Brand: “vibes” or measurable?
For something that drives enormous business value, brand has a surprisingly bad reputation for being “unmeasurable”.
Performance marketing looks tidy. Dashboards, attribution models, neat little conversion paths.
Brand, by comparison, often gets dismissed as “vibes”. Something fuzzy. Harder to pin down. More instinct than evidence.
But brand does leave measurable signals. They just don’t show up neatly inside last-click attribution.
When brand strategy is working, you rarely see one metric suddenly jump. Instead, a few market signals start moving in the same direction. Demand increases. Familiarity grows. Performance marketing starts getting easier.
Brand shows up as changes in market behaviour, not instant conversions.
Here are four signals worth paying attention to.
- Extra share of voice (ESOV). How loud you are compared to how big you are.
If your share of advertising presence is higher than your share of market, research from Binet and Field shows growth becomes more likely over time. If it’s lower, you’re gradually becoming less visible than competitors.
- Share of search. How often people search for your brand compared with competitors.
It’s one of the best modern proxies for brand salience. When share of search rises, it usually means your brand is becoming more mentally available when buyers enter the category.
- Branded search volume. How many people search specifically for your brand name.
Growth here often signals that awareness and consideration are increasing. You’ll typically see the downstream effects later: lower CPAs, higher click-through rates, and faster conversions.
- Price sensitivity. What happens when prices change.
Strong brands reduce price sensitivity. If small price increases don’t significantly reduce demand, brand equity is doing some of the work. If discounting is constantly required, the brand probably isn’t carrying much weight yet.
You’ll usually see these signals show up alongside improvements in performance marketing too. Cheaper clicks. Higher CTR. Faster decision making.
Brand success isn’t invisible. You just have to know which signals to look for.
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This is taken from the weekly email written by one of our directors, Roberto Boi. Every Thursday he shares observations, ideas and perspectives from the work we’re doing day to day at Dilate. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, you can sign up here.
