Top-of-funnel measurement is all about evaluating the marketing activities designed to build the brand; to increase visibility. The top of the funnel is the first stage in the buyer journey so it’s critical that your brand has a strong foundation, otherwise the flow of your target audience through the funnel will be insufficient to increase sales and market share.
For many organizations, their brand awareness figure is the most important metric used to measure brand health. At B2B International, we also put a lot of stock into brand awareness; however, we find that certain awareness metrics are more insightful than others.
For example, spontaneous, situational awareness is a better predictor of future brand performance in B2B markets than overall (prompted) awareness. Brands that have strong name recognition overall are not necessarily strong – their performance could be artificially inflated due to a “halo” effect from consumer markets or other B2B categories.
Spontaneous, unaided awareness is a better measure of top-of-funnel performance because it assesses the extent to which your brand is front-of-mind. The value of this insight is even greater if the awareness being tested is situational – in other words, asking your target audience to report brands they’d think of in a specific category or buying situation.
Secondly, it’s important to remember that your brand does not stand in isolation and therefore, brand awareness measurement must take into account the competitive context. Our Share of Voice analysis does just that. Share of Voice simply measures what proportion of the total awareness of all brands is held by your brand. Similarly, Share of Search analysis uses data from external sources to evaluate a brand’s share of relevant media mentions and/or search traffic.
Using spontaneous, unaided awareness and share of voice analysis to measure top-of-funnel performance is a better indication of how prominent your brand is in the minds of target buyers, and therefore how likely it is that the buyer will recognize or think of your brand when starting their purchase journey.
To learn more about brand funnel metrics and the holistic approach we take to measuring the health and strength of B2B brands, check out our interactive brand research playbook.
To learn more about the tailored brand awareness and brand health research programs we build for clients and to view related case studies, visit our brand research page.