Brand research will provide insights that help manage and grow brands.
Quite simply, brand research is an invaluable tool that always should be part of creating, developing, monitoring and managing brands.
Strong brands regularly conduct research to reap rewards and avoid missteps.
Brand research can help uncover how well you are aligned with your customers’ worldviews and values. It can confirm where you are positioned and whether your marketing and communication efforts have had an impact on the strength and value of your brand.
Brand research can contribute greatly to strategic planning as well as product and program development. It brings clarity and insights to brand perceptions.
Brand research is as important for startup brands that as it is for brands that have been around for decades. If you believe, like many, that knowledge is power, then brand research should be in your toolbox for building a powerful brand.
Brand research methods frequently used.
Whether a brand is being tracked continually or periodically, there a number of tried and true brand research methods that can be used. Some are less expensive and easier to conduct than others. Whatever research method used is almost always dependent on the time and money available. Investing wisely is the key as is gathering information from as many sources as possible.
Brand workshops, focus groups and discovery sessions.
Gathering small groups of people together for a half-day workshop or session usually results in helpful and quite often fascinating qualitative brand insights. We suggest limiting the session time, no more than three hours, and the number of people participating, usually no more than 10. Preparing a discussion document with a series of open-ended questions is a great way to elicit a wider range of feedback that includes opinions, perceptions and feelings. Try to make these sessions lively and interactive to keep people motivated and engaged. Develop worksheets and tools that get participants up and thinking. It also usually a good idea to organize people into peer groups such as senior management, frontline staff, customers, donors and so forth. Having an objective, knowledgeable, independent and diplomatic facilitator is a must to keep things on track.
“Brand research helps in the creation, development and management of strong, vibrant brands.”
Brand surveys, interviews and questionnaires.
Surveys have been around forever and guess what, they still can work like a charm. Whether it’s for brand perceptions, consumer views, awareness, loyalty, media consumption and more, surveys are great for gathering quantitative insights. Surveys can be conducted in person, over the phone, at events, by front-line staff and online using affordable brand research tools like Google Forms and Survey Monkey.
Brand research using social media channels.
Most progressive and digitally brands have some presence on at least a couple of social media channels these days. With billions of people engaged and active on social media, the opportunities to use social channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn for brand research is growing. With advances in machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, the possibilities for rapid data collection using social are now a reality. But even using existing analytics tools can uncover interesting insights. Social media brand research provides access to unprompted feelings and opinions of users, something that quantitative researchers would normally collect through surveys or focus groups. Social media brand research using surveys, questionnaires and more can also help bring clarity and insights to brands.
Common brand research topics.
There is a wide range of brand factors that can be effectively addressed some of the brand research methods mentioned previously. Depending on the maturity, health and strategic objectives of a company, research is a great tool to bring clarity to:
- Brand competitiveness - how well is a brand is positioned for success.
- Brand awareness - what and how much do key audiences know if anything.
- Brand perceptions - what do audiences think about the brand.
- Brand associations - where do audiences place the brand on a continuum.
- Brand experience - do audiences enjoy interacting with the brand.
Where our brand research experience and expertise will help.
Brand research brings clarity and insights into a wide range of brand development and management areas. Quite often the first step is deciding what you want to learn and where that learning will come from. If you’re grappling with brand research goals and questions, we can provide objective guidance on what type of research would be best for you. If you’re looking for an experienced facilitator for a brand workshop, we can help with that too. Let’s start with a conversation.
