How Brand Tracking Helps Make Better Marketing Decisions

Let’s be honest, marketing doesn’t have the easiest go of it when it comes to accessing data. Or, at least, data that actually matters in the grand scheme of things.

Sure, we have user behavior data from our websites, as well as data collected from our customers’ journeys — but what about the users in your target audiences that you haven’t yet captured as customers?

How do you know what they want, what they think, and how they feel about your brand?

For years, the answer was to piece together the data you do have and “use your gut”. But, thankfully, we have a better answer for you in 2022: advanced brand tracking software.

Brand tracking software is exactly what it sounds like — software that is used to track your brand’s performance. It provides accurate data that’s statistically significant and fully representative of your target audience — plus, it offers a reliable and sustainable way to monitor your brand’s most important KPIs.

At the end of the day, brand tracking’s main goal is to help you make better marketing decisions — ones supported by nuanced data and reliable consumer insights. But how does it work, and what kinds of insights should you expect?

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This article will take a deep dive into what brand tracking software is and discuss why it’s the best option for brands that want to grow. Plus, provide a couple of examples of how brand tracking software can improve your marketing strategy.

What is Brand Tracking Software?

Before we can dive into brand tracking software, it would help to understand the concept of “brand tracking”.

In short, brand tracking is the continuous monitoring of your brand’s health over a given period of time. Short and sweet.

It allows you to understand how your target audiences perceive your brand — as well as how they respond to your brand communication. As we’re sure you have surmised by now, brand tracking software is the tool you can use to track your brand’s performance.

But advanced brand tracking software provides more than just data on consumers’ response to your own brand — it also allows you to track competitor brands, compare your brand’s performance across markets, identify new audiences to focus on, and even figure out which ones are struggling.

In essence, brand tracking software provides you with the information you need to make better, smarter marketing decisions.

Previously, brand performance has proven itself somewhat difficult to accurately quantify. However, with the right tools on hand, it’s easier than ever to track your brand’s health and performance and use the gathered data to shape your brand strategy going forward.

So, now that we all understand what brand tracking software is, let’s address the next issue at hand: how will it help your brand grow?

How Will Brand Tracking Software Help Your Brand Grow?

Having access to the consumer data that brand tracking provides will help you in a multitude of ways.

But since we’re trying to keep this concise, we’ll stick to the two most important ways brand tracking software can help your brand grow.

1.   Brand Tracking Software Allows for Audience Segmentation

Tracking how consumers feel about your brand as a whole is a great start — it’s always good to have baseline measurements from the general population. But, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a brand that considers everyone to be their target audience.

Thus, to have brand tracking data that actually matters, you need to be able to track your unique target audiences. Now, we can’t speak for all brand tracking tools, but high-quality ones should allow for the creation of custom target audiences.

Why does that matter? Well, custom audience segmentation makes it possible to zoom in on the niches of significance — the ones your brand really cares about. When you know how your marketing campaigns and activities are being received by the consumers who matter, you can refine your campaigns going forward.

This will, in turn, help you grow your business — as focusing on what drives positive consumer responses is bound to generate more profit.

For example, say you’re the brand manager of a mid-sized apparel company and you’ve been tasked with improving brand awareness within your top three target audiences over the next two quarters.

To put yourself in the best position to achieve success, you first need to understand where your brand stands for the KPIs you’ll be measured by: brand awareness, brand consideration, brand associations, and brand preference.

You’ll also need access to a tool that allows you to track these KPIs for your specific target audiences. With the right brand tracking software, this will be a piece of cake. Next, you’ll need to set up at least three waves of data — one at the very beginning, one at the end of the first quarter, and one at the end of the second.

This way, you can see how your brand performance is progressing with your target audiences and more accurately measure growth.

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2.   Brand Tracking Software Helps Identify Which Campaigns Work (and Which Don’t)

To succeed in growing your brand, you need to know which of your campaigns are winners and which ones… need improvement.

Depending on the medium chosen, there are, of course, certain measurements you always have access to when running a new campaign. For example, if you run a paid ad campaign on Google Ads, you’ll be able to see important stats like clicks, impressions, conversions, etc.

But a top-notch brand campaign will also connect with your target audience on an emotional level, increase important brand KPIs, and improve brand loyalty and trust.

So, how do you know if these boxes are being ticked? You use brand tracking software.

For example, consider the following scenario: you’re the brand manager of a new financial app aimed at female audiences. You’ve been running a myriad of different campaigns — some paid, some organic.

So far, you’re seeing decent stats from the platforms you’re using to run said campaigns, but what you’re really interested in is how your target audiences are responding to them. After all, it’s great if a campaign gets clicks, but it’s better if you know it connected with your target audience members and improved important brand associations.

For this, you decide to try out brand tracking software. While you want to measure standard KPIs like brand awareness and consideration, as a new brand with a specific target audience — you’re especially interested in your chosen brand associations.

As a brand that’s trying to welcome women into the financial sphere, you want to make sure certain brand associations are strong. That’s why you choose to track: “accessible”, “informative”, “innovative”, and “inclusive”.

In order to see which campaigns are performing well, you schedule an initial wave of data to get a baseline — and then another shortly after you release an extensive brand awareness campaign.

With this second wave of data, you can see how your target audiences are responding to your recent brand campaign — aka if you’re going in the right direction or if you need to make changes.

You should analyze your data and ask questions like:

Are my chosen brand associations performing as I’d like them to? Has brand awareness within my target audiences increased? Have there been any significant changes in brand consideration?

 These kinds of questions will help you determine how successful (or unsuccessful) a campaign really was — outside of just impressions and clicks.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to understanding your brand’s performance, there’s a great deal to take into consideration. While analyzing data from the platforms on which your campaigns run is always a good idea, to be truly successful, you’ll need more than that.

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Brand tracking software provides the data you need to make better, more informed marketing decisions — offering insights you can trust. With the ability to custom-build your target audiences and tailor your questions to your needs, you can rest assured knowing that you’ll have all the data you need to grow your brand.