We get it. The sheer amount of data and metrics you have to sift through on a day-to-day basis can be overwhelming. However, understanding key performance indicators (KPIs) in your brand marketing is paramount for achieving visibility and growth.
Below is a comprehensive list of essential brand metrics and a short overview of which ones you should be tracking.
Sound good? Let’s get straight into it.
What are brand metrics?
Brand metrics are indicators of brand health, the strength of your brand in buyers' minds, measured over time rather than at a single moment. They sit apart from performance metrics like clicks, conversions, and sales.
Performance metrics tell you what happened last week. Brand metrics tell you why it happened, and what's likely to happen next.
The distinction matters because roughly 95% of your potential buyers aren't in the market on any given day, a pattern the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute calls the 95/5 rule. Brand metrics measure the memory you're building in those out-of-market buyers now, which determines whether you get picked when they finally do buy.
What are the four types of brand metrics?
Brand metrics fall into four groups, moving from the top of the funnel (do people know you?) to the bottom (do they champion you?).
1. Brand awareness metrics
These measure whether people know and recall your brand at all, the base layer of brand health.
2. Brand perception metrics
These measure how people feel about your brand and what they associate with it.
3. Brand loyalty metrics
These track how consistently consumers choose your brand over others and their long-term commitment.
4. Brand Advocacy Metrics
These indicate how strongly your audience supports and spreads positive word-of-mouth about your brand.
What's the difference between awareness and salience?
Awareness asks "do you know us?" Salience asks "do you think of us when it's time to buy?" Awareness is recognition. Salience, also called mental availability, is the broader, more commercially useful concept: how readily your brand comes to mind across real buying moments.
Most brand metrics feed into salience, and salience is the strongest single predictor of growth. For the full picture, see our deep dives on brand salience and top-of-mind awareness.
Which brand metrics should you track?
Not all of them. The metrics worth your attention depend on how big your brand already is, because a brand with 2% of the market has a completely different job than one with 40%. Chasing loyalty metrics before you have awareness is a common, expensive mistake.
If you want a simple overview of the info below, check out our brand tracking cheatsheet.
Starting brands
- What counts as a starting brand: market penetration is less than 2%
- What you should try to achieve: convert customers who are actively looking for a solution (usually by targeting them with performance marketing).
- Metrics to monitor: category size
- Why should a starting brand track category size: tracking category size helps a starting brand understand the overall market potential and identify opportunities for growth. By knowing the size of the category, the brand can assess its market share and set realistic targets for expansion.
Small brands
- What counts as a small brand: market penetration is between 2% and 10%
- What you should try to achieve: raise awareness about your brand or product.
- Metrics to monitor: brand awareness, brand emotion
- Why should a small brand track brand awareness: brand awareness is crucial for a small brand as it determines the level of recognition and familiarity among consumers. By tracking brand awareness, a small brand can measure the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns and initiatives in reaching its target audience.
- Why should a small brand track brand emotion: tracking brand emotion enables a small brand to understand the emotional connection consumers have with its brand or product. Emotions play a significant role in consumer decision-making and influencing brand preference.
Medium brands
- What counts as a medium brand: market penetration is between 10% and 30%
- What you should try to achieve: be a salient brand in the selected category entry point (CEP).
- Metrics to monitor: brand salience, brand associations
- Why should a medium-sized brand track brand salience: brand salience reflects the brand’s prominence and top-of-mind awareness among consumers within its chosen category entry point (CEP). For a medium-sized brand, being salient in the CEP is crucial for maintaining competitive advantage and driving consideration and purchase intent.
- Why should a medium-sized brand track brand associations: brand associations represent the attributes, values, and characteristics linked to the brand in the minds of consumers. For a medium-sized brand, tracking brand associations is essential for shaping brand identity and differentiation.
Large brands
- What counts as a large brand: market penetration is above 30%
- What you should try to achieve: be a salient brand in the strongest category entry points (CEP) of the entire category.
- Metrics to monitor: mental market share (salience across multiple category entry points), brand associations
- Why should a large brand track mental market share/brand salience: by monitoring mental market share, the brand can assess its position relative to competitors and identify opportunities to strengthen its presence in strategic CEPs. It enables the brand to allocate resources effectively, prioritize marketing initiatives, and adapt its strategies to reinforce salience where it matters most.
- Why should a large brand track brand associations: for a large brand, monitoring brand associations allows for identifying strengths to leverage and weaknesses to address. It enables the brand to align its messaging and experiences with its desired positioning, fostering deeper connections and resonance with consumers.
How do you measure brand metrics?
You measure brand metrics with a mix of behavioral signals you already have and dedicated tracking that fills the gaps. In practice there are five common methods, from lightest to most complete.
- Web analytics — branded search traffic as a rough, free directional signal.
- Share of search — a cheap competitive benchmark that tracks closely with salience.
- Social listening — a live read on mentions and sentiment, but skewed to people who already follow you.
- Survey research — representative recall and recognition data; deep, but often slow and hard to act on.
- Brand tracking — ongoing measurement of recall, associations, and emotion over time, so you see shifts as they happen.
The first four give you signals. Brand tracking is the only one that measures the memory structures behind buying continuously, which is what lets you connect a metric shift to something you actually did.
What does Behavio measure, and how?
Behavio is a behavioral brand tracking platform that focuses on the metrics that predict growth, and tells you what to do next about them.
It measures brand awareness, salience, emotion, and associations, continuously, on a nationally representative sample rather than your own customer list.
The method is what makes it different. Instead of asking people to rate brands from a list (which they're bad at), Behavio uses implicit testing, measuring how fast people link your brand to a need or occasion. Fast associations are the ones that drive real choice.
See where your brand stands, and what to do next.
Behavio tracks the brand metrics that predict growth, on a representative sample, with your first results within just 14 days. Not a report to decode, a clear read on where to grow. Book a demo.
Frequently asked questions
It depends on your brand’s stage. Awareness and salience are critical early on; emotion, loyalty, and advocacy matter most once your brand matures.
Ideally, every quarter. This helps you spot trends and measure the long-term impact of brand campaigns.
Brand health metrics track perception and equity, while performance metrics focus on sales and conversions. Both are essential for full-funnel marketing insight.
