When we surveyed our audience last summer, 100% of the recipients who took our survey said that one of their main pain points running a small business is brand awareness.
With such a high percentage of small business owners struggling with brand awareness, we assumed that there would be vast resources for topics such as brand awareness metrics, tips, and suggestions. However, when we researched this topic further, we noticed much of the content surrounding brand awareness was vague and unhelpful.
So we wanted to create a comprehensive guide to understand the key metrics every small business owner should be tracking. Understanding these brand awareness metrics will help you make better content and copy surrounding your brand and help you figure out areas you can improve upon.
Why Tracking Your Brand Awareness Metrics Is Important
Every business grows in different ways; what works for one brand may not work for another. Because of this, truly understanding your insights and knowing how to make adjustments based on those brand awareness metrics is essential for your brand growth.
For example, if your follower count on social media is staying steady, but your engagement rate is increasing, what does this mean? Or, if the majority of your web traffic comes from one specific platform or medium, what’s the reason?
Knowing these two points can help you grow your digital presence and overcome marketing and brand awareness obstacles other small business owners may need to hire outside help for. While professional help is always recommended, not even budget can accommodate for that resource.
So let’s show you the six key brand awareness metrics we suggest you research, and what they mean to your business.
Metrics to Track
Web Traffic Breakdown
Your most vital metric to track will be your traffic breakdown. This metric is available in your Wix Dashboard or Google Analytics, and can show you exactly where your traffic is coming from and what days are best. You will also be able to see spikes of traffic is coming from specific platforms. If you ran ads on multiple platforms and noticed a significant spike from one, in particular, this is a good indication that this platform is best for your target audience.
Another reason traffic is the top metric to track is because you can directly see if your SEO and other marketing efforts are working. While these changes may take a few months to start showing, your web traffic breakdown will be the best brand awareness metric to look into to determine if these strategies are worth continuing.
Backlinks
Before we get started, we wanted to define what a backlink is and why it is so important. A backlink is simply a link back to your site from another website. These backlinks are broken down into two different types depending on the quality of the platform linking to you; Dofollow backlinks and nofollow. Dofollow links are a way to pass on authority to a website, while a nofollow link does not.
Types of nofollow links include:
Blog comments
Social media
Links in forum posts
Specific blogs and news sites (like the Huffington Post)
Links in press releases
In a nutshell, these types of links have no authority on the internet, and therefore Google does not consider them reliable sources of information.
With this in mind, the two backlink metrics to track for brand awareness are the amount of dofollow links and the amount of low-quality (nofollow) links.
When you know where your dofollow, or high-quality, backlinks are coming from, you can reach out and pitch collaborations together. These collaborations not only increase the amount of dofollow links to your website, but they can also help you get in front of a new audience. This, in turn, will increase your brand awareness.
It will also help to track this metric if you hire an SEO consultant or team. If your dofollow links do not increase after a period of time (at least three months), this may be an indication that their current SEO strategy is not working.
Ranked Keywords
Keywords are the terms that your audience finds your content and website through. For example, if you are an Atlanta-based photographer, your keywords might include “Atlanta photography” or “photographer in Atlanta.”
Not only could knowing these keywords help you create more content, but it also gives you a peek into which competitors your audience could also be considering. Other brands that rank for those similar keywords should be researched to position yourself as the better choice.
To find these keywords for free, go to www.ubersuggest.com and type in your website.
Once your results have pulled up, you can click on the “Organic Keywords” link, and you will then see a list of the keywords you are currently ranking for, as well as the volume and search engine position for that keyword.
Engagement Rate
This brand awareness metric is going to be tracked from your main social media sites. Engagement rates are metrics that track how involved your audience is in regard to your content. People who spend time interacting with videos, updates, and posts are more likely to convert into loyal customers.
If your engagement rate is between 3.5-5%, then you have a good engagement rate! This means that overall, your audience is enjoying your content.
An engagement rate below 3.5% indicates that your content is not resonating with your audience, decreasing your chances of it being shared and tagged by your audience. If this is the case, take a look at your content on a piece by piece level, and check which types did best and which did worst. These insights will help you create better content and phase out the content your audience doesn’t enjoy.
Conversion Rate
While your conversion rate may not be an obvious brand awareness metric to track, it can help you understand where your audience is dropping out along the customer journey. Assuming there is no technical difficulty causing audiences to not follow through with a purchase, a low conversion rate can indicate a number of copy and content issues.
Maybe your copy could use some work, an offer you’ve made wasn’t worth the purchase or download, or your ads are different than your landing page. Whatever the reason may be, understanding why your conversion rates are low (or high) can increase your organic brand awareness by creating loyal customers.
Followers
While followers are often considered a vanity metric by marketing experts, it’s still the most concrete way to determine if your brand awareness increases. Your follower number is almost always a direct measurement of how successful your other marketing efforts have been.
Assuming there are no spam or bot accounts in your follower list, you will also get a better understanding of if your content and marketing are hitting the right demographic. If your followers are the wrong type of people for your product or service, it’s time you take a look at your content and figure out why.
If you notice your accounts are growing rapidly, that is a sign your content is doing its job, and your audience is responding to your strategy.
Conclusion
Not only can tracking your metrics help you understand which marketing strategies are working best for you, but it can also help you develop a better understanding of your audience.
At the end of the day, people want to buy and support brands they can relate to and that they care about. If you’re not willing to create a community around your brand, then your brand awareness will never be where you want it to be.
One of the best ways to do this is through storytelling design. Our graphic designers are educated and excel at creating content designed to tell your brand’s story and help give your audience the experience they desire.
If you’re in need of a graphic designer to create great content for your brand, give us a call at the button below, and let’s set up a free consultation.
Kellyann Doyle is a Content Marketing Writer at Zoek, an SEO, Web Design, and Digital Marketing Agency that assists small and medium-sized businesses with their online footprint. She earned her Bachelor's Degree in 2013 from the University of Houston with a Major in Communications and a Minor in Marketing and has been working in the Digital Marketing world ever since. When not working, you can find Kellyann trying new recipes, enjoying a good nap, or watching Friends for the 500th time.
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