When planning a marketing plan to promote a product or service, you dedicate a section to your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). Everybody in the company needs to know what you are measuring and how you will evaluate your campaigns.
A lead generation campaign will be evaluated by cost per click, cost per acquisition, cost per enrollment, cost per conversions, etc. How much do you spend, what is your return on your investment (ROI), etc. These KPIs are numbers and financial indicators.
But when launching a brand awareness campaign, the KPIs are different: engagement, reach, brand recall, website sessions, social media followers, social media post reach, hashtag performance sentiment analysis, click-through rate, search engine rankings, video views, page views, the share of voice, etc. Also, you can measure your brand equity, brand value, etc.
Anyhow, all marketers are accountable and judged by these famous KPIs. With lead generation campaigns, the situation is easy because the results are easy to visualize. After all, we are talking about actual numbers, sales, spending, ratios, acquisition, etc. But when we are talking about “branding,” the numbers can be difficult to measure if you don’t have the right tools in place and if you don’t establish a baseline and keep and history and, of course, proper attribution.
Lead Generation vs. Brand Awareness
If you generate a lead generation campaign on Facebook with an ad saying Get out of Debt Fast and Easy with Debt.com and CTA or Call to Action Free Quote, Facebook will provide you with the ad spend, reach, CTR, conversions, etc. Then you can compare the info Facebook is providing you with the number of calls and how many people enroll in the debt relief program, and you will have your numbers, and then based on your goals, you will say this campaign had a good or bad performance.
In the case of a brand awareness campaign, the objective is different. If you want people to know your brand, visit your website, or engage with your social media account, the message is different because this is not a direct response campaign. The ad should be something like Are you in Debt? You are not alone. To find out how a Debt Relief Program can help you, visit Debt.com. In this case, Facebook will give you the same information I mentioned before, but this time you will notice that your phone calls or the person who enrolls in the programs may be less than the lead generation campaign, which was designed this way by purpose.
Some stakeholders will question your campaigns and can say, well, your campaign A generated 300 new clients with a cost per client of $100, which is $150 lower than our goal; excellent, keep going!. But then they can tell you that your campaign B spends $10,000 and only generates 10 new clients, costing $1,000 per client. This is too high; you need to pause or optimize this campaign immediately. You will respond: campaign B’s purpose is a brand awareness campaign, which generated 5,000 sessions in a month, and on average, all the ads got a 10% CTR, so the campaign is doing excellent. So, a conversation between financial and marketing can be back and forth the whole day this wrong; this is good, this is bad, bla bla bla. The problem is they are not comparing apples to apples, and the financial stakeholders want results and a good ROI.
In the short term, a brand awareness campaign may not give the numbers the financial department expects in a campaign. Still, in this hypothetical example, they are missing the whole picture and the long-term goal of building brand equity. Also, I am very positive that this brand awareness campaign is generating an audience of people who are engaging with the ads, and the smart marketing team is re-targeting them, creating look-a-like audiences, etc etc etc.
Measuring Brand Awareness
I mentioned a digital brand awareness campaign on Facebook, but as you know, this is just one tactic for building a brand. Brand awareness is also all the public relations initiatives the company might involve, like press releases, sponsoring an event, appearing in a TV show, social media organic posts, etc., etc. Measuring all these reaches and trying to add financial value is a challenge. How will you measure a TV show appearance by the PR Director? or how will you measure a tennis or golf event the company is sponsoring?.
On the digital side is easier because you can use the metrics provided by the platforms or software like meltwater.com, brandwatch.com, or talkwalker.com. On traditional media, you need tools provided by companies like Nielsen, but it can be a little harder.
To measure your brand awareness campaigns, you should:
- Set your campaign goals.
- Select your KPIs.
- Track Performance.
- Analyze Data.
- Compare Benchmarks.
- Adjust Campaign Strategies.
Even though some experts say that the optimal relation between a brand awareness campaign and a lead generation campaign is 60%-40% this is not an exact rule. This depends on the type of industry, target audience, goals, resources, etc. But building a strong brand can help the business in the long run. This is why I recommend investing in your brand and don’t take it for granted; big companies like Mcdonald’s, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Nike, have invested tons of money in building and protecting their brands for long years and now is paying off for them.
