It’s tough out there for brands, isn’t it? And it can be even tougher for those that don’t use brand tracking software to leverage accurate insights into their overall brand’s health, performance, and marketing strategies.
Here you'll find our free brand tracking tool checklist — which touches on all the most important areas high-quality software should cover. Make sure you have it on-hand for your next call with a potential brand tracking software provider and ensure they tick all the boxes before signing a binding contract!
Why Use Brand Tracking Software?
The answer is easy: brand tracking software will help you grow your brand and lend insight into your performance and brand marketing campaigns.
You may ask: “How?” or "Isn't the purpose of a brand monitoring tool just to tell me how my target audience feels about my brand?"
Nope, there’s so much more. Using the data from a top-notch brand tracking tool, you can also:
Find and define new target audiences, as well as niche audiences.
Avoid making the same mistakes as your competitors.
Increase your data reach and confidence.
Utilize audience segmentation to track the consumers who really matter to your brand
But before you can do any of these things, you need to find the right brand tracking tool for your company.
What to Ask When Looking for the Right Brand Tracking Solution
Take your time when choosing a brand tracking tool. First, you need to ensure it offers access to your target markets, is within your budget, and has a good reputation.
But to be 100% sure it’s the right choice for your brand, you should also make sure that it ticks all the boxes in our below infographic. In it, we provide ten questions for you to ask potential software suppliers — as well as the ideal answers you should be looking for.
Brand Logos
Question: Do your surveys allow for the inclusion of brand logos?
Correct Answer: Surveys that include brand logos enhance visualization for respondents, which leads to more accurate responses. While some brands can be easily recognized based on brand name alone, lesser-known brands require some visual aid to capture their recognition.
Audience
Question: How many audiences will I have access to?
Correct Answer: To outperform the competition, you need access to reliable data straight from the source: your target audience. For some brands, a more general population is best to assess wider awareness levels, while others may have a more focused or niche product and, therefore, require an audience to reflect this. Tailor your audience and segmentations to measure your brand most effectively.
Real-World Changes
Question: Can your software detect real-world changes?
Correct Answer: With a reliable tracking setup, your data should represent real-world changes in a brand's awareness levels and other KPI metrics. Reliability is based on the representativity of the audience you wish to measure, authentic responses in-survey, and a non-biased survey set up.
Sample Size
Question: What is your standard sample size for a survey?
Correct Answer: As a general rule, the larger the sample size, the more reliable and precise the results will be. That being said, it's best to aim for at least 1,000 respondents per wave — with a 500 respondent minimum for core segmentations.
Data Accuracy
Question: How accurate is your data?
Correct Answer: Unfortunately, many brand tracking tools have large margins of error that go far beyond +/-10% — meaning they won't be able to provide you with reliable data. You need a tool that uses more accurate methods of data analysis, like Multilevel Regression and Postratification, which boasts 90% lower margins of error.
Brand KPIs
Question: Which KPIs do you track?
Correct Answer: Different brand tracking tools will track different KPIs. Be sure your tool of choice tracks — at the very least — brand awareness and brand perception. Furthermore, it can also be useful to keep a measure on consumer consideration and preference for your brand
Competitor Brands
Question: How many competitor brands can I track?
Correct Answer: Only tracking your own brand provides a limited view of your market. Find a brand tracking tool that allows you to track your core competitors’ brand performance, as well to provide a benchmarking measurement. While there is no strict minimum or maximum number of competitors to choose from, you should consider your primary competition in the market to give the best overview of market share.
Mobile-Optimized Surveys
Question: Do you use mobile-optimized surveys?
Correct Answer: Mobile-optimized brand surveys provide a clear, intuitive, and engaging user experience — which, in turn, leads to more accurate responses and lessens users' confusion or fatigue.
Audience Segmentation
Question: Do you allow for advanced audience segmentation?
Correct Answer: Standard, pre-made audience segmentations won't provide the nuanced data most brands need to discover real insights. You need a tool that allows you to tailor your audience to your needs and build custom audience segmentations. This way, you can track the audiences that are actually important to your brand.
Respondent Sourcing
Question: How do you access respondents?
Correct Answer: We partner with publisher websites and apps, as well as DSPs, to invite opt-in, real-time respondents to our brand surveys. This ensures we gain insights from casual and non-professional survey takers for a more representative and authentic sample.
Updated by: Cory Schröder on 26.11.21
