• by Scott Jones , Op-Ed Contributor, November 5, 2014

Wouldn’t it be great if brand equity could be measured daily, like the Dow Jones Industrial Average, instead of on a quarterly, or bi-annual basis? Imagine the decisions that could be made by being able to correlate current marketing activities to movement in brand equity. Although not possible historically, due to the analog nature of classic brand equity studies, by focusing on digital channels, marketers have an opportunity to improve the speed of their learnings and, ultimately, the impact of their efforts. 

The first step to establishing a more real-time view into brand equity is to develop a standardized approach to measurement, analysis, and reporting. Based in modern technology, and guided by nimble processes, a strong performance measurement strategy should define language, terminology, categorization, and context for an organization. That way apples are always apples, oranges are always oranges, and internal teams, as well as external partners, are certain to be on the same page.

With a strong foundation in place, marketers can then move onto identifying their brand equity raw materials: data sources and data sets. These can generally be organized into two categories: traditional / offline and digital / online.

Traditional / offline

A combination of internal sales and revenue data and benchmarking data provided by market research firms such as Nielsen, Kantar Media, Ipsos, and GfK, traditional / offline data usually focuses on financially-oriented brand equity measures. Some examples include:

• Revenue and profitability

• Customer acquisition and retention costs

• Market share (% gross sales for product category)

• Share of shelf with respect to certain retail verticals (e.g. supermarket chains, drugstores etc.)

• Share of voice with respect to mass media advertising viewership and reach

• Competitive advertising spend data

Digital / online

Historically the domain of panel-based surveys, digital / online data provides visibility into strength- and consumer-based brand equity measures. Some examples include:

• Share of web visits (comScore, Hitwise, Alexa, etc.)

• Share of social engagement and buzz (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc.)

• Share and ranking of organic and paid SERP (search engine results page) (The Search Monitor, Conductor, Google Trends, etc.)

• Share of display (banner) ad placement and exposure (Moat, comScore, etc.)

• Awareness and sentiment (Various social listening tools)

With both classes of data connected, marketers have the ability to get a daily view of brand equity. But the real value comes when marketing campaign performance data is also part of the equation. This third component, which is collected from marketing execution systems, opens up the ability to connect marketing efforts with brand equity. As campaigns are executed (or modified), marketers have the ability to assess brand equity impact in addition to more standard metrics such as impressions, engagements, clicks, and reach. I’ve seen this in action. I’ve seen the ‘a-ha’ moments as marketers get immediate feedback on their programs and make subsequent optimization decisions, such as moving spend from country to country, channel to channel, or network to network...its’ something they’ve never had before and they love it.

Although still not perfect, and subject to similar challenges related to biases, using digital channel measurement provides a much broader and more up-to-the-minute view into brand equity. In a business environment where each percentage point of brand equity relates to billions of dollars of brand value, companies need to think hard about how they track brand equity and connect it to marketing effort.