Brand Building is Hard to Measure. Here’s How You Do It

Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact

Struggling to measure the impact of your branding and marketing efforts? You're not alone.

Ironically, the more analytics tools we have to measure the success of our marketing efforts, the harder it seems to know what’s actually working. This is especially true of broader brand marketing efforts, which are harder to measure and don’t play nice with our modern measurement platforms that have been optimized for performance and transactional marketing campaigns.

In today’s episode, we dig into:

• Why traditional digital marketing metrics can be misleading

• The trap of vanity metrics (and how to use them effectively)

• The importance of timescale in evaluating your efforts

• How to tie brand building to bottom-line metrics like revenue/fundraising and volunteer recruitment

• Practical strategies for gathering feedback and measuring impact

We also discuss:

→ The power of directional data vs. predictive data

→ Why the simple strategy of just talking to your audience is critical (and often overlooked)

→ How to set up a framework for measuring long-term impact

Brand building is a long game, but it's essential for creating authentic relationships with supporters and driving real change. This episode will give you the tools to start measuring your efforts effectively.

Ready to level up your brand building strategy? Listen to the full episode now.

Episode Highlights

• [00:00] Introduction to the topic of transactional vs. brand-building marketing
• [01:06] Why transactional marketing is easier to measure but lacks long-term depth
• [02:20] The rise of data-driven marketing and the issues with privacy laws
• [03:59] The allure and pitfalls of short-term marketing metrics
• [05:24] Urgent and gamified marketing tactics vs. authentic engagement
• [07:15] Misleading analytics and the complexity of attribution in marketing
• [10:38] Journey mapping and understanding the customer’s path
• [13:00] The importance of long-term brand-building efforts over immediate gains
• [16:39] Engaging directly with your audience as a way to measure brand-building
• [22:06] How to measure impact in brand-building campaigns
• [22:24] Using feedback forms and tracking trends
• [23:09] Breaking down big goals into measurable outcomes
• [24:13] How to track progress in fields where outcomes can take years to manifest
• [25:53] Knowing when to stick with or abandon a strategy
• [27:03] Importance of empathy and adaptability in brand-building efforts

Resources:

• Designing Tomorrow: Season 1 - Episode 04 - We’ve GOT to Stop Marketing Like This.
• Journey Mapping 101 - Sarah Gibbons
• OKRs: the ultimate guide to objectives and key results
• Beyond Aesthetics: The ROI of Brand Building

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Thank you for all that you do for your cause and for being part of the movement to move humanity and the planet forward.

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1. Measuring Success in Brand Building (00:00:00)

2. The Journey of Brand Building (00:09:44)

3. Connecting Brand Building to Business Metrics (00:14:41)

4. Measuring Impact in Brand Building (00:23:02)