How to undertake a brand awareness survey in 5 easy steps

Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash

In this article we run through the practical steps of designing, setting up and running a brand awareness survey.

These steps are "easy", if you know how! And that's the point of this article.

So, at least some of these steps can be undertaken by brand owners themselves. However, having a market research consultant or agency on hand to guide them can be useful. This is because it can save them time and money. 

So the 5 easy steps are….

1. Define the research audience

2. Decide on the sample size

3. Design the questionnaire

4. Choose the sample provider

5. Go live!

1. Define the research audience

The first step is to decide who to do the research with. For example, if you produce a type of fishing rod then presumably you would only want to do research with people who fish.

But you may want to define it further, into people who do a certain type of fishing, such as sea, game or coarse, depending on the scope of your brand.

In addition to this, if your brand is premium, you may also want to refine the audience further, into people who have a certain income. If you only sell in certain geographical areas you may also want to limit the research audience to people who live in these areas.

We would mention, the more restrictions you have, the more the research is likely to cost. However, it is better to undertake research with fewer of the “right” people than with a larger sample of people who are not within your target audience.

2. Decide on the sample size

The second step is to decide how many respondents to conduct the research with. For example, should you interview 100 people or 1000? Or somewhere in between? The higher the sample size the greater the cost.

A good rule of thumb is to think in terms of having a sample size of 100 respondents for each distinct group within your target audience for which you would like to gain a brand awareness measure. In other words, if you think you will want to gain a figure for men, and another for women, then a survey with 100 of each (i.e. 200 in total) could be appropriate.

Brand awareness surveys, especially for starter or challenger brands, do not need a sample of more than a few hundred respondents. More than this just adds cost, for minimal, if any gain.

3. Design the questionnaire

The questionnaire will need to begin with demographic questions about gender, age, region and potentially other variables. Next would be the qualifying (also known as “screener”) questions to identify the correct respondents to complete the research.

In other words, if the research was to be with buyers of peanut butter there would need to be a question to find out if respondents buy peanut butter. Any respondent who answers this question in a way that shows they do not buy peanut butter would find they are then excluded from the survey, whilst everyone else can continue.

Then, in terms of measuring brand awareness, there would typically be two questions. The first would measure what is called “Unprompted” or “Spontaneous” brand awareness. This would be an open-ended question asking...

What brands of XYZ are you aware of?

Please write in

“XYZ” is the market within which the brand sits. Defining “XYZ” needs to be undertaken carefully. For example, XYZ could be “Peanut butter” or possibly “Crunchy peanut butter”.

After this open-ended question, there would be a closed multi-response question to measure “prompted” brand awareness, such as the below.

Which of the brands of XYZ are you aware of?

Please select all that apply:

1. Brand A
2. Brand B
3. Brand C
4. Brand D
5. Etc…
6. Other (please specify)

Strictly speaking, for a brand awareness survey this could be all that is needed in the questionnaire. However, it could be useful to extend it somewhat, to also include questions on which brands respondents had purchased in the past, for example, or which they would consider purchasing now or in the future.

Similarly, the questionnaire could include questions about brand perceptions, in terms of quality, price or other variables.

It is worth bearing in mind that a longer questionnaire will mean a higher cost for the research. However, a few extra questions such as those above could still be great value for the extra insight they provide.

4. Choose the sample provider

Whilst you can do much yourself when it comes to running a brand awareness survey, at the very least you will need a company (known as a "panel") to supply the respondents. 

5. Go live!

Once the questionnaire has been designed the next step is to program the online version, and then initiate and manage the interviewing process, in liaison with the sample provider you have commissioned. 

Summary

We have written another article that might be of interest to you, called Brand Awareness Survey Questions: A Simple (But Complete) Guide

If you need help running your research, please do get in touch. We can either run it for you or just help on an hourly basis, as and when you need it.