Your complete marketing guide to brand strength analysis

What do the Nike swoosh, Apple logo and the infamous Golden Arches all have in common? They each have a familiar image most of the world’s population recognizes at a glance. The Golden Arches stand for salty french fries and good times, the Nike swoosh nods to motivation and inclusion, while Apple is synonymous with innovation and design.

Such recognition is more than simple brand awareness. It speaks to a deeper connection with a brand, even if you’re not a customer. 

A brand strength analysis provides a snapshot of your brand’s potential growth, overall metrics and customer loyalty. It also includes your brand’s equity, perception and more in the marketplace. And it can help you identify potential gaps so you can improve your brand strength.

In this article, I’ll walk through what brand strength is, why it matters, some tips and examples of brands who do it well. 

Similarweb defines brand strength as “the measure of how well a company’s brand is known and trusted by customers.”

Brand strength is related but different from brand equity or awareness. Brand strength is more about the brand’s resilience in the marketplace and the business case of how well it can drive future performance. Brand awareness focuses on whether people know the brand exists, and equity focuses on the brand's perception. 

The components of brand strength include the following elements: 

• Recognition - How easily do customers recognize your logo, tagline or signage worldwide? 

• Trust - How much do your customers trust your brand? 

• Loyalty - How loyal are your customers? Do they choose you over the competition? 

• Market positioning - How well does your brand align with your customer’s values? 

Each plays an important role in a strong brand. 

Strong brands create emotional connections with their customers. 

Greg Kihlström, host of the Agile Brand podcast and advisor to Fortune 1000 companies, says in this Forbes article, “To truly stand out and build lasting relationships with your customers, you need to create an emotional connection that resonates with them on a deeper level.”

This connection creates strong loyalty, reduces churn and increases customer lifetime value. It also contributes to high brand strength, which means you can have premium pricing, become a category leader in your industry and be resilient in a crisis. 

High brand strength is crucial in industries like luxury goods, food and beverage because they rely on emotional connections, perceived quality and customer loyalty. 

Consider these brands with high brand strength: 

Luxury goods 

Brands like Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Gucci rely on exclusivity and the perception of high value. Premium pricing ensures customers buy a status symbol that fosters an emotional connection. 

Food & beverage 

There are many soft drinks, but only one Coca-Cola. Its iconic red color and swirl logo is one of the most recognized in the world. Their customers are specific about preferring Coke over other colas thanks to its connection with happiness and nostalgia. 

Financial services

Trust is a defining factor in choosing financial services. Whether banking, credit cards or another financial product, the financial services industry relies on brand strength to build and maintain trust. 

The benefits of high brand strength include: 

• Premium pricing

• Reduced price sensitivity

• Strong customer advocates

These can translate into reduced acquisition costs and greater profit margins, which creates space for innovation. 

Now that you recognize the importance of brand strength to promote business growth, you might wonder how an organization measures brand strength. How can you identify the essential metrics and evaluate their effectiveness? 

There are many ways to measure brand strength. Here are five of our favorites:

1. Brand awareness metrics

When people recognize your logo without a name, that’s strong brand awareness. You can measure your brand awareness through surveys with aided or unaided recall tests. 

For example, SurveyMonkey shares some unaided vs. aided recall test questions. 

Let’s say you’re a brand that sells bottled water. You run a survey and ask respondents which of the following brands they’re familiar with and list several popular bottled water brands, including yours. 

So for example, an aided brand awareness question would be:

Which of the following water brands do you recognize? 

• Fiji 

• Evian 

• Liquid Death 

• Pelligrino 

• Smartwater

In the unaided brand awareness category, the question could appear as follows: 

“List five bottled water brands.” If yours is included, that’s a checkmark towards high brand strength.

SurveyMonkey recommends asking aided questions first to jog memories. 

2. Brand loyalty indicators

You measure your Net Promoter Score (NPS) through questions like “How likely are you to refer us to a friend or colleague?” or “How would you rate our product on a 1-10 scale?” Customers who rate your brand a nine or a ten, with ten as the highest possibility will likely remain loyal to your brand and recommend it to others. 

When you have strong customer retention rates, your customers have a higher lifetime value. Starbucks for instance has a loyalty program that rewards customers for purchases and lets the brand personalize messaging to encourage more frequent visits. 

Brands measuring the NPS and customer retention rates can have a better sense of their business growth and growth predictions over time. 

3. Perceived value and differentiation 

How do your customers perceive your brand’s value compared to competitors? Besides measuring your NPS, customer retention and brand awareness, you can benchmark your brand against your competitors. 

Tools like Similarweb, Statistia, Brandwatch, Zappi and others can help analyze your market share, customer sentiment, sustainability, social media presence and many other areas to assess how the public perceives your brand. 

4. Financial metrics 

Nothing proves a brand’s strength more than the bottom line. Branded products like Coca-Cola or Apple have greater brand strength than store-brand cola or a no-name tech product because people buy these brand names in larger numbers.

Customers pay premium pricing for Apple products thanks to the strong perception of innovation and quality. They pay premium pricing for Coca-Cola because they prefer its taste. 

Pricing power offers resilience even in market downturns because customers will continue to pay premium prices thanks to years of brand trust and reliability.

That’s brand strength. 

5. Social and digital influence

We live in a digital-first world, making your brand’s digital presence a powerful indicator of brand strength.

Share of voice is one metric to focus on here specifically. Social media tool Sprout Social describes SoV as “a measure of the market conversation your brand owns compared to your competitors. It measures your brand’s visibility and influence within industry conversations.”

It’s ever-evolving as markets fluctuate and can include social media mentions and keyword placements. Digital marketers also measure engagement and customer sentiment. 

You can pair share of voice tools and brand engagement tools like Sprout Social, Brandwatch, Talkwalker or YouTube brand lift surveys with Zappi’s data-driven ad campaign or brand tracking tools. As a marketer, you probably already use some of these metrics, but you may want to add more to improve or maintain your Below are some examples of brands for inspiration. 

Brand strength is the foundation for all branding and marketing strategies. High brand strength encourages customer loyalty and drives sustainable growth. If you’re looking to conduct a brand strength analysis, consider your objectives. 

Are you looking to improve customer loyalty or understand your competitive positioning? Brands with great brand strength continuously test ideas and communicate with their customers. 

Key strategies for improving brand strength:

Every analysis starts with a few benchmarks. When it comes to a brand strength analysis, those include: 

• Crafting a clear brand identity.

• Delivering consistent experiences across all touch points.

• Engaging customers through authentic communication.

• Innovating while staying true to core values

Let’s explore each of these in more detail. 

Crafting a clear brand identity

Every strong brand starts with a recognizable brand identity. It incorporates the brand’s mission, values, personality and visuals. When customers recognize your logo, tagline, and visual identity and it’s consistent across channels, you have a clear brand identity. 

Brands can use Zappi’s Brand Health Tracker to monitor audience brand perception and identify opportunities for refining their design or message. 

Inspired by Byron Sharp’s “How Brands Grow” framework, Zappi’s brand tracker helps you keep a pulse on your brand and competitors and get actionable brand data in real-time. This includes continuous insights on metrics that matter such as awareness and consideration, as well as a deeper understanding of category drivers, brand drivers and mental equity. 

🔍 Learn more 

Delivering consistent experiences across all touch points

Strong brands have a cohesive color palette, logo, typography and imagery in every channel. A customer journey audit can help you identify any gaps in your customer experience. Mystery shopping, usability testing, NPS and customer feedback can all help. 

Zappi’s consumer insights platform can also help you collect and measure the data you need to build a consistent customer experience. 

Engaging customers through authentic communication

Create a unique voice that’s true to your brand. The water-in-a-can brand Liquid Death for example opted for an edgy, heavy metal tone with their marketing and branding. While Trader Joe’s grocery chain has a recognizable, playful voice in their marketing. Successful brands have a recognizable and consistent personality.

And customers love it when brands seem “real.” Be transparent if there’s a problem, and respond to social media as fast as possible. Avoid the corporate speak unless that’s your brand. Let your customers know there’s a real person behind the screen.  

Train your employees and offer guidelines for what’s an appropriate response. There’s a balance between stuffy and flippant.

Innovating while staying true to core values

Google famously has a 20% rule. The founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, encouraged employees to spend 20% of their time or one full workday a week to work on experiments the employees thought could benefit the company. Those experiments led to Gmail, Google News and other innovations. 

When you dedicate resources to innovating, you never know what breakthroughs can happen! Plus, markets don’t sleep and you don’t want to fall behind. You can innovate new product ideas, ad campaigns and more. 

That’s why it’s important to keep a pulse on audience insights to guide your experimentation. You can use customer surveys to measure perception, loyalty and conduct ongoing market research. 

As you gather and analyze data, you’ll prioritize next steps, identify areas to pivot and track progress. That way, you evolve with customer expectations and remain relevant.

These brands certainly have strengths you recognize and you can probably check a few boxes without even knowing their metrics. How does your brand measure up? 

Tide, Stains Happen to the Best of Us

No one wants to bite into a sandwich and spill jelly on your favorite shirt, yet it happens to all of us – even Olympic athletes. This is the angle the popular laundry detergent shared in their ad at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

Sinead Jefferies (FMRS) is an SVP at Zappi and past chair of the Market Research Society (MRS):

“Love this! It's a great use of the athletes in a way that doesn't feel as contrived as some sports-related advertising can do. And I think the laddering up from the girl with her sandwich to Carl Lewis is done really cleverly to reinforce that relatability.”

Tide has been around since 1946 and has dominated the detergent market for decades. It’s a quality product with a consistent message, and this, plus longevity, contributes to its brand strength. 

Uber’s “On Our Way” 

You know the anticipation you feel when you know someone is showing up for you at an important time? That’s the feeling Uber’s connecting with in this ad. 

“On our way depicts the joy and delight that we all get when we see a ride is en route or a delivery is on the way. The feeling of someone showing up for you is widely universal and uniquely human – especially at a time when people are more isolated than ever before, it feels good to know that someone is on their way,” said Jill Hazelbaker, Uber’s CMO and SVP of Communications, about the new approach. 

A pioneer in the ride-sharing industry, Uber’s name is synonymous with ride-share. Uber continues to build trust and improve the user experience with the addition of services like Uber Black. 

Corona Cero, “Life’s Golden Moments” 

Corona Cero was the first global beer sponsor for the Olympic & Paralympic games. The campaign “For every golden moment” created an experience in 11 iconic travel destinations with athletes and everyday people relaxing. 

The ad scored in the top 1% of UK ads driving sales and top 10% driving brand equity. It worked because it successfully connected the brand’s lifestyle image with a culturally relevant moment. 

The non-alcoholic beer was the first global beer sponsor of the 2024 Olympic Games. This aligns it with health-conscious consumer trends and enhances the brand’s visibility. 

Understanding your brand strength is essential for building a resilient and competitive brand. 

Brands with high brand strength have strong brand identities, they’re consistent across touch points, transparent in communication and innovate and adapt to changing market conditions.