Unlocking Brand Performance: The metrics that matter most in 2025

To drive the success of their organization, insights leaders need to have their voices heard in the boardroom. Getting buy-in from the C-Suite has never been tougher – particularly when it comes to convincing them of the value of long-term brand measurement. We’ve seen the pressure to create growth right now make it harder for many of our clients to focus beyond the short-term wins.

The answer is to tie brand tracking programs and measurement systems firmly to business performance, and provide evidence that your metrics are connected to a clear outcome that people really care about. In short, if you can attach a dollar sign to what you're measuring, then they will pay attention.

At Hall & Partners we know that certain types of metrics are more strongly correlated with business performance than others. Long tracking surveys that measure things like likeability and satisfaction, and the calculation of Net Promoter Scores, are among those that are not. Never measure for the sake of measuring; the set of metrics you use must be a leading indicator of future change for the organization – and you must be able to demonstrate this to decision-makers.

A brand should be measured from both a rational and emotional perspective, encompassing awareness, perceptions, purchase intent and an element of equity. Ideally, the metrics applied should extend across four key areas that follow the journey the consumer takes when they interact with the brand.

1. How they see the brand – and how prominent it is in their minds

Salience plays a huge role in any purchase decision, and is the gateway to brand growth. To evaluate this aspect, you need to measure top-of-mind awareness – asking the consumer to name the first brand that comes to mind when they think about a category, or unaided awareness – when they’re asked to name all the brands they can think of. These metrics have a much higher correlation with business performance than aided awareness, where the consumer is asked to pick from a list of brands; it’s rare that someone will consider buying a brand they can't think of on their own.

2. How they feel about the brand

As the consumer moves further on down the road with the brand, learning about and becoming more familiar with it, emotions come into play. These feelings will be built through marketing efforts, the way a brand communicates, or through actual use and experience of the brand. If a real emotional connection can be forged, consumers are less likely to move away and try something different. Emotional metrics can take a number of different forms – for instance measuring brand connection, brand closeness, or brand love.

3. What they think about the brand

Perceptual measurement is important, to explore how the consumer’s relationship with a brand is developing. The metrics that matter most here include whether the brand meets their needs, they see the brand as being ‘for someone like me’, or they believe it helps them to do good. The stronger the relationship, the less likely consumers are to leave the realm of that brand and look elsewhere.

4. What they actually do – their behavior in relation to the brand

It’s vital to establish what actions consumers are taking in reality. Are they more likely to consider the brand? Have they purchased the brand?

Ultimately, you need to be able to demonstrate that what you measure actually has an impact on the brand – and, in turn, on market share or revenue for the company. This means proving the strength of the relationship between a metric such as customer sentiment, and the business goals that are of greatest consequence to the organization.

Say, for example, that the leadership team’s top priority is revenue gain. Plotting a series of data points gathered over time on a brand-related metric against the revenue numbers for the brand can be extremely powerful and persuasive.

The power of pairing up

Combining a rational, perceptual measure like ‘the brand meets my needs’ with an emotional metric like brand love – and correlating the relationship of the composite number with business performance – can supercharge your argument.

Considering both long-term and short-term metrics is also a good idea. Metrics don’t all move at the same cadence – and nor should insights teams and marketers expect them to.

We often find that clients look at this as a means for goal setting: ‘We’re at X right now. Where should we – or could we – be next year, if we do all of the right things?’

Behavioral related metrics such as awareness, consideration, or purchase intent will be more immediately impacted by a marketing campaign, for instance, and lend themselves well to short term goals.

Anything related to brand equity, perception, or emotional connection tends to be much more slow moving, and provide the basis for longer term goals. It's really hard to make an impact on those things in the short term; it takes time to move the needle permanently and achieve sustained change around how consumers perceive and think about a brand. Perception really sticks.

Determining whether short-term or long-term metrics are the most appropriate basis for goals is also sometimes influenced by the type of marketing a brand is contemplating. Some ads are product-focused, speaking very specifically to a certain product or service and its benefits. Marketers may expect a short-term change – as well as a long-term equity change – from this type of advertising. ‘Equity advertising’, on the other hand, is more about the brand itself, and the image or feeling it is trying to convey. This may not necessarily spur purchase intent, but if done well could certainly have an impact on long-term equity.

Knowing which metrics to focus on will become increasingly crucial for insights professionals in a world where people’s attention spans are becoming ever narrower. Gone are the days we had the luxury of running a 25 minute survey covering multiple questions; nobody has the time for that any more. The good news is, 25 minute surveys are simply not necessary. By streamlining the survey and the survey experience we’re able to get clients the answers they need in a much shorter timescale, and extract an awful lot of power out of the resulting data to take forward in the organization.