When it comes to your brand, it’s easy to measure where you stand, but hard to measure why.
What we mean is, any market research firm can create a brand tracking survey that assesses how your brand stacks up against its competitors on this or that KPI—awareness, familiarity, consideration, preference, etc. That’s where your brand stands.
But not every market research firm has the expertise and artistry to tease out why your brand stands where it does vis-a-vis competitors—which is the key element that allows a brand tracker to become actionable. If the research doesn’t reveal what levers you need to pull to improve your brand’s performance, it will just sit on a shelf (or in the cloud) collecting dust.
Comparing Qualitative vs. Quantitative Survey Tactics
In quantitative brand trackers, the typical means of understanding why brands perform as they do is to measure how each brand is perceived on a set of “attributes.” For instance, if it’s a college or university brand, respondents might be asked to rate the brand on attributes such as “Academically rigorous,” “Vibrant and exciting student life,” “Good value for the money,” etc. Sounds easy, right?
But this is where things get tricky, for several reasons. First, while the attribute ratings show you which brands are doing well in which areas, that alone won’t tell you which of those areas truly drive the overall brand performance.
Let’s look at a hypothetical example. Say a university brand is lagging its competitors in consideration as a school students would like to apply to. The same university performs worse than its peers on several attributes: “Good value for the money,” “Strong opportunities for jobs and internships,” and “Dedicated to helping the region thrive.” Which of these three attributes—if any of them—explains the university’s lagging consideration? In other words, how strongly do any of these attributes affect the school’s consideration by students?
To answer that question, you’ll have to conduct a driver analysis. Without getting bogged down in statistical jargon, a driver analysis uses advanced mathematical techniques to determine which variables have the strongest and most consistent connection to a particular outcome—weeding out factors that may look influential but are not really important. In our example, then, a driver analysis would reveal which attribute ratings are the most influential “drivers” of the university’s consideration by students.
But just because you’ve included a variety of seemingly important attributes in your brand tracking survey doesn’t mean any of those attributes drive consideration (or any other brand KPI). Often, driver analyses reveal only weak connections between the outcome variable, like consideration, and any of the attributes. Or, at best, the analysis might reveal only one or two attributes that have a modest connection with the outcome variable. (If you’ve ever done brand tracking research before, perhaps you’ve had this experience of underwhelming results, too.) Then you’re back almost to square one—basically guessing as to what’s important.
Take Action with Qualitative Insights in Your Brand Tracking Survey
The reason that so many driver analyses fall short is that they weren’t measuring the right attributes to begin with. This is where the “art” part of “art and science” comes in. Any market research firm can measure brand perceptions and run a driver analysis, but if that analysis is going to be truly useful, it needs to include attributes that actually capture what is important to consumers. Often, we see firms (and in-house researchers) making the mistake of writing survey instruments based on their own preconceived assumptions about the category—which causes them to miss things that could be critically important.
This is one of the reasons it’s so important to do qualitative research before quant. Direct engagement with consumers in the target audience—and analysis of these conversations by a seasoned strategist—will identify the common attitudes and motivations that lie behind consumers’ perceptions of brands in your category. It will also bring to light the exact language consumers use to express these. (Maybe it’s not “Dedicated to helping the region thrive,” but rather “A good neighbor to folks in the area”—so a survey using the latter wording would capture insights that a survey using the former wording would not.)
Of course, there are exceptions to the “qual before quant” rule—maybe your organization already has an unusually deep understanding of its consumers’ motivations. But in most cases, conducting direct engagements with consumers—even if it’s just a few in-depth interviews—is needed to ensure your quantitative research really hits the mark.
Want to build a better brand tracker for your organization? Drop us a line!
