Brand Perception And How To Measure It

Ok, so let’s simplify this. When you decide what to purchase, how do you make that decision? However you frame that answer, the reason that you make some purchases and not others is often based on brand perception, ie: your feelings and thoughts associated with a brand.

As Michael Jackson says, you are not alone. Almost 70% of consumers feel emotionally connected to brands they buy from. It is also proven that once a perception is formed it is hard to shift it and that is why we focus on creating positive associations between our clients and their target consumers.

What is brand perception?

In simple terms, brand perception is a mental association with your brand. It’s your consumers feelings and thoughts are about you and what they believe your brand represents rather than what you claim to represent. It is important to nuture your brands integrity because people consider their attitude toward you when choosing between you and your competitors.

What do they do to come to their conclusion?

• They read reviews
• Call your company and draw conclusions based on that experience
• Compare options with people they know
• Are drawn or turned off by your creative presence eg: branding, website, socials
• Sign up for a initial consult or free trial etc

All of these affect brand peception and can impact a companies success! So nuture it!

If a consumer feels emotionally connected to a brand, they can become fiercely loyal. People get into wars over Apple VS Android. Nike VS Adidas “I’m a Nike girl, I’ll never get caught in Adidas kicks” and the famous Coke VS Pepsi.. Holden VS Ford. The list goes on.

If you or the agency you engage with, understands brand perception, the information can be used to develop brand equity so while brand perception can be summarised as what ONE person thinks about your brand, brand equity is the combination of many peoples peceptions that create your reputation.

By creating brand perception that appeals to your target market, you are driving company growth. It may seem like brand perception is out of your hands but you couldnt be more wrong. You have the ability to measure it and improve on peoples opinions.

How to measure brand perception?

Data is king! Its helps you understand how consumers, employees, stakeholders and competitors percieve your brand.

Since brand perception combines reviews, customer experience, reputation, advertising and social engagement, you need to gather metrics from multiple sources.

Surveys

Conduct a survey to learn what people actually think about your business and how it looks when compared to your rivals. Asking questions that touch on action-oriented factors that are emotional and cognitive allows you to really get inside their heads.

Eg:

• When you think of [your brand], what is the first thing you think of?
• How would you describe [your brand] to a friend?
• What you last experience like with [your brand]?
• On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend [your brand]?

Brand Audit

Evaluate how your brand perception compares to your competitors. This will include research on your audiences, a competitive analysis of your products / services and evaluation of your communications strategy.

Social Listening

You can track online mentions using social listening tools or Google Alerts. When setting this up, you will want to monitor comments, reviews, relevant hashtags, and news mentions. As a brand grows so with its dataset. Create a system to handle negative mentions and stay on top of it.

Customer Data

Collect data from your customers through-out their enture “buyers journey” This can include how buyers research information, evaluate products, compare competitors, interact with your brand, make their decision, onboard and interact post journey.

This data is like gold for your brand. Once you have enough data, you can evaluate if consumer sentiment aligns with your brand identity. If it does, keep doing what you are doing. If not, learn from the data and improve your brand perception.

Conclusion

So in a nutshell.. knowing what people think of you is super important and allows you to develop a successful brand.

It allows you to shift consumer perceptions and mould your brand identity and create impactful campaigns.

PEG pride themselves on raising the profiles of our clients brands. If you want to know how we can do the above for you, holla at us real quick and take the steps you need to catapault your brand into stardom.