Beyond ROI: Tracking Brand Awareness Metrics

Published: May 05, 2025

While direct Return on Investment (ROI) is a critical measure for many campaigns, not all influencer collaborations are solely focused on immediate sales. Building brand awareness is a vital long-term goal. But how do you measure something as intangible as "awareness"? This guide explores key metrics to track.

Why Track Brand Awareness Metrics?

Brand awareness campaigns aim to make your target audience more familiar with your brand, its values, and its offerings. While not always leading to a direct sale from that specific interaction, strong brand awareness contributes to:

• Increased Trust and Credibility: Familiar brands are often perceived as more trustworthy.
• Improved Brand Recall: When a consumer needs a product or service you offer, your brand is more likely to come to mind.
• Larger Customer Base Over Time: Awareness is the top of the marketing funnel, feeding future sales.
• Enhanced Brand Equity: A strong, recognizable brand is a valuable asset.

Tracking these "softer" metrics helps you understand if your influencer collaborations are effectively expanding your brand's reach and resonance, even if immediate ROI is not the primary KPI.

Key Metrics for Brand Awareness

Here are some of the most important metrics to track for brand awareness campaigns:

1. Reach

What it is: The total number of unique individuals who saw the influencer's content featuring your brand.

Why it matters: It indicates the potential size of the audience exposed to your brand message. Higher reach means more people are potentially becoming aware of you.

Where to find it: Most social media platforms provide reach data in their analytics dashboards (e.g., Instagram Insights, TikTok Analytics, YouTube Analytics). Influencers can typically share this data with you.

2. Impressions

What it is: The total number of times the influencer's content featuring your brand was displayed. One person can account for multiple impressions.

Why it matters: Impressions show the frequency of exposure. While reach tells you how many, impressions tell you how often. Repeated exposure can reinforce brand messaging.

Where to find it: Similar to reach, this is available in platform analytics.

3. Engagement Rate

What it is: The percentage of people who saw the content and interacted with it (likes, comments, shares, saves). It's typically calculated as (Total Engagements / Reach) * 100% or (Total Engagements / Impressions) * 100%.

Why it matters for awareness: While often tied to ROI, a high engagement rate on awareness-focused content indicates that the message is resonating with the audience and capturing their attention, which is crucial for building recall and positive brand association.

Where to find it: Calculate using data from platform analytics.

Our ROI Tracker already helps you see total engagement numbers. To get the rate, you'd divide by the Reach.

4. Cost Per Engagement (CPE)

What it is: The amount you spent for each engagement received. Calculated as (Total Campaign Cost / Total Engagements).

Why it matters for awareness: A lower CPE suggests your campaign is efficiently generating audience interaction relative to its cost. For awareness, this means you're getting more "bang for your buck" in terms of audience attention.

Where to find it: Our ROI Tracker calculates CPE for you!

5. Cost Per Mille (CPM) / Cost Per Thousand Impressions

What it is: The cost to achieve 1,000 impressions. Calculated as (Total Campaign Cost / Total Impressions) * 1000.

Why it matters: CPM is a standard advertising metric that helps compare the cost-efficiency of reaching audiences across different channels or campaigns. A lower CPM is generally better for awareness.

Where to find it: Calculate using campaign cost and impressions data.

6. Video Views & View Completion Rate (for video content)

What it is:

• Video Views: The number of times your video content was viewed (platforms have different criteria for what counts as a "view," e.g., 3 seconds).
• View Completion Rate: The percentage of viewers who watched your video to (or near to) the end.

Why it matters: For video-based awareness campaigns, these metrics show not just if people started watching, but if the content was engaging enough to hold their attention, thus increasing the likelihood of message absorption.

Where to find it: Platform analytics for video content.

7. Qualitative Metrics (Beyond the Numbers)

Don't solely rely on quantitative data. Also consider:

• Comment Sentiment: Are comments generally positive, negative, or neutral? Positive sentiment indicates good brand association.
• Brand Mentions: Are people talking about your brand elsewhere online (e.g., other social posts, forums) as a result of the campaign? Tools like social listening can help track this.
• Share of Voice (SOV): How much of the conversation within your industry or niche is about your brand compared to competitors? This is a more advanced metric, often requiring specialized tools.
• Website Traffic & Direct Searches: Did you see an uplift in direct traffic to your website or an increase in people searching for your brand name during or after the campaign? (Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console).
• Survey Data: Conduct pre- and post-campaign surveys to measure shifts in brand awareness, perception, and purchase intent among your target audience.

Tracking and Reporting

• Set Clear Goals: Before the campaign, define what success looks like for brand awareness. Is it a certain reach target? An increase in brand mentions?
• Use UTM Parameters: For any links shared by influencers, use UTM parameters to track website traffic originating from their content in Google Analytics.
• Request Data from Influencers: Ensure influencers provide you with screenshots or exports of their post analytics.
• Benchmark: Compare metrics against past campaigns or industry averages (if available) to understand performance in context.
• Look for Trends: A single campaign might show a small lift, but consistent efforts over time should demonstrate a growing trend in awareness metrics.

While our ROI Tracker primarily focuses on conversion-based ROI, understanding these awareness metrics provides a more holistic view of your influencer marketing impact. Use these insights to refine your strategies and build a stronger, more recognizable brand over time!