Brand Health: A Beginner‘s Guide + Key Metrics to Track & Tools to Use

How healthy is your brand? It‘s a simple question but one with critical implications for your business. Just like your personal well-being, your brand‘s health needs to be proactively nurtured and monitored to stay in peak condition.

According to research by Bain & Company, brands with superior customer experience bring in 5.7 times more revenue than competitors. On the other hand, it only takes a couple negative articles to lose the trust of 57% of customers.

Clearly, nurturing a strong brand is an investment that pays dividends. But as the media landscape gets more crowded and consumer trust falls, that‘s easier said than done. Marketers need a reliable way to diagnose brand health issues early, before they become brand-killing epidemics.

In this guide, I‘ll share:

• What brand health is and why it matters
• The key metrics you need to be tracking
• Tools to make brand health monitoring easy
• Strategies for proactively managing brand health over time

By the end, you‘ll be equipped to give your brand a complete health screening and treatment plan. Let‘s dive in!

What Exactly is "Brand Health"?

First, let‘s define our key term. Brand health is a measure of how well your brand is positioned to drive long-term growth.

Think of it like your annual physical – a brand health check assesses key vital signs like awareness, reputation, and loyalty to identify any possible issues.

Indicators of a healthy brand include high awareness, a positive reputation, strong differentiation, loyal customers, and the ability to command premium pricing. If your brand is struggling in any of these areas, it may be showing symptoms of ill health.

Why Brand Health Matters

Investing in brand health isn‘t just about vanity metrics – it has a direct impact on your bottom line. Consider:

• Brands with high equity have 3 times better business results (McKinsey)
• 81% of consumers need to trust a brand before buying from them (Edelman)
• 77% of consumers buy from brands who share their values (Havas)

In other words, building a strong, trusted brand leads to better customer acquisition, loyalty, and revenue. It‘s the foundation of long-term growth and profitability.

The 6 Key Metrics for Monitoring Brand Health

Now that we understand why brand health matters, what should we actually be measuring? While there are dozens of metrics you could track, these six provide a robust view of overall brand health:

1. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS measures the percentage of your customers who would recommend your brand to others. It‘s a powerful indicator of customer loyalty and satisfaction.

To calculate NPS, survey your customers on a scale of 0-10: "How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?" Respondents are grouped as follows:

• Promoters (score 9-10) – Loyal enthusiasts who will refer others
• Passives (score 7-8) – Satisfied but unenthusiastic customers vulnerable to competitors
• Detractors (score 0-6) – Unhappy customers who may damage your brand through negative word-of-mouth

Then, subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters to calculate your NPS score. The higher your NPS, the healthier your brand.

According to data from Retently, the average NPS benchmarks by industry are:

Industry	Average NPS
Department/Specialty Stores	58
Tablet Computers	47
Brokerage/Investments	45
Auto Insurance	44
Grocery/Supermarkets	39
Hotels	37
Online Entertainment	36
Shipping/Courier Services	35

Source: NPS Industry Benchmarks from Retently

To measure NPS, I recommend using an NPS survey tool to automate the process of collecting and analyzing feedback. Some popular options include:

• Delighted
• AskNicely
• Promoter.io

2. Share of Voice (SOV)

SOV measures how much of the online conversation around your industry or product category features your brand compared to competitors.

A high SOV is correlated with a high market share, so it‘s a good indicator of brand awareness and visibility. To calculate, use the formula:

Your Brand Mentions / (Your Brand Mentions + Competitors‘ Mentions)

For example, let‘s say your sportswear brand was mentioned 10,000 times online in the last month, and the total mentions for all sportswear brands was 100,000. Your SOV would be 10% (10,000 / 100,000).

I recommend using a social listening tool to track SOV across channels like news sites, blogs, forums and social media. Tools to try include:

• Brandwatch
• Sprout Social
• Mention

3. Brand Reputation

Brand reputation is how positively or negatively your brand is perceived based on what customers are saying about you online. While it‘s a more qualitative metric, reputation directly impacts purchasing decisions.

According to Edelman, 81% of consumers said brand trust is a key factor in their buying decision. And research from Forrester found that a one-star decrease in Yelp rating can lead to a 9% reduction in revenue. In other words, reputation is revenue.

The best way to quantify brand reputation is through sentiment analysis – categorizing the emotion in brand mentions as positive, negative or neutral. Look at the ratio of positive to negative mentions to assess your overall brand sentiment.

Other key indicators of brand reputation to track:

• Star ratings and reviews
• Engagement with and shares of brand content
• Tone and quality of media coverage
• Earned endorsements and accolades

Tools for monitoring brand reputation metrics:

• Brandwatch
• Yext
• Reputology

4. Purchase Intent

Purchase intent measures how likely consumers are to buy from your brand. The higher the purchase intent, the stronger the indicators of future revenue – which is crucial for brand health.

There are a few ways to gauge purchase intent:

• Look at "high-intent" actions on your website like starting a free trial, viewing pricing pages, or adding items to cart. Set up goal tracking in Google Analytics to monitor these actions.

• Analyze branded search volume. An increase in searches for terms like "[brand name] pricing" or "[brand name] reviews" can signal growing purchase intent. Use Google Trends or an SEO tool to track search volume over time.

• Directly survey customers. For example: "How likely are you to purchase from [brand] in the next 3 months?" Responses on a 5-point scale (very unlikely to very likely) can be aggregated into a purchase intent score.

5. Brand Equity

Brand equity is the inherent value your brand name adds to your products or services. High brand equity means customers are willing to pay more for and remain loyal to your brand vs. generic equivalents. Some of the key components:

• Brand awareness – Do people recognize and think of your brand?
• Perceived quality – Is your brand associated with high quality products/services?
• Brand associations – What attributes do people associate with your brand? Are they positive and unique?
• Brand loyalty – How loyal are customers to your brand? Will they switch for a competitor?

While brand equity can be challenging to quantify, there are a couple methods:

1. Estimate the price premium of your products vs. unbranded versions. For example, if your branded t-shirt sells for $25 and a generic equivalent sells for $10, your price premium is $15 or 60%. The higher the premium your brand can sustain, the stronger the brand equity.

2. Survey customers on key brand perceptions. Ask customers to rate statements like:

• I am aware of [brand]
• [Brand] products are high quality
• [Brand] is for people like me
• I would be likely to purchase [brand] over competitors

By tracking these ratings over time, you can quantify shifts in brand equity. Just be sure to use consistent phrasing and a large enough sample size for reliable comparisons.

6. Traffic-Driving Brand Keywords

Branded organic search traffic is a key indicator of brand awareness, reputation and loyalty. After all, people need to know about your brand before they go searching for it.

By tracking the volume of organic traffic your site gets from brand name searches – and the share of your total organic traffic from branded terms – you can gauge the strength of your brand in driving demand.

Use Google Search Console to see the clicks and impressions your site gets for different queries, including branded keywords. Go to the "Performance" report and filter the queries to include your brand name.

I also recommend tracking your rank for key branded terms with an SEO tool. For example, if searches for "[brand name] reviews" have been increasing, you want your own review page showing up first, not third-party sites. Tools to monitor your branded keyword performance include:

• SEMRush
• Moz Pro
• Ahrefs

Improving your branded search performance is key for proactively managing your online reputation. Some quick tips:

• Claim and optimize your Google My Business profile to show up in branded searches
• Create content like reviews, comparisons, and case studies that directly address common purchase consideration searches
• Encourage customers to leave reviews on your own site and third-party sites to ensure fresh, positive branded search results

The Brand Health Tracking Toolkit

As you can see, assessing brand health requires looking at a variety of data sources and metrics. To make brand health monitoring efficient and actionable, you need the right tools for the job.

Here‘s a quick roundup of my recommended brand health tools:

• Social listening & sentiment analysis: Brandwatch, Sprout Social, Mention, Awario
• Review & reputation monitoring: Yext, Grade.us, ReviewTrackers, Reputology
• Survey tools: SurveyMonkey, Qualtrics, SurveyGizmo
• Web analytics: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Mixpanel
• SEO tools: SEMRush, Moz Pro, Ahrefs

The other key to effective brand health monitoring is pulling all your data into a centralized dashboard or report. This allows you to track changes over time, quickly identify red flags, and connect brand health data to revenue and retention metrics.

Most of the tools above have built-in reporting and integration capabilities. You can also build your own brand health dashboard using a tool like Google Data Studio or Tableau.

Conclusion: Your Brand Health Action Plan

We‘ve covered a lot! Let‘s recap the key takeaways for creating your brand health action plan:

1. Monitor the 6 key brand health metrics: NPS, SOV, sentiment, purchase intent, brand equity, and organic traffic from brand keywords.

2. Invest in brand health tools for efficient monitoring, including social listening, reputation monitoring, and web analytics software.

3. Create a brand health dashboard to track changes over time and quickly spot issues.

4. Implement a proactive brand health strategy including regular NPS surveys, responding to all reviews and social mentions, optimizing branded search terms, etc.

5. Measure brand health impact on revenue by connecting brand metrics to sales and retention data. Use cohort analysis to track the LTV of customers with high vs. low NPS and brand sentiment.

Remember, brand health is a long game. It requires consistently delivering on your brand promise and proactively nurturing customer relationships.

But as the data shows, investing in a strong, healthy brand pays off. It builds trust, loyalty and advocacy – which translates into sustainable revenue growth.

Follow this guide to make brand health a priority, and you‘ll build a brand that lasts a lifetime.