Branding can be measured: How to document the effect on your performance
Within digital marketing, there is often a sharp divide between branding and performance marketing. While performance efforts can quickly be documented in the form of direct conversions and ROAS, branding activities are sometimes overlooked because they can be harder to isolate in classic last-click models.
The challenge arises when you try to measure brand activities with the same lens and tools used to measure performance. Branding should not be measured like performance – it should be measured by its long-term effect on performance.
When the branding effort works optimally, it builds mental availability and trust in the market. In practice, this means that your conversions on tactical channels become cheaper, and your overall business becomes significantly more stable.
7 KPIs to document the value of your brand investments
To get a true picture of how your brand activities are moving the business, it is necessary to look at a broader range of metrics.
Here are the 7 KPIs that map the value of your branding:
This is one of the most direct indicators of increased awareness. When the number of users searching specifically for your brand name in Google rises, it reflects increased mental availability. This traffic is organic, has a high conversion rate, and does not incur cost-per-click on generic keywords.
Share of Search measures your brand's share of total searches within your specific industry or category. Data shows a close correlation between a brand's Share of Search and its actual market share over time. An increase here is an early sign of market growth.
A strong brand creates trust. When your brand is well known, you will often find that conversion rates increase across Google Ads, Paid Social and organic results alike. Trust is already established in advance, increasing the likelihood that users will choose your brand over a competitor's.
This KPI measures how quickly a user moves from the first touchpoint to the final purchase or sign-up. Branding helps shorten the decision-making process, because the customer does not need to spend time researching your credibility as a company.
The media market is characterised by increasing competition and fluctuating cost-per-click. A strong brand acts as a buffer; it secures a higher share of direct and branded traffic, keeping the average cost per conversion stable – even when auctions on generic keywords become more expensive.
Baseline revenue is the revenue your business generates if all paid performance ads are turned off. A continuous increase in this fixed baseline is the strongest proof of a healthy and independent brand.
By measuring incremental value, you ensure that your brand efforts actually bring new customers to the business and expand the market, rather than simply redistributing existing demand.
The single most important task for you as a marketing manager or business owner is to verify that your chosen third-party tool supports the fundamental requirements from Google Search Central.
You need to be 100% certain that the platform has full control over the four areas above.
The bottom line: The connection creates the effectiveness
If the effect of marketing is evaluated solely on the last click, branding activities in isolation will often appear costly. If the efforts are instead assessed on their ability to lift overall effectiveness across channels, it becomes clear that performance and branding are prerequisites for each other.
A strong brand paves the way for the performance budget to be executed more efficiently, and ensures a healthier business in the long run.
