Brand health. What is it and how is it measured?

Brand health helps you improve your results. If your brand is in good health, your customers will be more willing to choose it over other alternatives and even pay a higher price for it. But that’s not all. When you have an attractive brand, your marketing campaigns are also more effective, so you can get better results than other brands with the same investment.

In order to improve your brand health, you will need to measure it. It’s like doing a regular check-up. If your brand health has improved since the last analysis, your efforts to support it are paying off. If, on the other hand, its health has deteriorated, it’s time to make an accurate diagnosis that identifies the causes and allows you to introduce the necessary corrective measures.

Measuring brand health on a regular basis involves a certain investment, but if the data you collect allows you to grow, the return can be very significant.

How can you measure brand health?

To get a clear idea of your brand’s health, you need to measure at least two complementary aspects:

• Your brand funnel. This is a model that represents the steps a consumer goes through from the moment they are unaware of a brand until they become a loyal buyer. Depending on how many consumers are lost at each step, the brand manager will need to reinforce certain aspects of the funnel.
• Brand image. Each brand has a series of chosen attributes that it wants to highlight in order to stand out from its competitors. If consumers recognise these attributes in the brand, it is well positioned. If the image that consumers have is very different from the one the brand wants to have, work must be done to achieve greater alignment.

There are other factors that can be measured to gauge brand health. Some experts recommend including measurements related to sales and market share, but many other factors influence these indicators. In service companies, loyalty and recommendation are taken into account. These factors can be captured in the concept of the brand funnel. Today we will focus on the two aspects mentioned above.

What is the brand funnel?

The brand funnel provides a very clear view of the aspects that make the brand strong and those that still offer opportunities for growth. Basically, the brand funnel helps you know how many consumers are at each stage, from when they are unaware of the brand to when they are loyal or even recommend the brand. The funnel does not mean that all consumers must pass through these stages in a linear fashion; we know that consumers can skip steps or even go back in the funnel. But a snapshot of how many consumers are at each stage is extremely useful for knowing where you are losing buyers.

The number or definition of the stages of the brand funnel may vary depending on the type of product or the researcher’s point of view, but it usually includes the following:

• Total target audience. This is the entire group of people to whom the product is directed, regardless of the stage of the brand funnel they are in. Expressed as a percentage, the total target audience will correspond to 100%, the total study population.
• Aided awareness. The consumer is able to identify the brand when it is mentioned or when shown visual stimuli such as the logo, packaging or product.
• Un-aided awareness. The consumer is able to remember the brand without help when asked about brands they know within the category.
• Purchase consideration. The consumer not only knows the brand, but also considers it as one of their options when they go to the shop. This is regardless of whether they have purchased it or not.
• Purchase intention. The consumer believes they will purchase the brand in the future.
• Purchase. The consumer has already purchased the brand on one or more occasions.
• Preference. The consumer shows a preference for the brand and looks for it among the available options when they go to the shop.
• Loyalty. The consumer buys this brand more often than alternative brands. It is not necessarily the only one they buy, especially in the case of fast-moving consumer goods, where consumers often try alternatives or have different options depending on the store they choose. But it is the most frequent choice.

Image attributes

The second aspect to consider has to do with image and brand attributes. As part of their strategy, brands define how they want to be perceived by consumers. But… How do we know if consumers perceive them that way? We find out by measuring brand attributes.

Brand attributes are the essential characteristics that define and represent a brand. They are the elements that give a brand its identity, personality and value in the mind of the consumer or customer. Through interviews, consumers provide information on the degree to which each brand is associated with each attribute. With this information, you can create a map that places attributes and brands according to their relative distance. This will help you understand which attributes you already cover adequately and which ones you need to reinforce in your product and communication.

Estudios de salud de marca

Brand studies are market research surveys used to measure brand health, generally combining brand funnel calculations with brand image analysis. They are conducted through surveys of potential buyers in the category. When brand studies are carried out periodically, the effect of the actions taken since the last survey can be verified. In this case, they are called brand trackings. All major consumer goods companies and companies in other sectors conduct regular brand tracking studies to manage their portfolios appropriately.

How can brand health be improved?

Depending on where the greatest contraction in the brand funnel occurs, the causes can be identified and a response designed:

• Low awareness. The solution will be to focus on wide-reaching campaigns that raise awareness of the brand and product among large segments of the population.
• Low purchase intent. Consumers are aware of the brand but are not interested in buying it. Perhaps the brand is not sufficiently different from other options on the market, or its positioning is not relevant or credible.
• Low purchase. Consumers do not get to try the product. Perhaps it is not achieving the right level of distribution, it does not occupy enough shelf space, or its location in the store makes it difficult to find. Or perhaps the price is too high.
• Low preference. The product is tried, but it is not as attractive as the alternatives on the market. In this case, the consumer does not repeat the purchase, so the reasons for dissatisfaction must be investigated and the product improved.
• Low loyalty. The consumer prefers it, but buys other options more often. Perhaps it is not available in the shops where they shop, or the consumer ends up buying other products because they are on offer or better located.

Once the stage of the brand funnel where the greatest loss of consumers occurs has been identified, it is necessary to understand in depth the reasons behind that loss and implement solutions. To do this, specific research can be initiated to delve into the aspects that are priorities.

For its part, analysing image attributes helps you achieve the image that will have the greatest impact on consumers. When the brand does not stand out for the strategic attributes with which it wants to position itself in the minds of consumers, we are faced with a case of inadequate positioning. In this case, it is necessary to review the product design and communication to ‘overweight’ the desired attributes in which the brand is losing out to its competitors.

When to conduct a brand health study?

Conducting a brand health study is valuable for brand managers at any point in a brand’s life cycle:

• Launching a new brand: Measuring the brand funnel during its launch allows you to understand how adoption among consumers is evolving. Thus, in unexpected situations, the brand manager can make changes to the plan to optimise their investment and achieve maximum impact.
• Periodic brand health assessment: Measuring brand health on a regular basis allows you to evaluate the performance of your marketing activity before planning the next iteration of your plan.
• New campaigns and marketing actions: A brand health study is very useful when implementing significant changes in marketing strategies, such as a new advertising campaign, the introduction of new sales or communication channels, or the introduction of innovations.
• Launching in new markets: A brand health study provides valuable information on how to adapt marketing strategies to effectively reach the target audience in the markets to which the brand is expanding.
• Decline in sales or difficulties in achieving objectives. If sales targets are not being met, a brand health study will help identify the causes consumers on their path to loyalty.
• Sudden changes in the market. When a new competitor appears or if one of the brands has ceased trading, consumer preferences may adapt and modify the results of the brand health study.

Without conducting brand health studies on a regular basis, it is impossible to know whether the efforts made and the investment in brand campaigns are yielding the necessary return.

How to conduct a brand health study?

Conducting a brand health study is easy. To do so, you will need to interview a representative sample of the brand’s target audience. The questionnaire is usually fairly standard, including questions on awareness, consideration, intention, purchase, preference and loyalty. The analysis is very intuitive and is presented in an easy-to-interpret funnel chart. Measuring image attributes will help us to know if the image is appropriate. This is also obtained through fairly standard questions about the brand and competing brands. Data on the funnel and brand attributes can be collected using the same questionnaire.

A brand health study is one of the types of studies that can be easily created on the We are testers research platform. Creating the questionnaire is very simple, and our team of research experts can help you design the questions based on your category and objectives. Contact us for full details on how to organise your brand health study today.