What it is?
Brand research is a branding effort to assess and convert a regular business into a brand with the help of formal data and empirical study.
Some interesting stats.
86% of consumers like to business with brands who generate authenticity. [1]
81% of consumers believe trust is the driving factor to pick one brand above another. [2]
First impression is the key to branding. It takes 0.05 seconds for customers to form an opinion about your brand. [3]
Understanding brand research with implementations
How do you want to be known as? A brand that sells and serves, or the brand that sells and disappears? Every narrative, image, & characteristics that revolve around your business and how your customers perceive them should be a part of brand research. You want to create and manage perception around your brand because it can help drive business and brand value.
For example, Clothing retailer 'GAP' conducted a brand research survey in 1969 to learn how the buyers perceived it. Most of the buyers were kids, who rejected the culture of 'oldies.' Knowing this— the company adopted the tagline "generation gap" that associated the younger generation because they simply looked 'cool.'
Where can you use it
You can use brand research at each stage of your business. From gaining insight into your brand's product or service to re-branding, you can dive deep into these relevant categories:
Brand advocacy: Your happy customers can market your business more effectively than your marketing team. Since they actively recommend your company, researching them and making a part of your brand-community can be highly useful.
For example, Starbucks creates a sense of community in all its cafes. You can call it the third-most visited place after home and office. With curated music, games, and names on the cups, the company stirs an air of emotion and motivates its customers to advocate the brand. All this was not possible with market research!
Brand awareness: Would you like to know how famous your brand is? Do your customers know you, or are you spending on blank marketing? Brand awareness research refers to inspecting if the market recognizes your brand. Should you want to be on the tongue of most of your targeted audience, brand awareness research shall get you to places.
For example, what comes to your mind when you hear the word Gojo's Purell? The brand of instant hand sanitizing. Long back, the brand researched their market and noticed that not many people are aware of the hand sanitizers. Moreover, people were unaware of the daily germs they deal with. What did Purell do? They hit the fear appeal! Copies like "99.99 Germy Reasons To Use Purell" & "Your Money Is Truly Dirty" helped their sales and enhanced their brand awareness.
Brand loyalty: Selling the first time is victory, selling the second time is the world cup! Knowing if you've repeated customers with online market surveys shall help you organize loyalty programs. Afterall, you want to reward your customers for being loyal to you. Don't you?
For example, Amazon uses the tag "The customer is always right," not for the sake of using it. It conducts a lot of customer-centric surveys and rewards with free returns and fast shipping. Scrutinizing how loyal customers are with your brand shall compel you to enhance the brand experience.
Brand penetration: You have the list of your target group. But how do you know how many of them are using your brand product or services? The brand penetration market survey gives you the numbers on people using your brand against your probable niche group. You can revisit your strategies to target the remaining market pie.
For example, Marlboro conducted a market research survey to figure out how many people used their paper-tubes stuffed with tobacco. Unfortunately, they discovered the brand didn't penetrate the market they wanted. A little tweak in their marketing technique made them seep in the market they never imagined. What happens when you watch the Marlboro man with the paper-tube? Instant ego appeal! It's your ego and immediate identification that motivates you to buy Marlboro. That's what Marlboro did with the research, ego-morphing!
Brand perception: You may think that you're serving X to your customers with your brand. But you never know, they're receiving Y. It's the perception that your customers hold about you. Not what you claim to be or market on your sales channel. Researching your brand perception can help you clear the mess around your brand and project a positive image.
For example, most of the brands use survey questions like 'what word comes to your mind when you hear of our brand,' 'how likely is that you'd recommend our brand,' 'why do you choose our brand over other brands.' Questions like these give the gist of how consumers view your brand and help revert these responses desirably.
Brand positioning: What do you want from Apple phones? Simple user-interface. What does Apple want you to think of them? Simplicity! Simplicity is brand positioning. You want your customers to remember you for certain benefits. Simplicity, humanity, creativity, brilliant-services! Every type of visual image that you create around customers is brand positioning.
For example, Coca-Cola has always tailored its campaigns around happiness, friendship, sharing, joy, fun, unity, etc. How did the company position its brand around these concepts? Undoubtedly, it has learned about the emotions of consumers through market research!
Brand value: What would you invest thousands of bucks in— A Samsung handset or China's newly developed handset? You know how much you want to spend on a particular brand. It's called brand value. The amount that you're willing to pay to gain a brand experience is brand value.
For example, it's as simple as an employee in your firm. If an employee is willing to spend his time in your company for a specific value, then his value resonates with your brand value. Gaining insight into how branded your consumers see you as and how much they're willing to dig deep into their pockets will allow you to regulate your service or product prices.
How to do it?
You or your enumerators can conduct these brand research types and determine the emotions and associations linked. Online or offline market research surveys will help you get into your customers' boots and speak compelling languages that benefit them.
Refer to this template to research your brand and diagnose all the problems beforehand.
Brand research with GoSurvey
Empirical data doesn’t come out of thin air. You need to have tools that can capture data for you. GoSurvey is one such tool which lets you curate and deploy brand research surveys so that you can take important metrics in consideration and seemingly build a brand around your business. So are you ready to brandify?
