13 Brand Health Metrics You Need to Know & Track in 2022

You wouldn’t ignore your own physical or mental health, so why ignore the health of your brand? Maybe you didn’t even realize that your brand has health? That’s okay, we’re here to help.

Just like us, our brands can quickly become “ill”. But, if you’re able to spot the symptoms in time, your brand should be able to make a full recovery.

So, whether you’ve been unsuccessful in diagnosing your own brand health or you weren’t even aware of the concept, it doesn’t matter — this blog post is for you.

Read on to explore the basics of this important metric and find out how you can track it.

What is Brand Health?

First, let’s take a look at what brand health is.

Thankfully, it’s quite simple: brand health has to do with how well your brand is performing overall.

If the brand is helping your company achieve all the goals you’ve set, then it’s a success. And a successful brand is a healthy brand!

Why is Tracking Brand Health Important?

Let’s say you’re confident that your brand is targeting the right audience and your sales are increasing. Great! Understandably, you might then be wondering why you should focus any effort on tracking your brand health.

Well, as we mentioned before, it doesn’t take long for a healthy brand to transform into a weak one. You can’t afford to let your attention slip — when you look back, it might not be quite as healthy and robust as you thought.

So, what benefits will tracking your brand health bring?

• You’ll identify your brand’s strengths and weaknesses To determine what’s working for your branding strategy and what isn’t, take a look at your brand health.

• You can check the overall performance of your brand. Finding out the status of your brand health is a chance to take a good look at its performance as a whole.

• You can discover what’s holding your brand back. Once you check your brand’s health, you’ll be able to figure out what’s holding you back.

Now that you know why you should be tracking your brand health, let’s take a look at the 13 key metrics you should be tracking.

13 Brand Health Metrics You Need to Know

1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is the foundation of any successful brand strategy. Which is why, time and time again, we seem to circle back to it.

And because it’s such an important metric for all things brand, we’ve already numerous articles on it — from measuring brand awareness to high-level tips for marketing executives.

The main takeaway? All of the smaller metrics that help support and uplift your brand awareness — think social media mentions, website traffic, and online reviews — can also be used to check up on your brand health.

2. Brand Consideration

Even though a consumer is aware of your brand, that’s no guarantee that they would actually purchase something from you. That’s where brand consideration comes in.

To get an idea of how many consumers in your target audience would genuinely consider using your brand, you need to take a good, long look at brand consideration.

If you find a strong level of brand consideration, then it’s a clear sign that your brand is in good health. Why? Because high brand consideration means you have access to a large group of consumers who you can nurture into loyal customers.

3. Brand Associations

To live a happy, healthy life, it’s important that you don’t focus too much on what other people think of you. Your own opinion is always the most important.

However, this isn’t the case for your brand. Think of it this way; if your target audience doesn’t perceive your brand well, then there’s not much chance of them choosing it over your competitors.

By delving into your brand associations — the qualities, feelings, and characteristics that your brand brings to mind — you can see what your audience considers to be your strengths and weaknesses.

With this important information, you then know what to work on going forward.

4. Time on Website

Seeing an influx in traffic to your website via social referrals or a recent SEO update is always is great, right? Well, unless those new users are spending a long time on your website, then it isn’t so great after all.

If users are leaving your site as soon as they land on it, it’s often a sign that they simply aren’t interested. For whatever reason, you haven’t been able to capture and hold their attention.

But don’t fret, there are ways you can fix this kind of issue. From adding attention-grabbing, high-quality content to ensuring your web design is intuitive and easily navigable, there are real changes you can make.

5. Search Intent

Finding out how consumers landed on your website isn’t just for the SEO whizz kids — brand managers should take note as well.

To identify search intent, take a look at the keywords and phrases users are searching for when they land on your site.

As this is closely linked to brand awareness, it will provide you with an idea of whether users were searching specifically for your brand or something related to your brand.

If consumers are using branded search terms, then it’s a good indication that your brand has strong unaided brand awareness.

Bonus Tip: While you’re at it, check for any signs that consumers are trying to search for your site but aren’t discovering it. This might mean that you need to reconsider your current keyword targeting strategy.

6. Brand Loyalty

Attracting customers, great — retaining customers, even better!

A large chunk of most brands’ revenue comes from loyal customers. Converting new customers is expensive and labor-intensive, whereas keeping current customers satisfied is much less expensive and results in more immediate sales.

Plus, it’s often your loyal customers who recommend your brand to all their friends and family — so it’s a good idea to keep them happy and satisfied with your product and service.

There are a few different ways to track brand loyalty, but the main strategy is to track the following elements: commitment, associations, trust, satisfaction, and repeat sales.

7. Social Listening

Consumers want to spread the word about brands and companies they love — meaning you can rest assured that those who enjoy your products will likely share their positive feelings on platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

However, that’s just one side of the coin. If consumers have negative experiences with your brand, they’re also likely to vent their frustration on social media.

The best way to keep a finger on the pulse of your social mentions? Social listening. However, it’s important to put all mentions in context — try to discover the root of customers’ issues so you can make effective changes to prevent repeat offenses.

8. Volatility

Peoples’ opinions are constantly changing — you’ll know this from your own experience. However, this also means that consumers’ feelings about your brand might change over time.

But don’t worry, this is something you can measure quite easily. As long as you keep your finger on the pulse of your consumers’ opinions, you’ll be able to catch any negative changes and put a stop to them.

Additionally, you’ll find that tracking and managing your brand’s volatility can also help strengthen your brand value. If consumers view your brand in a positive light, then, consequently, they’ll see your brand as offering high value.

9. Purchase Behavior

Tracking the above-mentioned brand metrics is all well and good, but one thing’s still missing: knowing exactly how many consumers are buying from your brand.

If too few consumers are actually purchasing your products or services, you’re definitely doing something wrong — but what? To find out which changes need to be made in order to encourage consumers to go further in your sales funnel, you need to track purchase behavior.

By tracking this brand health metric, you’ll gather plenty of useful data — which will reveal who is buying what, how often, and how much they’re spending on average.

Additionally, take a look at your under-performing target audiences and brainstorm changes you can make to encourage them to improve their purchase behavior.

10. Returning Visitors

Your website analytics should show you what percentage of your web traffic is returning visitors. But why does that matter? Because lots of returning visitors mean you have strong brand loyalty — which directly correlates to brand health.

Plus, as previously mentioned, returning customers are more likely to make purchases. First-time visitors often aren’t ready to commit to a sale — they’re just there to check out your brand and gather information.

However, if they like what they see, then, ideally, they return at a later date to make a purchase.

11. Brand Score

This metric might be new to you, but it’s an important one. Your brand score will come from the brand tracking tool that you use and will quantify your brand health on a numerical scale.

However, not all brand tracking tools are the same and the way in which scores are calculated differs from tool to tool. Still, these scores are quite useful for getting an overall indication of your brand health.

Plus, if you’re short on time, brand tracking software is a huge asset — making it quick and easy to gain an overall view of your brand health.

12. Brand Preference

Jealousy may be an awful, green-eyed monster, but we think having a sneaky look at what your competitors are up to can only be a good thing! How else will you know how you compare?

But why does brand preference matter? Well, it will give you an idea of who your target audience prefers — you or your main competitors.

If the results don’t swing in your favor, you should brainstorm some ideas on what you can improve to increase brand preference and out-perform your rivals.

13. Brand Delivery

It’s all well and good to have a shiny, attractive brand. But, if you aren’t delivering what you promise, then you’re going to run into issues. Unhappy customers will quickly jump ship — so you better make sure that your brand is delivering!

To improve this metric, focus on your brand experience. From the moment a potential customer lands on your website to their first interaction with customer service, everything about your brand experience should be consistently excellent.

Show consumers that you deliver on your promised USPs and you’ll earn their loyalty.

Final Thoughts

We know what you’re thinking: That’s a lot to track, right?

If reading through this list led you to believe it might require too much effort — we can assure you, your time will be well-spent! The benefits gained from tracking these brand health metrics will make it all worth it.

From understanding how you can improve your branding to getting an up-to-date idea of your brand’s success, you’ll be much better equipped to improve and monitor your brand health going forward.

Updated by: Cory Schröder on 09.09.22