How to Measure Brand Awareness for a New Brand

Why Measure Brand Awareness?

Brand awareness seems intangible — how do you measure whether people "know" your brand? But awareness directly drives revenue. Customers buy from brands they recognize. Measuring awareness tells you if your marketing is actually building recognition or just burning money.

Types of Brand Awareness

Unaided Awareness (Recall)

When someone thinks of your category, does your brand come to mind without prompting? "Name a brand naming tool" — if they say yours, that's unaided awareness.

Aided Awareness (Recognition)

When shown your brand name or logo, does someone recognize it? "Have you heard of [your brand]?" Recognition is easier to achieve than recall.

Top-of-Mind Awareness

The first brand someone mentions in your category. This is the holy grail — it means you've won the mental real estate battle.

Measuring Awareness: Practical Methods

1. Branded Search Volume

The most direct measure of awareness. If people search for your brand name, they know you exist.

How to track:

• Google Search Console → Search queries containing your brand name
• Google Trends → Your brand name vs. competitors
• Google Keyword Planner → Monthly search volume for your brand name

Benchmark: Track monthly branded search volume and look for growth over time. Compare against competitors.

2. Direct Website Traffic

People who type your URL directly or click a bookmark already know your brand.

How to track:

• Google Analytics → Acquisition → Direct traffic
• Filter out internal traffic for accuracy

Benchmark: Direct traffic should grow as awareness grows. A healthy brand sees 20-40% of total traffic from direct visits.

3. Social Media Metrics

Track brand-specific social signals:

• Follower count and growth rate
• Brand mention volume (tags and untagged mentions)
• Share of voice vs. competitors
• Reach of branded hashtag content

Tools: Native platform analytics, Brand24, Mention, or free Google Alerts.

4. Brand Surveys

The most accurate but most resource-intensive method.

Simple survey approach: Ask a sample of your target audience (not existing customers):

1. "When you think of [category], which brands come to mind?" (unaided)
2. "Have you heard of [your brand name]?" (aided)
3. "Where did you first hear about [your brand]?" (attribution)

Run quarterly to track trends. Use Google Forms + social media distribution for free, or SurveyMonkey Audience for paid panel access.

5. Share of Voice

What percentage of the conversation in your space mentions your brand?

How to calculate: Your brand mentions ÷ Total mentions of all competitors × 100

Tools: Brand24, Sprout Social, or manual tracking via social search.

6. Referral Traffic

When other websites link to you and drive traffic, it means people are talking about your brand.

How to track:

• Google Analytics → Acquisition → Referral traffic
• Identify which sources are driving awareness (press coverage, blog mentions, forums)

7. Earned Media Value

Calculate the equivalent advertising cost of your earned media coverage.

How to estimate: For each piece of media coverage, estimate what equivalent paid placement would cost. A feature article in a publication with 500K readers might be worth $5,000-20,000 in equivalent ad spend.

Setting Awareness Benchmarks

Month 1 (Baseline)

Record your starting point across all metrics. Everything is measured against this baseline.

Month 3

Expect to see initial movement in branded searches and direct traffic if your marketing is working.

Month 6

Social following should show consistent growth. You should have some earned media mentions.

Month 12

Compare all metrics against baseline. Healthy brands see 3-10x growth in branded search volume within the first year.

Awareness Without a Budget

Free tactics that build awareness:

• Consistent content marketing — Blog posts, social content, email newsletters
• Community participation — Genuine engagement in relevant online communities
• SEO — Ranking for industry keywords exposes your brand to searchers
• Partnerships — Co-marketing with complementary brands
• Word of mouth — Deliver exceptional experiences that people talk about

The Name Factor

Brand awareness starts with a name people can remember, spell, and search for. If your brand name is hard to remember, every awareness metric will underperform.

Check whether your brand name is distinctive and available everywhere with BrandScout — because awareness is meaningless if people can't find you when they search.