How to write an effective survey

Brand awareness is one of the trickiest marketing metrics to define, much less track. After all, can you truly know how powerful your brand and marketing message is?

The answer isn’t as unknowable as you might think. Brand awareness surveys with great design and well-written questions are one of the easiest ways to measure the overall impact of your marketing efforts.

Why a Brand Awareness Survey?

Brand awareness is essentially how familiar a customer is with your product, service, or brand. When you know your brand’s visibility, you can create targeted campaigns to keep building awareness and generating leads.

With the right questions, a brand awareness survey enables you to measure:

•   Brand Recall: If put on the spot, do customers remember your brand or think of a competitor first? 

•   Brand Recognition: Do customers easily recognize your brand among a list of other brands?

•   Brand Perception: How do customers see your brand? Does this image match up with your brand identity?

Get the Sample Survey: We’ve created a list of example questions for your next brand awareness survey to ensure you’re collecting the right data and insights.

Let’s dive in.

Brand Recall

Every brand awareness survey should begin with brand recall. These questions establish how well your customers know the brand and remove the risk of survey bias.

If you want to know how top of mind your brand is, ask open-ended questions that allow for a written answer:

•   Please list the top 5 [product/service category] brands.

•   When you think of [product/service category], what companies come to mind?

•   How familiar are you with [product/service category]?

•   When was the last time you used this [product/service category]?

Brand Recognition

Using aided questions that mention your brand specifically, you can determine how you stack up against your biggest competitors.

Multiple choice questions will help establish a clear idea of how consumers recognize your brand among your competitors:

•   Out of these [product/service category] brands, which have you purchased? (Select all that apply).

•   How familiar are you with these brands’ [product/service category]?

•   Are you familiar with [YOUR BRAND’s] offerings in the [product/service category] market? If so, to what extent?

Note: To score responses, use a Likert Scale ranging from “Not at all familiar” to “Extremely familiar.”

Brand Perception

You have a solid understanding of your brand identity, but do your customers have the same understanding?

Use open-ended questions to determine how customers actually see your brand:

•   When you think of [YOUR BRAND], what comes to mind?

•   What three words best describe [YOUR BRAND’s] position in the [product/service category] market? 

•   What is your perception of [YOUR BRAND’s] services?

The Results

When you ask the right questions, you can measure the true power of your marketing efforts. Based on your brand awareness survey results, you may need to refocus messaging, update your buyer personas, or explore new marketing opportunities.

Collecting valuable customer data and brand insight allows you build a stronger, smarter strategy. Use our Brand Awareness Survey [Example] to start measuring awareness, recognition and perception today.

Ready to measure brand awareness but not sure where to begin? Reach out to us! We’ll happily share our brand survey knowledge to point you in the right direction.