Marketing Strategy
The 5 Best KPIs for Measuring B2B Brand Awareness

The 5 Best KPIs for Measuring B2B Brand Awareness

April 27, 2020
3 min read

Brand awareness allows B2B companies and marketers to understand how well their target audience and potential customers know their brand and their specific products or services.

While brand awareness is a critical part of the buyers’ journey, it’s sometimes undervalued because it can be difficult to fully grasp and measure.

Companies with strong brand awareness benefit from increases in revenue in the short-term and improved customer retention in the long-term, because people buy from brands they’re familiar with and trust.

In this post, we’ll review the five best KPIs for measuring brand awareness, so you can better understand how to track your brand awareness goals and know when to adjust your efforts.

1. Direct Traffic

Direct website traffic refers to when people intentionally type your URL into a search engine to visit your website. The amount of direct traffic your website receives is a great way to gauge how your marketing campaigns are influencing people to visit your website.

traffic sources

This metric is especially important because many people discover new brands by using social media, seeing ads, or by directly typing in keywords on Google that relate to your specific brand or product.

When you see an uptick in direct traffic, it means that your brand awareness is increasing.

2. Search Volume

Another potential indicator of your brand awareness is organic search volume, or the number of times people are searching for your brand name, products, website, or blog. One of the best tools you can use to track your brand’s search volume is Google Search Console. This tool allows you to see:

  • Exactly what keywords users are searching to find your brand
  • How many times those keywords have been searched
  • How often users are searching for your brand name directly

If people don’t know that your brand exists, they won’t be able to search for it. Theoretically, then, if the number of searches for your brand and/or products is increasing, so is awareness of your brand.

3. Share of Voice

Share of Voice refers to the percentage of the market your brand owns in comparison to your competitors. It’s another way to measure your brand awareness and determine how much influence you have on the conversations within your industry.

If you have the majority share of voice in your industry, you’ll likely also have more authority and popularity than your competitors.

Calculating share of voice is easy: Divide the metric that you’ve chosen to represent your brand by the total in your industry. Then, multiply that result by 100, and you’ll have your share of voice percentage for that metric.

4. Social Media Engagement and Reach

If you want to measure the impact of your brand on social media, you’ll want to pay attention to engagement metrics, such as likes, comments, and shares. Social media engagement will give you an idea of how your content is being received by your audience, which can provide additional insight into your brand awareness.

You can also get a clearer picture of your company’s reach on social media by paying attention to the insights provided by platforms themselves.

For example, if you have a business account on Facebook or Instagram, you can see exactly how many people each one of your posts has reached. Then, you can use this data to inform your campaigns going forward, as you will know exactly which types of posts are reaching the largest number of people.

facebook reach

5. Mentions

Mentions refers to the number of times your brand is organically mentioned on the internet. This could be in the form of:

    • Articles
    • Tags on social media
    • Mentions of your brand in comments
    • People using your unique hashtags in their posts

A great way to discover mentions of your brand is to use a social media management tool to keep track. By keeping track of your brand mentions, you’ll have a better idea of how many people are aware of your brand. You can even track the sentiment of each mention and use that data to inform future marketing campaigns, customer support, and even products or services.

brand mentions

Start Measuring Your Brand Awareness Today

Your brand awareness—or lack thereof—can directly impact the perception of your brand, revenue, and overall marketing efforts.

Pay attention to these 5 KPIs and test out the tools mentioned to start having a better idea of how aware your target audience is of your brand. Soon enough, you’ll find that your company has a loyal audience that recognizes your unique benefits and chooses your products or services over that of the competition!

Get a Free Consultation
for Content Marketing

Mark Schmukler

Mark Schmukler, CEO and Co-founder of Sagefrog Marketing Group, brings more than 30 years of global marketing and consulting experience to the agency, leveraging his B2B background to lead brand strategy and business development. Headquartered in Doylestown, PA with offices in Philadelphia, Princeton, Boston and Washington, DC, Sagefrog is a top-ranked B2B marketing agency with specialties in healthcare, technology, industrial, and business services. Founded in 2002, Sagefrog’s mission is to accelerate client success through branding and strategy, websites and digital, content and inbound, and traditional marketing services. Visit Sagefrog.com or call 215.230.9024.

Related Posts

Strategy Brand Storytelling: How to Craft & Tell Your Brand Story

Brand Storytelling: How to Craft & Tell Your Brand Story

Jun 14, 2023
24 min read
Content Marketing The 1-2-3 Guide to Content Marketing for Startups [KPIs Included]

The 1-2-3 Guide to Content Marketing for Startups [KPIs Included]

Mar 14, 2024
21 min read
Search Marketing The Best SEO Strategies That Actually Work Today

The Best SEO Strategies That Actually Work Today

Jun 7, 2023
4 min read