This is a blog by Mark Verzijl, Consultant at Sciential.

My tip to life science marketers is to keep tracking brand awareness indicators throughout the year. That might sound logical and it is something that is done with the performance side of marketing. Marketers or other commercial people continuously track whether their campaigns are generating leads and sales. Return on investment always is the bottom line within performance marketing.

Surprisingly, within branding or awareness campaigns measurement does not seem to be required. On the one hand, marketers thoroughly track all performance campaigns and on the other hand, branding campaigns are just seen as “an investment”. Personally, I also believe that brands should invest in their brand, however, it does not make any sense to not measure this. This is one of the main reasons that, when push comes to shove, branding and awareness campaigns are often killed prematurely. After all, it is just seen as a cost without a clear outcome.

It makes sense to measure to see whether your campaigns have added value. If you are running a campaign to increase your brand awareness, measure it. Measure it before, during and after the campaign. Measure if there is a potential uplift and if it can be attributed to your campaigns. Do this with awareness, but also consideration and preference. You can simply start with brand name searches in Google and see if the numbers grow overtime. Or carry out surveys on a structural basis. This can be done through advertising, where you run survey banners among your target audience, let’s say four times a year. This way you have always a pool of respondents, a random sample and enough data for reliability and replicable. And thus always have insights into your brand metrics. Happy tracking!