--- title: The 3 Research Questions That Predict Brand Growth Better Than Revenue description: Revenue lags brand health. Three survey questions on advocacy, substitutability and customer experience show growth or decline building before sales move. image: https://info.brandhealth.com.au/hubfs/3QuestionsForBrandGrowth.png --- **[![logo](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/hubfs/Imported%20images/Layer_1%20(1).png%3Fwidth=390%26height=50%26name=Layer_1%20(1).png)](https://brandhealth.com.au/)** - [Solutions](https://brandhealth.com.au/brand-research-solutions/) - [Pricing](https://brandhealth.com.au/brand-research-pricing/) - [Resources](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/) - [Contact](https://brandhealth.com.au/contact-brand-research-experts/) - [Login](https://app.brandhealth.com.au/user/login/) ![arrow-right](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/hubfs/raw_assets/public/Brand_Health_April2024%20Theme/images/arrow-curve-right.svg) [Book A Free Consultation](https://brandhealth.com.au/free-consultation/) # The 3 Research Questions That Predict Brand Growth Better Than Revenue ** 8 min Share - [**](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/the-3-research-questions-that-predict-brand-growth-better-than-revenue) - [**](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/the-3-research-questions-that-predict-brand-growth-better-than-revenue) *Revenue tells you what has already happened. Three survey questions can show the pressure building underneath it, often while the sales figures still look healthy.* ## Key takeaways 1. **Revenue is a late signal.** Customers keep buying out of habit and convenience after their opinion of a brand has started to slip, so sales can hold up while preference weakens. 2. **Advocacy beyond the inner circle shows energy, not just satisfaction.** Recommending a brand to an acquaintance takes more confidence than recommending it to a friend. 3. **Substitutability shows whether you own customers or rent them.** Asking what people would do if the brand disappeared reveals who they really see as the alternative. 4. **Read the three together, and over time.** No single score settles anything. Sustained movement against the brand's own history is the signal. Most marketing leaders know the gap between brand health and sales. A brand can keep growing revenue for a year or more on the strength of distribution, promotion and habit while the reasons people choose it are wearing away. By the time revenue falls, the cause is usually well established and slow to reverse. The opposite happens too. A brand closing unprofitable stores or dropping a weak channel can report falling revenue while its core customers are more committed than ever. Read on revenue alone, the healthy brand looks weak and the weakening brand looks healthy. The research that closes that gap does not need to be elaborate. Three questions, asked of the right people at regular intervals, show much of what revenue cannot. None of them is new on its own. What matters is asking them consistently and reading them together. ## Why revenue is a late signal Customers rarely leave a brand the moment it disappoints them. Habit, convenience and the effort of switching create inertia, so behaviour lags opinion. A customer who has started to think a brand is overpriced, or that its service has slipped, may keep buying for months before an alternative gives them a reason to move. The same lag runs the other way. Les Binet and Peter Field's work for the IPA, *The Long and the Short of It*, found that the effects of brand building accumulate over years, while the effects of sales activation are strong but short-lived. A brand's strength is built, and lost, more slowly than a quarterly sales report can show. That is why the most useful brand questions are the ones that measure intent and attachment, not just recent behaviour. ## Question one: would you recommend us beyond your usual circle? **"Would you recommend \[brand\] to someone outside your usual circle, such as a colleague or an acquaintance?"** This is a deliberate variation on the standard recommendation question. Recommending a brand to a close friend is easy, because a friend will forgive a bad recommendation. Recommending it to a colleague or acquaintance puts the respondent's own judgement on the line, so it takes genuine confidence. The answer measures something closer to energy than to satisfaction. We set out [why a recommendation score alone can mislead](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/nps-the-most-overrated-metric-in-brand-tracking) in a separate article. The distinction matters because satisfied customers stay, but energised customers recruit. A brand where satisfaction is high and this measure is low has customers who are happy to keep buying but unwilling to put their name to it. That pattern often points to a value problem: people like the product but do not think it is worth the price they would be asking someone else to pay. **How to read it.** Ask it of recent customers and active considerers, not only of loyal customers. Track the share who would recommend, and watch its direction across waves rather than its level in any one. ## Question two: if we disappeared tomorrow, what would you do instead? **"If \[brand\] disappeared tomorrow, what would you do instead?"** This question strips away politeness and asks about substitutability directly. The answers tend to fall into three groups, and the mix between them is the finding. - **"I would be stuck" or "I would wait for you to come back."** These customers see no acceptable substitute. This is the clearest sign of genuine differentiation. - **"I would switch to \[named competitor\]."** These customers see the brand as interchangeable. When this group is large, price becomes the main lever, and competitors can take share by undercutting. - **"I would do it a different way" or "I would not bother."** These customers are telling you the competition is not another brand but another solution, or doing without. That is a category relevance problem, not a brand problem. The question is valuable because it shows the competitive set customers actually see, which is often not the one the business assumes. *As a hypothetical illustration:* a meal kit brand might expect customers to name other meal kits, and find instead that most would go back to cooking from free recipes online. Its real competitor would then be free content, and its case to customers would rest on time saved rather than on variety. **How to read it.** Weight answers by customer value, because a small share of high-value customers who would be stuck can matter more than a large share of occasional ones. Track the mix over time. A rise in "do it a different way" suggests a new alternative is emerging. Competitor mentions concentrating on one name suggests that competitor is gaining strength. ## Question three: what would you tell your replacement about working with us? **"What would you tell your replacement about working with \[brand\]?"** For business-to-business brands, this question gets at the knowledge clients carry about what it is really like to deal with a supplier. For consumer brands, it adapts easily: "What would you tell a friend using \[brand\] for the first time?" Either way, it bypasses what customers think they ought to say and captures what they actually experience. Listen for three things in the answers. - **Workarounds.** "Always call, the website never works" or "Allow extra time for revisions" describe friction customers tolerate today and may not tolerate tomorrow. - **Emotional language.** "They genuinely care" suggests a strong connection. "They are fine" suggests a brand that could be replaced without much thought. - **Generic descriptions.** A customer who describes the brand only in category terms, "they are a supplier", sees it as a commodity. One who describes a role, "they are part of how we run", sees it as embedded. **How to read it.** Code the answers for specific friction points and specific moments of delight, and track the balance between them over time. Sentiment scoring alone can mislead: "fantastic, but impossible to reach on weekends" reads as positive and describes a real risk. ## Reading the three together Each question answers part of the picture. Together they suggest where to act. **Strong advocacy and low substitutability** describe a brand with pricing power. Customers recruit others and see no easy alternative. **High substitutability alongside a positive experience** describes a brand customers like but would leave for a better offer. The priority is differentiation, so the experience they value becomes something competitors cannot easily copy. **Weak advocacy with rising friction** describes a brand whose experience is costing it. Spending on acquisition before fixing the friction tends to fill a leaking bucket. There is no fixed threshold that applies across categories. **Set expectations from the brand's own history and a category benchmark, and treat sustained movement across two or more waves as the signal**, not a single result. ## Measuring them well **Ask the right people.** Include current customers, recent lapsed customers and active considerers in the category. Leave out people who never buy in the category, because their answers dilute the signal. **Use samples large enough to see change.** As a matter of arithmetic, a sample of 400 carries a margin of error of roughly plus or minus 4.9 points at 95 per cent confidence on a result near 50 per cent. A movement smaller than that between two waves may be noise. **Match the cadence to the rate of change.** These measures move over quarters, not weeks. A thorough annual study with a lighter mid-year read is usually enough, and monthly measurement mostly adds noise, as we set out in [always-on brand tracking](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/why-we-fired-our-always-on-tracker-and-went-back-to-annual-research). **Keep them alongside the core measures.** These questions sit next to awareness, consideration and preference rather than replacing them. The standard set is covered in [brand health metrics](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/brand-health-metrics). ## Frequently asked questions **Can three questions replace a brand tracker?** No. They add forward-looking signals that standard trackers often miss, but they work best alongside the core funnel measures. Awareness and consideration show whether a brand is in the running. These three questions show whether the customers it already has are likely to grow it or leave it. **How quickly do these measures move?** Usually over quarters rather than weeks, unless something significant happens, such as a service failure, a price change or a new competitor. That is why the direction across several waves matters more than any single result. **Do the questions work for business-to-business brands?** Yes, and often better, because business buyers tend to have clear views on substitutes and on the friction of working with a supplier. The third question in particular suits business buyers, who are used to briefing colleagues on how to deal with a supplier. ## Measure what is coming, not only what has happened Revenue will always be the number the board watches. It is also the last number to move. The brands that see trouble, or opportunity, early are the ones that measure what customers intend and feel while their behaviour still looks unchanged. Three well-chosen questions, asked of the right people and read together over time, give that early view at modest cost. Brand Health designs brand research programs that put forward-looking measures alongside the core funnel, so marketing leaders can act before the sales figures force them to. [Schedule a free 30-minute consultation to discuss which forward-looking measures your brand should be tracking.](https://brandhealth.com.au/free-consultation/) *Tom Morris is the Managing Director of Brand Health, an Australian brand research consultancy. He works with senior marketing leaders to design measurement programs that connect brand performance to commercial outcomes.* Share - [**](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/the-3-research-questions-that-predict-brand-growth-better-than-revenue) - [**](https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/the-3-research-questions-that-predict-brand-growth-better-than-revenue) # Let us be your guide Discover how Brand Health can help you unlock insights to drive your brand's growth! [Get Started](https://brandhealth.com.au/free-consultation) ## Related posts #### [Your Brand Has Two Audiences. Your Tracker Reports One](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/multi-sided-brand-awareness-measurement) Why businesses that depend on several separate groups keep reporting a single awareness figure that describes none of them. [Read More »](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/multi-sided-brand-awareness-measurement) #### [How to Run a Brand Equity Stress Test](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/brand-equity-stress-test) What to ask, how to isolate one asset from the rest, and what the results license you to do differently. [Read More »](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/brand-equity-stress-test) #### [Awareness Asymmetry: What Not-for-Profit Brand Data Hides](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/not-for-profit-brand-awareness-asymmetry) A single awareness figure can look healthy and still describe none of the audiences a purpose-led organisation depends on. [Read More »](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/not-for-profit-brand-awareness-asymmetry) #### [How to Choose a Market Research Agency in Australia](https://info.brandhealth.com.au/blog/how-to-choose-market-research-agency-australia) The shortlist is the last decision, not the first. What to settle before you contact anyone. 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