Brand Marketing: A Guide to Under-used Inexpensive KPIs that Deliver Actionable Insight

Growing your brand on a tight budget doesn’t mean sacrificing high-quality insights. By focusing on the right data, you can make strategic decisions that grow your brand without unnecessary spending. Focus areas include Brand Awareness, Brand Perception, and Brand Affinity.

Building a Data-Driven Culture

The first step is getting your team comfortable with the data. Creative people often like to lead with their personal experience and insights. It is important to recognize these insights, especially from team members who have been working in the industry. Including data in the mix spurs creativity and helps teams focus their effort. When data becomes part of everyday decision-making, your business becomes more agile and informed, even without high-priced software.

Cost-effective KPIs for Brand Awareness include

Brand Search Terms: Are people searching for you or your product? Is this number going up? Keep an eye on your brand search terms in Google. This is a strong indicator of growing brand awareness.

Social Community Growth: Add up all the followers on your social media channels and chart this number over time. The change will give you good information about your brand’s awareness and what type of community is connecting with you.

PR Reach: It is relatively inexpensive to issue press releases where you will spend hundreds of dollars to reach millions of people. Every wire release will give you a “Potential Reach” or “Reach” number. This is the number of people who may potentially see your release. Track this number over time and see its impact on brand search terms and other KPIs here.

Inexpensive KPIs for Brand Perception include

Customer Service Calls and Email: This is another good number to watch. When calls increase, it’s crucial to identify the root cause—whether it’s a product issue, confusing instructions, or something else. An increase in calls is often a leading indicator of bigger problems. 

Customer reviews: To get the most out of this one requires a bit of work. Group the reviews by rank to see trends. If anyone has left a comment, read them! Even just thanking people for their reviews goes a long way to improving your perception. 

KPIs for Brand Affinity

Sentiment: Social media channels often provide sentiment numbers and this can also be gleaned from the reviews mentioned above. Track these numbers over time to identify which activities are delighting your customers.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): This number is most easily attained by companies that sell a lot of products and can be asked a couple of weeks after a product is delivered. NPS asks customers how likely they are to recommend your business and is a great indicator of your brand’s affinity.

Social Engagement: This is just the sum of likes, shares, comments, and follows from your social media. When sentiment is positive and this number is increasing, you are doing the right things to increase your brand affinity.

KPIs that everyone on your team should know

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is key to understanding how much you’re spending to bring in new customers. By dividing your total marketing and sales costs by the number of new customers, you get a clear picture of efficiency. Use internal data and free tracking tools to keep tabs on this.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Knowing the long-term value of your customers helps prioritize retention efforts. Calculate CLV by multiplying the average purchase value by the purchase frequency and average customer lifespan. This metric is crucial for long-term planning.

These KPIs are all about making the most of what you have. They’re powerful, insightful, and—most importantly—don’t require a big budget. Which KPIs are driving success at your company?