region, an age group. The sample is drawn from that market and sized so the segments you need to report on are readable.
Ask in the right order
Start with spontaneous awareness (which brands come to mind), then top-of-mind (the first one named), then prompted awareness from a list, then recognition of the logo or identity. Asking prompted questions first would contaminate the unprompted answers.
Add the diagnostic questions
Interest, consideration and usage turn an awareness score into a brand funnel, and image statements show what people associate with the brand once they know it.
Set the frequency
Continuous tracking or quarterly waves for brands with ongoing media; a pre- and post-wave around a campaign; an annual benchmark for smaller brands. The questions and method stay identical from wave to wave.
Report and act
Results go into a brand awareness tracker dashboard with competitor and segment comparisons, trend lines and the funnel stage to fix first. Social listening adds the online conversation between waves.
“I’d really recommend this agency. From enquiring about our market research project they sought out to really understand our questions and needs. Results were delivered really quickly without compromising quality of research and delivery of result.”
(The Perfume Shop)
What does a brand awareness agency deliver?
Brand awareness companies vary in what they deliver. A good brand awareness agency designs the survey, runs the fieldwork, benchmarks the competitors and turns the scores into decisions. Vision One has done this for consumer and B2B brands for more than 25 years. Every brand awareness research project includes:
- Spontaneous, top-of-mind and prompted awareness, plus logo and identity recognition
- Competitor awareness on the same questions, in the same wave
- Awareness by segment: region, age, customer and non-customer, buyer type
- Mindshare and the brand funnel, so awareness is read with interest and consideration
- Campaign evaluation: pre- and post waves that show what the media bought
- A live dashboard, a written debrief and a presentation of what to do next
- ISO 20252:2012 accredited, MRS Company Partners, rated 9.4 out of 10 by UK research buyers
Brand tracking studies that include awareness start from £8,000, quoted fixed before work begins. A one-off brand awareness survey is priced on sample size and markets. Download the brand tracking guide for the questions, sample sizes and reporting to expect.
Brand awareness market research vs brand tracking: how they fit
Brand awareness market research answers one important question: how known is the brand today, by whom and against whom. Brand tracking asks it every wave, so you can see the direction and trajectory. Most clients start with a one-off awareness study and move to tracking once they have a baseline.
Brand tracking
Awareness, interest, consideration, usage and loyalty are measured in waves or continuously, with Mindshare, Magnetism and Momentum alongside.
Brand funnel
Awareness is the top of the funnel. The conversion from awareness to interest shows whether being known is turning into being wanted.
Brand health
Awareness is one of the eight metrics in brand health tracking. Read with Brand Love, Fame and NPS; it explains why awareness is or is not converting.
Read more on the psychology behind the numbers: brand awareness psychology.
Latest client testimonials
Allianz (Insurance and Asset Management)
Vision One were a pleasure to work with. I enjoyed the whole process start to finish, they managed my expectation perfectly and their level of service was outstanding and their insights were effective. I would recommend them to anyone.
Salcombe Gin (Alcoholic Drinks)
Vision One were excellent to work with throughout the process. They understood our brand and its needs and took on feedback to make changes where necessary. We’re very happy with the level of insight gained.
Silentnight (Beds, Mattresses and Sleep)
Vision One’s BrandVision has given us new and powerful insights – helping us understand our brand health and shape our strategic decisions going forward.
Vision One were an absolute pleasure to work with and I would highly recommend them to anyone looking for a strategic thinking market research agency. They had great client relations, they bought creative ideas to the table, and delivered on the strategic insight we needed.
I just want to say thank you so much for the brilliant presentation yesterday. The work you’ve done has really hit home, which will make a massive difference to our work. We’re really grateful!
Vision One delivered exactly what we wanted with no fuss or issues. Every step of the process was easy, hassle-free and the relationship always felt warm. I would recommend them to any charity or organisation wanting to conduct research.
Fantastic service. Will go the extra mile to accommodate your needs and fit within changing timelines and requirements.
Research case studies
A range of our brand and tracking research case studies
Recent Case Studies
Other Killer Brand Metrics to build Brand Awareness
Running brand awareness tracking surveys over time lets you spot trends and act quickly. But you’ll need to measure more than brand metrics if you want truly actionable research, so welcome to BrandVision.
Tab Contents
Welcome to BrandVision
Metrics to Turbocharge Your Strategy
BrandVision is our flexible brand evaluation system, fully customised to your requirements. From self-serve to fully managed, BrandVision offers tracking for brands of all shapes and sizes.
Brand Magnetism
Magnetism attracts Customers
Part of the Brand Funnel, Magnetism refers to the attraction your brand has with the target market.
There are two aspects to brand Magnetism. Firstly the strength of appeal and interest in the brand. Secondly, it is about the segments and groups interested in the brand. Understanding who and who isn’t interested in your brand are the first step in creating a strong marketing and brand strategy.
Brand Magnetism is the holy grail for many brands as it is often associated with some of the best and most iconic brands in history.
Brand Love
The Power of Love
The concept of Love in brand relationships has been receiving immense and escalating attention. It is considered by many experts as the essential ingredient for capitalising in today’s digital world.
Brand Love underpins the consumer-brand relationship. It’s not an emotional or fluffy metric but rather the holy trinity of brand metrics, combining three powerful metrics: Relevance, Need and Trust.
Evaluation of brand tracking data has taught us, time and time again, that Relevance is arguably the most important metric of all – and is highly correlated with consumer behaviour.
NPS Metric
The Recommended Metric
Net Promoter Score was initially developed in 2003 by Bain & Co to help companies earn customer loyalty and inspire employees,
NPS is an important part of consumer research for many companies as it is a measure used to gauge customer loyalty, satisfaction, and enthusiasm for a company
Further research carried out by Nielsen has supported the metric, confirming that word of mouth is the most influential element of consumers’ purchasing decisions.
Brand Momentum
Discover the power of Brand Momentum.
Momentum refers to the growth potential for your brand and its likely future trajectory. Momentum measures the extent to which your brand is seen to be growing or declining.
Momentum is a complex KPI and is driven by your marketing activity and spend, product availability, brand image and your brand proposition and positioning.
Brand Momentum is a better indicator of growth than virtually any other consumer metric. Its role is far more important than the highly regarded Net Promoter Score (NPS), because it is a better predictor of consumer behaviour than any other brand metric.
Brand Fame
What is Brand Fame?
Brand Fame (also known as brand leadership) is one of the key metrics that indicate whether or not your brand has a USP and is seen by consumers as a ‘Leader’, ‘Different’ or ‘Characterless’.
There are two very important aspects to Brand Fame: Uniqueness & Leadership, Brands that have neither of these attributes tend to struggle, with little to set them apart from their competitors.
A great example of this is people’s desire to own the Apple brand. The high levels of Fame (Distinctiveness and Leadership) correlate highly with Brand Love and Consumer Loyalty – which ultimately has helped drive Apple’s dominant position in the market.
Brand Health
8 Secrets to Brand Growth
The 8 Essential brand image metrics are:
- Ethical – Are you seen to be doing the right things?
- Brand Identity -Does your Brand identity have Clarity?
- Brand Noise – is your brand Grabbing people’s Attention?
- Newsworthy – Is your brand worth talking about?
- Outstanding – Do you offer exceptional Quality or Value?
- Variety – Is your brand flexible and have multiple uses or benefits?
- Accessible – Is your brand Readily Available and Convenient?
- On Trend – Is your brand Topical & Current?
Brand Emotion
Creating Strong Emotional Bonds
Branding is much more than just a brand name, logo or strap line. Successful branding is far deeper than that.
The best and strongest brands form an emotional relationship with their customers. We call this Emotional Branding, and along with Brand Love, these forms a pivotal part of our BrandVision approach and our Brand Equity Wheel.
Developed by Robert Plutchik the Wheel of Emotion helps to explain how emotions work.
FAQ’s about Vision One’s brand awareness & tracking research
Brand Momentum is a book by Tony Lewis author and CEO of Vision One, who introduces the story behind the new metric and reveals many of its hidden secrets, proving to marketers that it is the most powerful force.
Brand Awareness Tracking
Our consumer and B2B tracking surveys go well beyond the basics to truly help businesses build their brands successfully! Not only can you track Brand Health and key competitors, but we also cover areas such as media consumption, segmentation, and monitoring customer trends and market behaviours. Even specific advertising executions can be evaluated with our AdProbe methodology.
Tracking brand awareness and other key brand health metrics has been a mainstay of consumer marketing for generations; marketers and businesses are increasingly discovering the value of monitoring these vital metrics. Discover the full range of our UK and International business and consumer research tracker services.
The Heart of Your Business
At Vision One, we know that a well-designed awareness tracker should identify the changes that a business could make to improve its brand health. Tracking studies should sit at the heart of any business to help inform business decisions and strategy. However, from time to time, it is important to dig deeper, and this is where qualitative research comes in – to provide greater clarity and understanding.
Brand awareness tracking is a repeated survey among your target market that measures how many people know your brand, spontaneously and when prompted, and how that changes over time against competitors. It is usually run as part of brand tracking, with interest, consideration and usage questions alongside, so awareness can be read as the top of the brand funnel.
We don’tSpontaneous (unaided) awareness is the share of people who name your brand without any prompt when asked about the category. Prompted (aided) awareness is the share who recognise your brand from a list. Spontaneous awareness is the harder, more valuable measure; prompted awareness shows the ceiling. The first brand named is top-of-mind awareness.
Absolutely — because brand health only makes sense in context. We track your competitive set across the same KPIs, alloBy survey, among a representative sample of the market you want to be known in. Ask the spontaneous questions first, then prompted, then recognition, then the diagnostic questions on interest and usage. Repeat the same questions with the same method each wave, and benchmark the competitors in the same survey. Vision One combines the awareness measures into Mindshare.
Continuously or quarterly for brands with ongoing media spend, because awareness decays between bursts and you need to see the shape of that decay. A pre and post wave around a campaign shows what the media bought. For smaller brands, an annual benchmark is better than nothing, provided the method does not change.
There is no universal benchmark; awareness depends on the category, the market and how long the brand has existed. The useful comparisons are your own trend and the competitors measured in the same survey. A good score is one that is rising, converting into interest, and higher than the brands you compete with for the same buyers.
Usually one of three things: not enough reach in the market that matters, creative that does not carry the brand name so people remember the ad but not who it was for, or a brand identity that is not recognised as yours. The awareness questions, logo recognition and ad recall together show which one it is.
Organisations partner Yes. B2B brand awareness tracking surveys decision-makers and influencers in the buying centre rather than consumers, with samples drawn from business panels and customer lists. The questions are the same, the samples are smaller and the categories narrower, so we size the study to the segments you need to report on. Corporate reputation measures can be added.
| Feature | Vision One | Tracksuit |
|---|---|---|
| B2C | Yes | Yes |
| B2B | Yes | No |
| Customisation Level | High | Low |
| Niche Audiences | Yes | No |
| No. of Brands | 6-20 | c6 |
| Price | £8k+ | £15-25k |
| Ideal for | Full Indepth understanding & Benchmarking | Basic metrics and Benchmarking |
Brand tracking studies that include awareness start from £8,000, quoted fixed before work begins. A one-off brand awareness survey costs less than a tracker and is priced on sample size, the number of markets and the competitor set. Send us your category and markets and we will scope it.
Online surveys for the fieldwork, our BrandVision framework for the metrics and a live dashboard for reporting, with social listening added between waves. Off-the-shelf brand awareness tools track a fixed set of questions; a tailored study lets you define the market, the competitors and the segments, which is where the useful answers sit.
Yes. Research training and consultancy is part of our service: we run sessions for marketing teams on how awareness, Mindshare, sentiment and the brand funnel are measured, how to read a tracker and how to brief one. It is often added to the debrief of a first wave so the team can act on the results.
Need the insights to make smarter, more confident decisions?
Get in touch for a fast, tailored proposal,
or email us at mail@visionone.co.uk
or call us on 0203 693 3150
Powering Business Decisions
