There are a variety of ways to measure brand awareness, but one of the most reliable is to develop a brand survey that can be sent to consumers in your target audience. The feedback gathered from brand awareness survey questions will allow you to determine how well people know your brand.
There are a plethora of questions that can be used to measure brand awareness, however we have selected our top 5 most useful brand awareness survey questions that you should ask in your next brand research study.
When consumers think about brands in your industry, what are the first that come to mind? What other brands do they remember?
Unaided brand awareness is a measure of the number of people who remember a brand without any visual or audio prompting. First brands mentioned are a key indicator for likely purchase choice, as these are also likely to be the first brands thought of when a person wants to donate.
This must be asked as an open-ended question, meaning the respondent will need to write their answers in a text box, without any prompting.
Question Example:
What brands of (e.g. fast food) are you aware of? (Type in all the (e.g. fast food) brand names you can think of)
Aided brand awareness (or brand recognition) is used to determine whether an audience has any knowledge of a brand’s existence when prompting the brand’s name. When consumers are shown a list of brands, which of these do they recognise?
People are likely to know more than one brand name on any list they are shown, therefore this type of question needs to be set up as ‘multi-response’, allowing the selection of more than one answer option.
Question Example:
Which of the following (e.g. fast food) brands have you heard of before today?
Which brands have people heard something about recently (whether through the news, through advertising or talking to friends and family).
This is an important metric to measure frequently, to see whether brands are being noticed. It is also worth measuring brand attention for your competitors, to compare your performance.
Brand buzz can be positive for the brand or negative, so you must ask people how they feel about what they have heard. This can be included as a follow up question.
Question Example:
A. Which of the following brands have you heard something about in the last month? (e.g. in the news, in advertising or through friends and family)
B. Was what you heard about each of these brands POSITIVE or NEGATIVE?
Where have consumers heard about your brand or where have they seen it advertised in the last 12 months?
It is important to understand which marketing activities are having the greatest impact so you can adjust your marketing spend accordingly. For instance, do consumers have high levels of awareness of your latest TV advertisement? Is your social media campaign creating the buzz you expected?
Again, people may have seen or heard about your brand from multiple sources, so this question will need to be set up as a ‘multi-response’, allowing the selection of more than one answer.
Question Example:
Please indicate where you have seen or heard about the following (e.g. fast food) brands in the past 12 months?
How well do consumers think they know your brand? The more familiar consumers are with a brand, the more likely they are to choose that brand when making a purchase.
Brands with little to no familiarity amongst consumers are less likely to be noticed and included in a consumer’s consideration set.
This question can either be set up to ask about one specific brand. Or if you would like to ask about many brands, the question can be built into a grid format.
Although it may seem obvious, when setting up question logic, it’s important to only allow the selection of one answer choice, as someone cannot, for example, be ‘extremely familiar’ and ‘not so familiar’ with the same brand.
Question Example:
How familiar would you consider yourself to be the (e.g. MacDonalds) brand?
These are some of the most commonly used brand awareness survey questions and are a good starting point for measuring your brand awareness. If you would like to learn more about measuring your brand, get in touch with our team today. Our Brand Health team are research experts and can help guide you in building a successful brand research program.