Brand tracking essentials: Using brand insight to maximise marketing spend

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by Jacob Solomon Mar 23, 2023 News
Brand tracking essentials: Using brand insight to maximise marketing spend

One of our clients showed how important the right marketing investment was during the last recession. A leading premium chocolate brand faced pressure from its global headquarters to reduce its media budget due to a weak sales season during the recession. Our client increased media pressure relative to competitors and achieved stronger communications awareness than all other brands according to evidence from their brand guidance programme.

Increasing media pressure relative to competitors

Increasing media pressure relative to competitors

All other brand measures hold up when brands keep their communications awareness.

When communication awareness levels are maintained, other brand measures hold up better

Percentage of brand increasing

Driving brand growth

Understanding brand performance can lead to brand growth.

  • Make your marketing spend more effective. When you are marketing on a budget, it is essential that your spend is effective in achieving your marketing goals of strengthening perceptions and predisposition to buy or pay more. Brand performance programmes help you measure success against these goals.
  • Make your marketing more efficient. Reaching a wider audience and getting your brand messages across is crucial for brand growth. Brand health tracking allows you to monitor your campaigns in market, optimise the mix of ads to maximise reach. This means you can drive brand awareness and recall and improve marketing ROI.
  • Build brand equity. Once you understand your successes and improvement areas, you can identify which activities need a boost to make strategic improvements and build brand equity. Nudge your equity every step of the way – from early awareness, first impressions, and developing associations to lasting brand memories and long-term equity.
  • Give your team’s motivation a boost. When it comes to the success of your brand, there is no upper ceiling. Being able to see and celebrate brand success is essential for boosting team motivation.
  • Thrive during troubled times. We’ve seen a recent spate of job cuts from cost-cutting measures. Marketing 101 says that building a strong brand that people are willing to pay more for and don’t want to give up even under duress, is a better strategy to weather a downturn. The right brand performance programme provides the confidence in knowing you have a strong, differentiated and meaningful brand to stand out from competitors.

Be bold and build better campaigns

It takes courage and vision to increase your marketing spend during an economic downturn. You can start marketing on a budget that works for you with brand monitoring tools.

Brand tracking can be used to drive brand growth.

Prioritising short- and long-term activities

The metrics that brands use allow them to reach their target audience. The metrics are aligned with the goals of the business. If you are a small brand with a tight budget, you should focus on campaigns that create brand awareness and use media that is targeted to your potential customers to generate short term wins. Business objectives should be aligned with your tracking metrics.

The investment in digital marketing is increasing. Brand health tracking can help you find missing opportunities so that you can focus on the right channels. If you allocate the correct amount of marketing spend to these areas, you can avoid spreading your brand budget too thin and slowing your brand growth.

Brand health tracking to modify campaigns

The right brand tracking tools can help brands understand both live and in-market impact. They can modify their campaign approach and make sure their marketing strategy is supported by the content consumers see.

Some of your problems can be solved with real-time data. Knowing what to do and where to modify your campaign is a must for a marketer. The right metrics will be given to you by the brand tracking tools. The signposts you need to allocate your resources can be provided by reliable metrics.

Make your brand budget go further

It's important to make your investment go as far as possible during an economic crisis. It's important to connect your actions from aholistic point of view in order to ensure a seamless campaign.

Brand tracking essentials can help you maximize your marketing spend.

  • Use your brand performance tracking indicators. Prioritise the right indicators such as brand awareness, perception and loyalty and track your brand’s performance in these areas. This will help you to ensure you allocate your brand budget correctly and increase your marketing spend ROI.
  • Don’t underestimate the power of digital marketing. Every part of the consumer experience builds your brand perception. Kantar’s Media Reaction’s 2022 study shows a marked increase in focus on digital marketing over offline marketing. Social media channels offer huge opportunities for brand tracking and managing budgets in real-time. Despite the fast pace and the fact that your brand experience will be competing with many other content sources, digital channels allow you to track campaign reach, how well your consumers engage, and ultimately conversion rates.
  • Don’t underestimate the power of connection. Digital marketing is important. However, connecting emotionally with your consumers is even more important in building your brand perceptions and equity. Brands create value when they create and reinforce these connections in the minds of their consumers. A brand health tracker shows you how well you are building these mental connections and which opportunities to go after.

You have everything you need for marketing on a budget, now. Even in times of economic turmoil, successful brands use the brand tracking and brand guidance systems. Contact us to find out more.