Branding makes a product a class apart. In the age of fierce competition for market share, branding is the only vehicle for growth. But although companies spend hefty amounts of money for branding every year, very few only achieve commensurate growth. Ask the experts, and they’ll all point to one area – brand perception. Branding will be futile if the brand perception isn’t worked out properly.

So, what is brand perception?

Brand perception is how your brand is perceived by your audience. You can spend a huge amount of money advertising your brand, but do your audience feel positive about your brand? Does the price/performance of your product fit well in their expectation and capacity? What do they think about your competitors and, given the choice, will they select your product over your competitors?

Why consumers wear a certain brand of apparel or become fussy about a particular brand of cosmetics can be explained by brand perception, which is influenced by the thoughts and feelings connected with a company. Once brand loyalty seeps in it’s difficult to change a consumer’s mind. That is why brands strive to instill positive connotations in people’s thoughts.

When a customer is loyal to a brand, a study says, 86% of them will recommend it to their friends or family, and 66% will provide a good review. These activities promote corporate growth and increase brand perception, both of which are beneficial to your firm.

Brand perception study takes into account the needs, wants, preferences, opinions, influences, demographics, and other data about your potential customers in order to develop a focused and calibrated branding strategy.

Types of Brand perception parameters

Brand perception is a synthesis of multiple parameters that creates an image in the minds of the buyers, and urges them to buy or not to buy a brand. Here are the common types of brand perception:

• Quality: How successfully your items meet the wants of your customers. For example, a smart phone that is feature rich, durable, and easy to use.
• Value: The level of quality offered by a product relative to its price tag. For example, a smart phone brand that is perceived as high quality but overpriced compared to peers.
• Visual: The visual appeal of the product. For example, a motorbike that looks like a cheetah
• Senses: Smell, taste, touch, and sound that also create impressions. For example, a shampoo that smells good.
• Personality: Overall brand personality. For example, a brand may be thought of as friendly, reliable, and stylish.
• Reputation: Perception of the behavior, values, and history of a company.
• Status & culture: Perception of the status level and culture surrounding a brand.

How to measure brand perception?

This is an essential part of branding. In order to gauge how consumers perceive a brand, the companies should conduct brand perception research. However, you may take the following steps to monitor the barometer of your brand on a daily basis:

• Track online mentions of your brand. Activate Google alert.
• Read online reviews of your product. Quick and efficient customer service is important for improving brand perception.
• Use social listening tools for monitoring social media comments, hashtags, and other mentions.
• Measure the number of times your PPC ad is clicked by the viewers and how long they stay in your site.
• It will make more sense to measure the PPC ad click rates and dwell times of your target audience groups.

Brand perception is the single most important factor behind the success of your branding efforts. You must monitor and take good care of your brand perception on a regular basis. Remember, more than advertising, the brand perception depends on personal and shared experiences, advice, achievements, reputation management, etc.

Source- Fluidscapes
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