How To Measure Brand Marketing Efforts (And Prove Their ROI) via @sejournal, @AlliBerry3

Brand marketing is often the silent driver behind successful digital campaigns.

People are far more likely to read, watch, click, and ultimately buy from a brand they already know and trust. That’s why doing the harder, slower work of building a strong brand pays dividends when it comes to performance marketing efforts like SEO and PPC. We know this intuitively.

But proving the impact of brand marketing is much harder. Unlike SEO rankings or PPC conversions, brand-building results are not always immediately visible, which is why these efforts often get under-credited – or worse, neglected altogether – in favor of easier-to-measure tactics. This is a mistake.

Why Brand Marketing Matters More Than Ever

The irony is that large-scale studies repeatedly show brand-related factors at the forefront of digital visibility.

Semrush’s 2025 ranking factor study found that authority, traffic, and backlink signals – closely tied to brand strength – are still among the most important correlating factors for high search rankings.

Similarly, as AI Overviews and large language model (LLM)-powered search expand, brand strength is proving to be the key to visibility. In its 2025 study, Ahrefs found that branded mentions, branded anchors, and branded search volume are the top three factors correlated with AI Overview presence.

All of these point to one conclusion: Brand marketing is increasingly the engine that drives both human trust and algorithmic preference.

The challenge, however, is demonstrating its impact in a way that stakeholders can understand and value. That’s why it’s critical to learn how to measure your brand marketing efforts using both qualitative and quantitative metrics, tied back to clear key performance indicators (KPIs).

The Situation For Digital Marketing Leaders

Consider the role of an in-house SEO director. Your KPIs might look like this:

• Grow organic traffic by 25% year-over-year.
• Increase lead generation downloads by 40%.
• Drive 20% more sales from organic.

But with Google’s AI Overviews cutting click-through rates by more than 34% and users increasingly turning to LLMs for top-of-funnel research, traditional SEO tactics alone won’t get you there.

Instead, your future success depends on brand strength. Stronger brand signals lead to better visibility in AI-driven search results, higher trust with customers, and greater resilience in an evolving digital landscape. That means, even as an SEO professional, your path forward relies on executing and measuring brand marketing strategy effectively – and proving its business impact.

The good news is that as an SEO professional, you’ve likely already got quite a bit of the data you need. It may just require you to repackage some of your efforts. It may also require you to collaborate more with your fellow digital marketers, particularly those in PR, social media, and PPC, to show brand visibility growth more holistically.

Tying Metrics To The Sales Funnel

When it comes to your brand marketing, there are really four categories of efforts:

• Awareness.
• Consideration.
• Conversion.
• Loyalty & Advocacy.

Ultimately, you are looking to increase your brand strength in every area of the funnel.

You want more people to hear of your brand, which then drives them to search for it to learn more about it.

More brand familiarity and trust should then ultimately lead to more conversions.

And the more customers and followers of the brand you have, the more you would expect to see an increase in loyalty and advocacy.

All of your brand marketing tracking should tie back to one of those four categories. Therefore, the next sections of this article are broken down by stage of the funnel.

Brand Awareness Metrics

Brand awareness metrics help you measure whether your brand is becoming more recognizable in the right contexts. At the top level, awareness is measured by reach and visibility signals: metrics like impressions, social mentions, and share of voice across channels.

On the digital side, you can monitor branded search impressions and clicks in Google Search Console, track direct traffic growth in Google Analytics 4, and use SEO tools like Semrush or Ahrefs to compare your brand’s share of voice against competitors.

These metrics reveal whether people are actively seeking you out and whether brand exposure is translating into traffic.

Equally important are perception-based metrics, which capture how audiences actually recall and recognize your brand.

Brand lift studies and recall surveys ask consumers whether your brand comes to mind within your category – both aided (i.e., Have you heard of [brand]?) and unaided (i.e., What brands come to mind for [category]?). These are especially powerful after large brand campaigns, such as a national TV spot or a major podcast sponsorship, to see if awareness efforts are resonating with the right audience.

Key Awareness Metrics

It is important that you’re measuring both the quantitative signals of awareness (search, traffic, mentions) and the qualitative signals (surveys, brand lift). Together, these provide a complete picture of how visible and memorable your brand really is.

Consideration Metrics

While awareness tells you whether people recognize your brand, consideration metrics show whether they are actively evaluating your brand as a viable option. This stage of the funnel is all about engagement and intent. We’re looking at signals that potential customers are digging deeper, comparing you against competitors, and gathering the information they need to make a decision.

On your website, key metrics include pages per session, time spent on product or service pages, and return visits to your site, which often indicate research and deeper evaluation. Growth in traffic to product-related pages and increases in branded product queries (i.e., “Brand X running shoes”) are also strong signals that awareness is moving into intent.

Beyond on-site behavior, content downloads such as case studies, whitepapers, or product comparison guides show that audiences are engaging with assets that help them evaluate their choices.

Similarly, a rise in third-party product reviews or mentions on industry forums and social media reflects growing consideration and social proof that others are weighing your brand seriously in the buying process.

Key Consideration Metrics

By tracking both behavioral signals on your owned channels (site engagement, return visits, content downloads) and external validation (third-party mentions), you build a clear picture of whether your brand is moving beyond recognition and into active consideration.

Conversion Metrics

Conversion metrics show how effectively brand strength translates into tangible business outcomes. At this stage, the focus shifts from evaluation to action.

We’re looking at whether people are requesting demos, signing up for free trials, or making purchases. Strong branding makes these conversions more likely by building the trust and credibility necessary to reduce friction at the decision point.

On your website, look for form fills, demo requests, trial sign-ups, and completed transactions as clear indicators of conversion. Tracking conversion rates from branded search campaigns in Google Ads or measuring pipeline influenced by brand-related traffic in your customer relationship management (CRM) also provides valuable insight.

Additionally, monitoring add-to-cart and checkout completions in GA4 can highlight how often brand equity is driving purchase intent to completion.

Key Conversion Metrics

Loyalty And Advocacy Metrics

Loyalty and advocacy metrics reveal whether brand strength translates into long-term customer relationships. At this stage, the goal is not just to retain customers but to turn them into advocates who actively promote your brand.

Strong loyalty reduces churn, increases lifetime value, and builds a customer base that supports sustainable growth.

Key metrics here include customer retention rates, repeat purchase behavior, and customer lifetime value (CLV), which quantify how effectively you’re keeping customers over time.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer satisfaction surveys capture how likely customers are to recommend your brand. Monitoring referrals, user-generated content, and social sharing also provides qualitative proof of advocacy.

Review platforms and communities can be another strong signal. Growth in positive product reviews or customers organically defending your brand in forums shows that loyalty has translated into advocacy.

Key Loyalty & Advocacy Metrics

Turning Metrics Into A Compelling Data Story For Stakeholders

The real value of measuring brand marketing comes not just from tracking the right metrics, but from connecting them into a story that stakeholders can understand.

By aligning awareness, consideration, conversion, and loyalty metrics to the sales funnel, you create a framework that shows how brand-building efforts impact the entire customer journey.

A brand dashboard is one of the most effective tools for communicating this story. Tools like Looker Studio or Power BI will allow you to consolidate signals from multiple sources to present a holistic view of brand health.

Rather than overwhelming leadership with granular reports from different platforms, you’re providing them with a clear line of sight from brand activity to revenue impact. It can look something like: Google Search Console for branded queries, GA4 for site engagement, CRM data for conversions, and social listening tools for sentiment and share of voice.

When sharing results, keep in mind that executives often care less about the technical details and more about the outcomes. Frame your reporting around KPIs tied to growth:

• Did brand awareness lift lead to more traffic and higher-quality leads?
• Did stronger consideration metrics translate into more demo requests or trial sign-ups?
• Did higher loyalty scores reduce churn or drive referrals?

By mapping brand marketing metrics to outcomes stakeholders already value – pipeline growth, revenue impact, and customer retention – you position branding not as a “soft” investment, but as a measurable driver of business performance.

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