If you’re in charge of managing the brand, it’s vital that you know how it’s performing. In this article, we’ll explain what information you should have, how frequently you should gather it, and how to ask your research team to provide it.

Does anyone like you?

That question is at the heart of brand research.

Some people might argue that you can measure this by your monthly sales totals. After all, if people are buying from you, doesn’t that mean that they like you, and that they are fans of your brand?

Up to a point, yes. But the sales figure doesn’t tell you why people buy from you, or how easily they might be swayed by a competitor’s advertising. Nor does it tell you anything about the people who don’t buy from you.

Brand research gives you these answers. It’s important to make sure that you know how many people know about you, what they think about you, and how this compares to the competition.

By monitoring this regularly, you can keep track of any changes (which might result from a new advertising campaign, for example, or from the actions of a new and aggressive competitor) and respond quickly to any threat.

You can also find out what people think about your brand. Once you know this, you can see if their perception of your brand – what it stands for, and what its values are – match the positioning that you’ve tried to create. (You’ll find some help with creating a brand positioning in our article here.)

The two types of brand research that you need

You should get two types of research:

1. A regular snapshot of how many people have heard of your brand. (This helps you to answer questions like “how well is our brand doing, compared to the competition?)
2. A more detailed view of what people think about your brand, and those of your competitors. (This helps you to decide whether you need to change your brand’s positioning.)

The regular snapshot: how many people have heard of you?

Your regular snapshot should answer two questions.

1. How many people have heard of you?
2. How many people would consider doing business with you?

The first question – brand awareness – is usually asked in two ways.

First, it should find out how many people have heard of you without being prompted. This is known as spontaneous awareness. For example, imagine that you work for a bank. A researcher would ask people to list all the banks that they can think of. That’s spontaneous awareness.

Next, the researcher would give the same people a list of banks and would ask them to tick all the ones that they’ve heard of from that list. That’s prompted awareness.

There’s no point in being famous, though, if nobody likes you. So the second question tells you whether people would do business with you. That’s known as consideration.

So basic brand research usually consists of three pieces of data: spontaneous awareness, prompted awareness, and consideration.

You should get a regular update on this, so that you can track your brand’s performance over time. If you’re a large organisation, you should get this every month. If you’re a smaller organisation, you should get this at least once every three months.

The detailed view: what do people think of your brand?

To help you to shape your brand, and to check its health, you’ll need to know what your prospective customers really think about both your brand, and the competition. You need to know what they like about your brand, what they don’t like, and – however much they might claim to like your brand – whether they would still prefer your competitor’s brand, and if so, why.

In short, you need to find out what people think about your brand’s reputation.

You should research this every six months, and you should get the results of the research before you draft your annual brand strategy. (There’s a guide to help you to write a brand strategy here.)

Commissioning the research: how to write the brand research brief

You’ll need to make sure that the research team know exactly what you want, and when you need it by. To make sure that this is really clear, and that there are no misunderstandings, you’ll need to write a brand research brief.

The brief should include six things:

1. A brief overview of any background that the research team might find useful
2. What you want to find out (the objectives of the research)
3. Who you want them to ask (your target audience)
4. Your budget
5. When you’ll need the research to be completed
6. What decisions the research will help you to make.

It’s important to keep this brief as short and as clear as you can, so that your research team is absolutely clear what you want and what they are responsible for delivering.

You can find an example of a brand research brief here.

Get a head-start on your research team: the secrets of getting the best results from your research

You need to be absolutely confident that your research team are delivering the best possible information. If they take any short-cuts, or ask the wrong people, then the strategy that you’ll develop in response to this information will be wrong, with potentially catastrophic results.

So when your research team responds to your brand research brief with a research plan, you’ll need to know how to decide whether it will deliver the quality of insight that you need.

To make sure that you’re fully equipped for this conversation, read our guide “How to make sure that your research team are delivering the best results”.

We deliver clear, accurate brand market research for our clients, and we help them to use this research to make the best business decisions. If you’d like help with crafting a great brand research programme, please get in touch for a chat.