Brand awareness: the KPI that can't be missed

Some KPIs are dangerous. Leads, sales, cost per acquisition: these can be counted. Counting leads to accountability, and accountability leads to emails with the subject line "Quick question."

Enter brand awareness

Brand awareness is the perfect KPI. It goes up whenever we say so. There's no number to hit and therefore no number to miss. It's a feeling, like love, or the sense you've been overcharged.

How we measure it

We measure awareness the scientific way: impressions. An impression is when your ad loads somewhere on the internet, possibly below the fold, possibly on a phone in a drawer. Four billion impressions sounds incredible. Two sales sounds like a meeting. So we lead with the four billion.

Supporting metrics

For extra rigour we also report "reach," "engagement," "sentiment" and "share of voice," which we calculate by asking the team how loud you feel this month. Engagement includes likes from accounts with no profile picture. They're extremely engaged.

Handling the ROI question

When a client asks what all this awareness has done for revenue, nod slowly and say "brand is a long game." Then mention a famous soft-drink campaign without naming it, imply you're basically the same, and propose a bigger budget so the awareness can "compound."

When awareness goes down

It doesn't. If impressions fall, we switch to reporting "quality impressions," a subset we define after seeing the numbers. If those fall too, we move to "aided recall," which we test by asking your mum whether she's heard of you. She has. Every month. Awareness: up.

P.S. Awareness matters, but so does knowing whether it's turning into customers. The real agency at the bottom of this page would like a word.