The best brand management tools

What is your brand?

No, it’s not your logo, your product, or your tagline. Your brand is all about consumers. What do they know (or think they know) about your company? How do they perceive you? Do they hold you in high or low esteem? The way people view your company—and whether or not they recommend you to their friends—is your brand.

That’s where brand management comes in. Brand management is the process of maintaining, improving, and upholding your brand image and ultimately remaining a consumer favorite. That means your brand strategy involves targeting the right consumers at the right time (in the right way and the right place)—and staying on their good side through advertisements, incentives, goodwill, and more.

And the best brand managers and marketers assess whether their brand strategy is working by conducting brand research surveys, which help them keep track of how consumers view their brand.

There are five major areas of brand management that you can measure through brand research surveys:

Brand Awareness. Use brand awareness surveys to find out if consumers are familiar with your brand using brand recall and brand recognition questions. When you include demographic questions in brand awareness surveys, you can find out who’s aware of your brand (and who’s not) so you can find your target market and customer base.

Brand Attribute Research. A brand attribute research survey helps you determine what characteristics consumers associate with your brand (and your competitors’ brands). This can inform your brand strategy because you can position your brand advertisements according to what people expect of your brand–and you can try to change how consumers see your brand if you aren’t happy with the way they view it now.

Brand Loyalty. Use brand loyalty surveys to see if consumers trust your brand, think it’s reliable and appropriate for them, and whether or not they hold your brand in high esteem. Consumers who have faith in your brand and think it’s good for them tend to stay loyal, so use this brand survey to identify your target market–and troubleshoot your brand image.

Brand Tracking. When you want to form a brand strategy around brand advertising, use a brand tracking survey to learn if your ads are making an impact on consumers. Brand tracking research is useful because you can ask questions that take the pulse of how consumers view your brand—and how likely they are to purchase your product or service—before you launch a new ad campaign. After you’ve exposed consumers to your ad, you should survey them again to see if your brand advertisements has yielded positive or negative results. Use brand tracking surveys often to keep an eye on how you’re faring with consumers over time.

Although there are many ways perform brand research surveys, here are the three most common survey methods that marketers use:

Brand Equity Ten: This method measures 10 attributes in order to assess the strength of a brand. Attributes include differentiation, satisfaction, perceived value, market share, and brand awareness.

Brand Equity Index: This method is an index of brand equity as a product of three factors: effective market share, relative price, and brand durability.

Conjoint Analysis: Conjoint analysis is used to measure consumers’ preference for various attributes of a product, service, or provider to gain insight into consumers’ valuation of a brand.

Because your brand strategy relates to how, where, when, and to whom you’re marketing your brand, any of these methods can help you with brand management. Just make sure that you’re consistent, survey often, and listen to consumers—they’re the ones who have the final say when it comes to customer satisfaction and your success.

For more ways to manage and strengthen your brand, visit our Branding and Brand Identity resource page where you’ll find articles, expert-certified branding survey templates, and more.