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In this episode of the B2B Insights Podcast, B2B International’s Louise Coy and Jennifer Strange discuss common myths and misconceptions about brand research, share their favorite frameworks for effective brand research, and explain how to make brand research actionable.
Key discussion points:
- Why brand research isn’t just brand tracking
- Incorporating different audiences in brand research
- Quantitative vs qualitative brand research
- Creative techniques in brand research
- Frameworks for effective brand research
- Making brand research actionable
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- Myth 1: Brand research is always going to be brand tracking research
- Myth 2: Brand research should be quantitative
- Making brand research strategic and actionable
Louise: Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the B2B Insights Podcast. My name is Louise Coy, and I’m a Research Director at B2B International. I’m joined today by my colleague, Jennifer Strange, who’s also a Research Director.
Today, we’re going to be talking about the topic of brand research. Brand research is one of the most popular types of research we conduct across a wide variety of industries worldwide. Our proprietary superpowers research shows that brand is only becoming more important to business decisions.
So today, we’re going to talk you through some of the most common misconceptions about running brand research.
Myth 1: Brand research is always going to be brand tracking research
Jennifer: Great. Let’s dive into myth number one, which is that brand research is always going to be brand tracking research. Before we dig into this myth, let’s clarify what we mean by brand tracking research. Brand tracking research refers to research that tracks brand awareness, brand usage, and brand perceptions over time.
I think this myth is quite common because a lot of research does involve measuring and tracking over time. However, brand research can be so much more than just a tracking project. For example, there are different types of brand research that aim not just at measuring but also at understanding certain areas of a brand.
We’ve done quite a lot of brand research involving brand architecture projects for clients. This is when we look at a brand’s portfolio and how the different brands work together. We’ve also conducted interesting projects to understand whether newly acquired brands should be renamed or keep their original names, and what impact the naming has on perceptions of the brand and customers’ likelihood to purchase.
Even if you are doing a typical brand tracking project, you can still mix things up and keep it fresh. For example, you can add guest questions that are not part of the standard questions in every wave of your brand tracker. These questions might focus on a particular theme or topic that the client is interested in.
Recently, many clients have wanted to dig into topics like the environment, sustainability, and perceptions of their thought leadership with their customers. This approach can widen the scope of the brand tracker and make it more interesting and engaging.
Louise: I think it’s also really interesting to include different audiences in your brand research. It’s common to think you should just talk to the market to understand brand awareness, but taking a more holistic approach can be beneficial.
For example, looking at employees or other stakeholders of the brand, understanding how career seekers feel about taking on a role at your organization, and talking to industry experts or distributors. All these different audiences can ensure you get a well-rounded 360-degree view of how your brand is perceived and help you understand any discrepancies. It might be the case that people who work for your organization see your brand in a certain way, which is very different from what you’re putting out into the market.
Myth 2: Brand research should be quantitative
Louise: Now, moving on to myth number two, which is that brand research should be quantitative. What we find in B2B research is that often qualitative brand research can also add a lot of value.
In many cases, our audiences can be very niche, and we can’t always go after the sample sizes required for a robust quantitative project. A qualitative project can give you the advantage of a lot of depth of insight into the audience and perceptions of your brand. It can work with smaller populations than might be required for quantitative research.
Another option is to take a mixed-method approach to brand research, including both quantitative elements, which allow you to track and measure figures, and qualitative elements, which provide depth of insight. This can be valuable as it helps you understand the reasons behind the quantitative responses. For example, if perceptions of your brand on a particular metric have declined since the previous year, including some qualitative interviews or questions can help you understand the reasons behind that change.
Jennifer: When you’re doing qualitative brand research, it’s important to think about the types of questions you’re going to include and what you want to achieve from these questions.
A technique that’s really good to use in any qualitative research, including brand research, is called laddering. This technique helps dig deeper into a topic and the answers your respondent is giving. You’re not just taking their first response but asking follow-up questions to understand why something is important to them or why they have a particular perception of your brand.
Another creative question that works well in branding projects is to ask the interviewee to imagine the brand as either an animal or a person. If they imagine the brand as an animal, they have to tell you what animal they think the brand would be. If it’s a person, you can ask about the physical features and characteristics the brand would have. The specific animal or physical features mentioned aren’t the most important output; it’s the characteristics that the animal or person represents that provide valuable insights into how they feel about the brand. For example, if someone says your brand would be a dog, it can bring up perceptions of loyalty and dependability.
Including creative types of questioning can give you engaging and memorable outputs. These outputs may be more memorable than typical bar charts. For instance, the audience might not remember the exact percentage of the market that associates your brand with being loyal, but they’re likely to remember the animal the brand was compared to after the research has finished.
Making brand research strategic and actionable
Louise: I love that animal question. Now that we’ve talked about a couple of myths, let’s consider how to elevate brand research to ensure we’re delivering the most impactful outcomes. Brand research can be strategic and actionable, and it’s all about extracting as much insight as possible from the data. This comes down to the approach we take to analysis.
We always try to avoid just showing lots of data and slides within a report. Instead, we focus on the data that is most meaningful and surprising to the client.
For example, in our analysis approach, we can measure what attributes are important for a brand, but we can also take this to the next level. We can perform driver’s analysis, leveraging correlation to understand the impact of certain attributes on other areas of performance, like overall satisfaction or likelihood to use a brand. We can also use advanced analytics to explore the impact of renaming brands. If you were to rename one of the brands in your portfolio, you can measure the likely impact on some of your key metrics.
Jennifer: I think there are also many different frameworks you can use within a branding project. We’ve used the brand health wheel quite a lot, which brings together metrics on brand awareness, brand perceptions, and brand performance to assess the overall health of a brand. I’ve found this framework to be very effective in branding projects as it’s memorable and consolidates various data points into a single, comparable metric year on year.
Another great framework is the three circles framework, which focuses on creating a winning brand positioning strategy. This framework looks at what customers need, the strengths of competitors, and the strengths of our client’s brand. It helps identify white space opportunities to differentiate a brand from others in the market.
When making brand research actionable, it’s important to understand the market context from the beginning of the project. This helps relate any findings back to what’s happening in the market at the moment. This can be done during the kickoff workshop, where it’s crucial to get a solid understanding of the business context and any brand challenges our client is facing.
It’s also important to understand what the competition is doing, as brands don’t operate in isolation. Desk research can add valuable context to a branding project, making the insights more actionable.
Louise: Great. Thanks, Jen. So that brings us to the end of today’s podcast. We hope we’ve demonstrated that brand research doesn’t just have to be about brand tracking or quantitative methods. It can be very strategic and actionable, helping organizations determine the next steps for their brand strategy.
If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. To explore more of our content on how strategic research is used to inform successful business outcomes, or to subscribe to our B2B Insights newsletter, please visit B2B International’s Insights Hub.
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