You know your overall health isn’t just about whether or not you have a cold or cough. It also includes your flexibility, physical stamina, mental well-being, mood, and sleep—any number of factors play their part.
The same is true of your business. How your company is doing can’t be captured simply by a snapshot of your income statement. To really know how it’s doing, you have to understand your own brand health.
Table of contents
What is brand health?
Brand health measures the overall well-being and public perception of a business. Brand health includes how well a business is doing, the brand reputation, brand positioning, customer satisfaction, loyalty, and market share. Aspects of brand health can relate to your products and services, your marketing and content, customer service, and even employee satisfaction.
You can measure your brand’s health using qualitative and quantitative methods. You can ask customers to respond to surveys or write reviews. See how people are talking about your brand’s reputation online by engaging in social listening, conducting focus groups, and looking at metrics like market share.
A strong brand will also go beyond the data. “I like to look at the data as that entry point where you can start asking questions,” says Giovanna Alfieri, VP of marketing at The Honey Pot, on an episode of Shopify Masters.
“Why does this human identify with X buying pattern? What would it look like to change their perspective on this and start really asking more of those kinds of therapeutic psychoanalytical questions? How can we take this a step deeper?"
User interviews and surveys give you a direct line to your customers, allowing you to assess how they view your brand.
Key indicators of brand health
- Net Promoter Score
- Brand recognition and awareness
- Brand reputation
- Share of voice
- Brand equity
- Market share
- Purchase intent
- Employee engagement
These key brand health metrics and indicators can help you track brand health over time:
Net Promoter Score
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a way to measure brand health by looking at customer satisfaction and asking consumers how likely they are to recommend your company on a scale from zero to 10. You then divide the answers into promoters, passives, and detractors, finally subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters.
This easy-to-perform test provides a useful snapshot of how happy customers are with your business. Since it’s standardized, you can use it to compare how your brand performs to industry averages or between different product lines in your business.
You can improve a brand’s Net Promoter Score by addressing distractor issues or engaging with passives to target key issues at the source. A healthy brand will also integrate feedback from promoters, passives, and detractors to improve the customer experience.
Brand recognition and awareness
Brand recognition looks at whether customers have heard of your brand as a means of brand health tracking. To know this, you can engage in brand recall surveys. Aided brand recall means asking users whether they’ve heard of your brand specifically. Unaided brand recall involves asking them to name all the brands in your industry, and seeing if your name pops up. You can measure this brand health metric by using focus groups and surveys.
One of the most important brand health metrics, brand awareness considers your target audience’s ability to not just recall a brand, but also know their products, values, and market position.
To improve brand awareness and recognition, you may need to increase and improve your brand’s presence across channels like digital advertising, social media, and organic search.
Brand reputation
Brand reputation looks at what people think about your brand, the words associated with it, and the words used to describe it. Brand reputation can be positive or negative, and can help you understand whether you need to focus your efforts on highlighting your brand’s success, working to solve a common issue, or engaging in crisis management.
A brand’s reputation might be determined by what an audience believes a brand stands for, what a brand advocates for, or the brand’s reputation in regards to customer feedback.
If you find your brand reputation is struggling, you may want to look at the in-depth qualitative data gleaned from customer feedback, reviews, or social media interactions. As you work to improve the problem, continue to measure brand reputation by looking at the same metrics each time and track the changes.
Share of voice
Share of voice (SOV) is the proportion of mentions in both advertising and organic conversations for which one brand is responsible. A high SOV doesn’t necessarily mean that one brand is preferred over another, but it does indicate a stronger influence and greater brand health. Measuring share of voice is channel-specific, so you’ll want to look at social channels, paid ads, PR, traditional media—anywhere your brand is present.
You can increase share of voice by dedicating more resources to those specific channels and increasing your brand’s visibility.
Brand equity
Brand equity is a marketing term that describes a brand’s value. If people think highly of a brand, it has positive brand equity. When a brand consistently under-delivers and disappoints—to the point that people recommend avoiding it—it has negative brand equity.
Brand equity includes recognition, customer loyalty, NPS, and SOV—it’s a complete picture of your brand. Enhancing brand awareness, building customer loyalty and affinity, and carving out a unique niche for your brand are all ways to improve brand equity.
A healthy brand delivers consistent equity over time. Increasing your share of voice, brand loyalty, brand perception, and brand reputation are all ways to increase brand equity over time.
Market share
A brand’s market share is the percentage of the market your brand is responsible for in comparison to competitors. While a large market share is an indicator of good brand health, it’s important to consider how your market position and share grow and change over time.
Market share is one of the key brand health metrics and may be improved by dedicating more resources to marketing campaigns or increasing your brand’s presence on social media platforms.
Purchase intent
Purchase intent measures how likely someone is to purchase from you. A quick survey asks consumers how likely they are to purchase from your brand, which will let you know what your audience’s purchase intent is and help you understand brand performance.
You can improve purchase intent by improving the customer experience, running sales and promotions, and personalizing marketing efforts.
Employee engagement
People often make the mistake of only looking outward when trying to measure brand health, but it’s just as important to know what’s going on inside when considering brand health. Employee engagement and satisfaction are essential when it comes to understanding brand health. How active employees are, how long they remain at the company, and how satisfied they are are all indicators of strong employee engagement.
Employee engagement can be improved by dedicating more resources to employee benefits and conducting regular check-ins to ensure morale is high.
Brand health FAQ
What is the difference between brand health and brand equity?
While brand health and brand equity are often used interchangeably, they have slightly different meanings. Brand equity focuses specifically on customer experiences and how they value the brand. Brand health is broader and includes customer-focused indicators, as well as indicators such as market share and employee engagement.
How do I increase brand health?
Increasing brand health can’t be done overnight, but with time and planning, it is possible. Increased brand awareness is the result of a variety of factors that can include strategies across social media, paid advertising, traditional media, and in-person activations. Regardless of the strategy, it all starts with measuring brand health. Conducting focus groups and surveys can help you assess brand health and help determine the best place to focus your efforts and where you can have the strongest impact on brand health.
How do you do a brand health study?
Understanding how your company is doing requires ongoing brand health monitoring. When you’re ready to do a brand health study, identify your goals and consider which indicators, such as Net Promoter Score and brand recall, will best give you the answers. To collect data, you can solicit customer feedback by conducting surveys, engaging in social listening, and using focus groups. This can help you understand your customer experience and how you measure up to competing brands.
