Conducting market research regularly is crucial for maintaining a competitive edge, keeping the pulse on customer needs, and creating relevant marketing campaigns.
An effective way to accomplish this is with brand tracking studies.
There are many types of brand tracking, whether it be collecting ongoing feedback from customers or measuring the results of a 6-month marketing campaign.
When deciding what type of market research is right for you, consider your audience and goals. These components will serve as an excellent indicator for what approach to take.
To help give more context to different methodologies, our market research company shares 5 types of brand tracking surveys we often recommend.
1. Tracking Customer Feedback
Companies of all shapes and sizes can value from understanding how their buyers evolve and what factors caused the change. Therefore, customer satisfaction surveys have become one of the most popular types of brand tracking.
The greatest example of meeting this objective is the impact of COVID-19. It should be no surprise that how and where people spend their money is drastically different.
For instance, the pandemic has pushed more shoppers online, with e-commerce now accounting for 16.1% of all U.S. sales. For this reason, many brands have focused on growing their websites and digital experience offerings.
Continuous customer feedback surveys can benefit companies to measure in real-time what website changes users like and don't like. Better yet, how those changes have improved sales, site traffic, Google rankings, and more.
To learn more about the value of collecting continuous customer feedback, watch this short video.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Customer tracking surveys measure shifts in buying patterns, preferences, and brand awareness from key markets. Together, these insights identify what factors lead to high and low satisfaction.
2. Tracking Non-Customer Preferences
While conducting tracking research with customers is essential, so is consistently measuring the opinions of non-customers or those in your target demographic.
Let's say you sell iPhone cases. Your target buyer is Millenials and Gen Z.
A non-customer market research study can survey this audience and ask questions such as:
- What brand of iPhone cases are you aware of?
- What brand of iPhone cases do you most prefer?
- What factors go into choosing an iPhone case? ie. price, quality, selection
- Where do you start your search for iPhone cases? ie. Google, Amazon, Target
Brand tracking companies like Drive Research can replicate these questions to be surveyed each month, quarter, or year.
As a result, the iPhone brand can easily change its marketing and sales strategies based on the new and relevant data.
💡 The Key Takeaway: By tracking the buying habits and preferences of non-customers, you are more likely to get ahead of new trends before competitors.
Recommended Reading: How to Survey Non-Customers
3. Tracking Marketing Efforts
Brand tracking studies differ based not only on the type of respondent but also on the objective and goal of the market research.
In fact, my favorite type of brand tracking revolves around a company's marketing and advertising efforts.
The marketing world moves at high speed. What is relevant today will likely be outdated 6-months from now. Therefore, marketing tracking surveys are becoming more pertinent than ever as they are not a one-and-done study.
Marketing teams receive waves of customer insights that they can easily use to evaluate their campaigns' effectiveness. It goes far beyond your standard analytics of link clicks, impressions, and reach.
Instead, tracking research shows how a marketing campaign impacted perception, likelihood to purchase, sources of awareness, and more.
💡 The Key Takeaway: If an advertising campaign resulted in a 2% growth of sales but grew brand awareness by 50%, did the campaign really fail? Perhaps it's more of a slow burn. Marketers can only achieve this type of insight through brand tracker surveys.
4. Tracking Competitor Comparisons
Lastly, tracking surveys are often utilized within a competitor analysis.
Doing so allows businesses to keep tabs on how their competitors make adjustments to service offerings, product upgrades, pricing, marketing efforts, and more. An additional benefit is learning your key differentiators to create a unique selling proposition (USP).
Financial institutions are a great example of a business sector that must constantly keep the pulse on its competitors.
Here's why 👇👇
From past bank and credit union market research studies we've conducted, we know members chose an FI predominantly based on their location and their rates.
So while it's hard to compete with location, tracking local competitor rates is easy to accomplish with secondary research.
For instance, a competitive rate analysis with Drive Research involves researching the rates of pre-determined banks and credit unions in a predetermined market area.
Then, our clients can predict competitive moves and adjustments to rates based on historical tracking.
While competitive brand health tracking is highly effective for banks, it also serves a significant purpose for organizations in all industries.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Brand tracking studies can create a competitive advantage for your organization. Keep up to date on their pricing, marketing, and sales strategies and create better ones.
5. Tracking Employee Feedback
Did you know companies with higher employee engagement strategies enjoy 2X more customer loyalty?
It is true then that employees are an organization's greatest asset. Therefore, keeping employee engagement top of mind is vital in maintaining high retention and productivity.
Employee brand tracking studies allow companies to keep the pulse of how changes with culture, management, compensation, and workload factor into their team's overall satisfaction.
Even using a third party for employee surveys once a year will serve huge dividends than nothing at all.
💡 The Key Takeaway: Employee satisfaction = customer satisfaction. The greatest way to improve retention and team productivity is by surveying employees regularly. Brand tracking only amplifies these results as you can benchmark key data points over time.
Contact Our Brand Tracking Company
Drive Research is a full-service market research company specializing in brand tracking studies. Our team conducts a variety of qualitative and quantitative studies for organizations across the country.
We can deliver regular insights into the ever-evolving attitudes, behaviors, and preferences of your target audience. To learn more about our services, contact Drive Research today!
- Message us on our website
- Email us at [email protected]
- Call us at 888-725-DATA
- Text us at 315-303-2040
Emily Carroll
A SUNY Cortland graduate, Emily has taken her passion for social and content marketing to Drive Research as the Marketing Manager. She has earned certificates for both Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
Learn more about Emily, here.
