Do you know what your customers think about your brand, what it stands for and what values they associate with it?
Regardless of what you think about your brand and its values, it is what your external audiences think that matters.
Brand Perception Surveys help you understand how your brand is perceived in the mind of customers, prospects, employees and other stakeholders.
Simply, a brand is an idea connected to your product:
- Simple + computer = Apple
A brand becomes a shortcut to decision making for customers – they know what kind of experience they are going to get when they buy your product or service. Or they should.
Brand perception studies track how well consumers are accepting the ideas you try to associate with your brand.
The human factors that help create affinity to your brand can be identified as:
- Cognitive – what they think about your brand
- Emotional – how they feel about your brand
- Language – how they talk about your brand
- Action – what experience they have of your brand
Qualitative studies such as focus groups help you to explore your brand with your target audiences. You might ask questions such as:
- When you think of X brand what do you think of first?
- How does the X brand make you feel? Why is that?
- Describe X brand to a friend – what key words would you use?
In larger quantitative studies such as online surveys, you may ask a mixture of open and closed questions:
- Which of the following words would you use to describe X brand?
- Which of the following emotions do you feel when you experience this brand?
- How attached do you feel to X brand?
Such measurement helps you understand how effective your marketing is but also how closely the whole customer experience is aligned to your brand values. How simple is it to buy an Apple Computer? How simple or easy is it to get support?
If you conduct brand perception at least annually, you can measure the strength of your brand and your customers’ loyalty and affinity to it.
Those companies who live up to their brand “promise” are those who regularly satisfy, delight and retain their customers.
If you want to know more about Brand Perception Surveys or have a project in mind, then please contact us, we’d love to hear from you.
