Branding is more than just color schemes and logos.
Oftentimes, it’s how your business makes a first impression with potential customers. And you know what they say- you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
In a competitive market, taking the time to fully develop your brand will not only help you stand out in the crowd, but it can also give customers a reason to choose (and be loyal) to your company.
But, if you’re not quite sure where your brand stands with consumers it can be difficult to know what you’re getting right and what you’re getting wrong.
That’s where brand insights come into play.
What Are Brand Insights?
In simple terms, brand insights are the result of brand research.
These insights can be related to metrics like brand awareness, brand usage, brand perception, brand preference, brand loyalty, or even your net promoter score (NPS).
But, they aren’t just limited to these common KPIs.
Brand insights can also be derived from the feedback you receive on the messaging or creative elements of your brand, or through research that compares your brand against competitors.
Why Brand Insights Matter
Conducting your own brand research can give you a better understanding of what your target market wants and expects from you.
While helpful at nearly every stage, insights on your branding are crucial early on in your organization's development. Rebranding after you have already established yourself- although totally doable- can be difficult and quite expensive.
As your company grows, brand insights can act as the glue that holds it all together- providing every consumer-facing department with guidelines on the look and feel of your brand. Without limiting creativity, these insights will create parameters for content creation, social media messaging, ad campaigns, and so much more.
Plus, consistently tracking brand health and KPIs that matter most to you will allow you to identify benchmarks and measure your brand’s popularity, loyalty, and usage over time.
How to Effectively Conduct Brand Research
Understanding how the market sees your brand is not as simple as just watching your sales rise or fall.
Conducting effective brand research will give you the opportunity to grow your business consistently and sustainably. Here are a few best practices to get you started:
Set Goals and Metrics Early
Before you start conducting any research, you’ll need to define what exactly you’re hoping to learn. Otherwise, you may end up with a pile of information and no clear way to draw insights from it. Work with your team to define the parameters of your study, the types of data that would be useful, and how you actually plan to implement the insights once you have them. This will save you a lot of time and work on the back end.
Find a (Great) Research Tech Partner
To get your brand research up and running, you’ll need to pick a platform that meets the needs of your current (and future) studies. Finding an option that not only has a wide array of capabilities but also offers support and services is key. And, if you plan on running more complex research studies (now or in the future) like MaxDiff or Conjoint analysis, automation will be incredibly helpful- and will save you a lot of time and stress.
Develop High-Quality Experiments
No matter the kind of brand insights you’re looking to get, surveys will be the foundation of your research. Try to remember, people will be taking time out of their busy days to answer your questions and give you their thoughts. The best way to respect their time is by keeping your survey brief and direct. Check out our blog All About Survey Design, for an in-depth look at building better surveys.
Distill Your Findings into Actionable Insights
Once you’ve got the data, you’re going to want to do a deep dive to find the insights that matter most to your brand. If that sounds difficult and time-consuming- don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be! Using automated tools you can more easily test for significance, find correlations, spot patterns, and segment your respondents by demographic, geographic, behavioral, or psychographic data. After that, you’ll want to be sure that all of your relevant findings are shared with the teams who impact your brand strategy. This will make implementing them much easier.
Get the Brand Insights You Need with SightX
The SightX platform is the next generation of consumer insights tools: a single, unified solution for consumer engagement, understanding, advanced analysis, and reporting. While it's powerful enough for insights teams at leading companies, its user-friendly interface makes it simple for anyone to start, optimize, and scale their research.
Plus, with SightX's research support team you can gain access to the best thinking in the insights field. Our team of in-house experts will guide you through every step in the market research process, from survey scripting to analysis support, and everything in-between.
If you're ready to remove the guesswork from your decision-making. Reach out to the SightX team to get started.
