What is Brand Salience?
Brand Salience
The term “brand salience” refers to a key performance indicator that shows how readily consumers think about or otherwise consider your brand when making a related purchase decision.
Do they picture you, or does it seem more natural to buy from one of the other guys?
High brand salience means people instinctively think of your products when they’re in the market for something similar.
Low brand salience, on the other hand, can mean people either don’t know of your brand or haven’t been exposed to it enough for purchasing from you to be second nature.
How Does Brand Salience Differ from Brand Awareness?
Although brand salience and brand awareness are related, it’s important to realize they’re not the same thing.
Brand awareness is all about how aware people are of your brand on a general level.
- Have they heard of you?
- Do they know off the tops of their heads what types of services or products you specialize in?
- Are people talking about you?
- How familiar are they with your brand imagery, core messages, and marketing concepts?
On the other hand, brand salience refers specifically to whether people are aware enough of your brand to immediately think of you when it’s time to make a purchase.
- Are you the Coca-Cola or Kleenex of your industry?
- How close is your brand to becoming the go-to “gold standard” for the types of items you offer?
How to measure brand salience?
Surveys
Surveys are helpful because you can ask a wide range of people questions to determine where your brand salience currently stands. You can ask your current or prospective customers whether they recall or notice your brand in relation to your competitors.
You should also ask whether customers think your brand is merely recognized or highly sought after, to determine how favorably they think of your brand.
And you can present your survey respondents with a randomized list of attributes and cues to ask them which marketing brands come to mind with each statement.
Focus groups
In focus groups, you can ask many of the same questions as you would in a survey. But they also offer a chance to dive in deeper into the responses you receive. You can ask participants why they feel a certain way about your digital brand, or dig into their feelings about your competitors.
Surveys and focus groups should ideally be used together. With a survey, you can reach a much larger number of people, and with focus groups, you can get deeper answers to your questions.
How to improve Brand Salience?
Use emotive storytelling
Branding is not just about rationality – it’s about creating an emotional connection with the customer that makes them want to purchase from your business. Leaning into emotive storytelling can help engage your audience, increase your brand equity, and gain customer loyalty.
Look for emotional impact or effective frequency
While these emotional stories can be valuable, they can also become repetitive within an industry if too many competitors try to use the same narrative. Ensuring that your digital brand story has a different emotional impact from your close competitors means your brand will actually stand out.
Be authentic
Customers see a lot of slick, expensive marketing every day. To stand out and stick in your customers’ minds, your branding needs to be authentic as well. Being real with your customers shows confidence and even courage – and that’s memorable.
Find ways to reach new potential customers
There’s a lot of competition out there these days, and many businesses are fighting over the same small pool of customers. Instead of joining that battle, you should also be trying to find ways to reach new customers.
You should make this attempt both digitally and in person.