Brand Perception: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Measure It

Brand Perception

Think of your favorite brands (besides your own, that is). How do you perceive them? What are your customer expectations when you think about them? What gives you a positive perception of them? These are all factors to consider when thinking about brand perception and customer loyalty. You can use these to help mold how your own customers perceive your brand as well. 

Defining Brand Perception

What types of feelings, attitudes, or emotions does your brand trigger? What experiences do people associate with your brand? Whether you’re confident in your brand’s perception, or a bit worried that some people may have a negative perception of your brand and products, it’s never too late to better understand brand perception and what you can do to create a positive one. 

Brand perception is a vital component of your marketing and branding. Collectively, it’s all the attitudes, feelings, emotions, and customer experiences associated with your services or products. 

A company with a positive brand perception may evoke feelings of happiness or joy whenever a client or customer hears its name. For instance, let’s say you drink the same soda every holiday, and initially, the commercials about happy families enjoying that soda together triggered you to start buying from that company. You have a positive brand perception of that company. 

While you can do your best to expand your customer base and establish a positive brand perception during the marketing process, that isn’t always how it works. The customer is solely responsible for establishing your perception. But, with that said, you can market your products or services to position them in a positive light. You can create commercials, web copy, and other marketing copy that show people using your products happily. By creating a positive perception of your business, you’ll be more likely to gain customer loyalty and encourage positive reviews. 

Everything from your products’ packaging to your social media engagement makes up brand perception. Consumers choose products based on everything from emotional character to aesthetic appeal. Products that target all the criteria are the ones that stand out and create a positive brand perception. 

Changing Perception

Brand perception can change over time. Consider Facebook in 2018. At the time, the company’s social media platform was still thriving, but it took a dip in popularity due to privacy issues and the sharing of misleading or false news stories. In 2022, Facebook rebranded and changed everything from its name to its privacy to what people can share. These changes were an effort to make the general public’s opinion of the company a more positive one.

While we’ve used the term “brand perception” enough and explained the definition, it’s vital to understand why it’s relevant. Your brand perception is how consumers perceive you. It’s influenced by everything from your advertising to a review and everything in between. If consumers view your brand as negative, they’ll automatically look elsewhere. And it often doesn’t take much to influence perception. Therefore, you need to continuously monitor and intervene as necessary in order to establish and maintain a positive brand perception. 

Measuring Brand Perception 

Is there a magic number from one to 100 that you receive for brand perception? Although there isn’t a ranking system, you or your marketing team can conduct research and determine what the overall consensus is about your business. 

Web Monitoring

You may carefully monitor what happens on the web to get an idea of your brand perception. For instance, you could track online mentions and set up Google Alerts to receive notifications instantly.

You could also read online reviews, and use this information to make changes to your business to put it in a positive light if it isn’t already. This is a vital step for any business. 

Social Media Monitoring

Become a social media listener. While it’s not actually talking to you, your profile page is saying a lot. Look at the social media comments, mentions, and hashtags associated with your brand. If you notice anything negative, use it to change your business accordingly. 

Start measuring your pay-per-click ad metrics. See how many people searched for your brand, clicked on your ad, and remained on your page. These are all key parts of measuring brand perception and improving it for potential customers.

Brand Focus Groups and Forums

If you’re still unsure of how people perceive your brand, create a small focus group, either in-person or remotely. You can ask these individuals questions, they can share their opinions and you can use those to determine how the general public sees your business. 

Another method you could use is a simple survey sent to prospective customers and your existing customer base. Once you receive the feedback, you can see what people think about your company and products or services, using the results to improve your brand perception. 

Tracking Brand Perception

Measuring your brand perception isn’t a one-time-only task. It requires you to continuously monitor and identify factors that are altering the perception of your company. While customer loyalty and the number of potential customers you had may have been strong, it can wane over time, requiring you to take action to alter the perception. Some examples of how to gauge your brand perception include the following:

• Research how the primary and secondary target audiences feel
• Conduct a brand audit
• Compare your brand perception against the competition
• Track metrics 
• Monitor customer opinions throughout every stage of the purchasing cycle

Your brand perception can have an immense impact on the number of customers you have, and can even impact customer loyalty. Therefore, it’s vital to receive customer feedback and see if you’re meeting customer expectations and know what’s lacking so you can make the necessary changes to improve your overall brand perception.