Once an organisation commits to tracking brand health, the next question is often what to measure.

Brand health tracking helps teams measure and understand how a brand is showing up in people’s lives – including how people think, feel, and behave towards a brand over time, relative to competitors.

In large markets such as Australia and the US, where categories are mature and highly competitive, these metrics carry particular weight. Long-term growth comes from strengthening mental availability and emotional connection, rather than relying on short-term advertising bursts or price-led activity. The same principles apply in smaller markets like New Zealand. In this article, we outline common metrics used in brand health tracking alongside those measures that are unique when you work with The Research Agency (TRA). We explain the value in measuring what matters, maintaining consistency of reporting, and incorporating diagnostic frameworks such as Brand Edge and Creative Edge into your program to uncover distinct brand advantage.  

Common metrics used in brand health tracking

Brand awareness and mental availability

Brand awareness captures whether people know a brand exists and can recall or recognise it. It’s usually measured through unprompted awareness (spontaneous brand recall in relation to a category) and prompted awareness (brands recognised from a list). At TRA, we also measure mental availability at Category Entry Points (CEPs) to understand if brands are coming to mind at moments that matter, not just when the category is mentioned. An example of a CEP could be craving something refreshing such as an ice block, a cold beer or a bottle of water (different categories with overlapping entry points).  

Why it matters
Awareness is the top of funnel entry point to all brand growth. If a brand isn’t mentally available, it won’t enter the consideration set.

How to interpret it
Unprompted awareness and mental availability are especially important because they reflect how easily a brand comes to mind in real situations, including the point of purchase.  

Brand consideration

Brand consideration measures whether people research and engage with a brand when they’re actively weighing options in a category.

Why it matters
As a middle-funnel metric, consideration is a useful indicator of whether awareness is translating into relevance. And, looking downstream, consideration is a necessary prerequisite to purchase or usage. The challenge for many brands is that people are overwhelmed by too many options, and they have a cognitive bias toward familiarity. This means that for many categories, very few brands make it through to the ‘consideration’ phase. Understanding your brand’s consideration metrics can be the difference between purchase or not.

How to interpret it
Consideration, like many of these metrics, is complex and rarely indicative of one clear action. At a basic level though, we might say that if awareness grows but consideration does not, it may suggest the brand is visible without being clearly positioned or meaningfully connected to category needs.  

Brand usage and penetration

Brand usage looks at whether people have used the brand, while penetration measures how many category buyers the brand reaches overall.

Why it matters
These metrics connect perception to behaviour and help distinguish between brands that are well liked and brands that are really growing.

How to interpret it
High awareness with low usage may point to barriers such as price, availability, or experience. Penetration trends are particularly useful for understanding long-term growth potential.

Brand preference

Brand preference reflects whether people would choose one brand over another if all options were available.

Why it matters
Preference signals competitive strength, perceived value, and it can also be an important indicator of loyalty if gained through consistency and familiarity.

How to interpret it
High consideration paired with low preference may point to poor customer or user experience. Preference tends to move more slowly and usually reflects consistency in brand signals built through repeated exposure (this is known as the mere exposure effect).  

Customer loyalty and advocacy

Loyalty and advocacy metrics assess repeat behaviour, intention to repurchase, and likelihood to recommend.  

Why it matters
When we measure loyalty we aren't just tracking rational metrics. We’re looking to understand the combination of habit, identity, effort and emotional reward that drive loyal behaviour. It matters because real loyalty results in actions that favour your brand, providing stability through reliable revenue streams and reduced reliance on new customer acquisition.

How to interpret it
Building and retaining loyalty has a lot to do with understanding and effectively applying behavioural principles. Strong loyalty among a small base can signal a good experience but limited reach. Broad usage with weak loyalty may suggest relationships that are functional rather than brand-led.  

Brand perception and positioning

Brand perception captures how a brand makes people feel and can be both rational and emotional. To get a clear read on brand positioning, we rely on a range of metrics, including perception, and a deep understanding of the audience, market and competitive landscape which a brand operates in.

Why it matters
Perceptions provide early insight into whether brands are meeting the functional and emotional needs of the category. Comparing a brand’s perceptual strengths and weaknesses against competitors allows us to determine whether there is relative differentiation.  

Differentiation, while difficult to achieve, is critical for effective brand positioning which tends to support higher brand recall and loyalty, greater pricing power and importantly, it means that your brand occupies a distinct place in the minds of your audience.  

How to interpret it
Many marketers fail to realise that perceptions will decay overtime if not continuously nurtured. So, effectively interpreting perceptions requires a long-term view to identify clear trends, risks and opportunities.  

Brand equity

In simple terms brand equity reflects the intangible value people associate with a brand. Measuring and interpreting brand equity is highly nuanced and can be a challenge when switching from one brand tracking program to another. Brand Edge is TRA’s proprietary framework for measuring equity.  

Why it matters

Brand equity is often a Board level metric and is an important indicator of commercial growth.

How to interpret it

Depending on the framework and metrics your program aligns to, interpreting your brand equity ‘score’ will slightly vary. Brand equity is generally considered to be a commercial indicator where strong equity points to distinct competitive advantage. Essentially strong brands hold persuasive power – they can ask for more and they get it.

Measuring brand equity with TRA

Brand Edge is TRA’s emotional brand equity model. It measures the persuasive power a brand has relative to competitors. Focusing on three key pillars – Fit (a measure of trust and relevance), Energy (brand momentum) and Purpose (clarity and passion) – the framework guides focus to high-impact areas that drive competitive advantage. Scores can also be benchmarked over time, against competitors and our industry norms database. For example, if your Energy score is lower than competitors, this is an opportunity to focus on creating a buzz around new innovations, product offerings, or store openings that signal momentum behind your brand.  

Measuring creative and campaign effectiveness

While not strictly a brand health metric, we think it’s important to integrate creative and campaign effectiveness into a brand tracking program as it is an aspect of marketing that teams have more control over. Furthermore, many of these measures can be applied pre- and post-campaign, guiding specific actions.  

Starting with campaign context, we determined what metrics truly matter. Depending on objectives, media spend and the competitor landscape, this may include measures of effectiveness (such as recall, brand attribution, fit, message outtake, stated behaviour and sentiment shift), broader campaign impact (e.g. brand perception, behavioural shifts or commercial outcomes) and creative evaluation.  

Our Creative Edge framework has been developed to assess the strength of a creative execution, taking into consideration how the human brain processes and classifies communication through the three R’s of creative effectiveness – Remarkable (uniqueness and virality), Rewarding (entertainment value), Remembered (brand fit and ease of recall). Creative Edge focuses on how creative expression and brand assets contribute to distinctiveness, memorability, and emotional impact, and can be benchmarked against our norms database to guide future decision-making.

Brand and Creative Edge help teams better understand the strength of their brand and creative as part of a connected brand health tracking system.  

Common mistakes in brand health measurement

Even well-designed programs can lose impact when:

– Using standardised or irrelevant metrics  
– Interpreting data without applying context  
– Changing metrics and methodologies too frequently
– Treating brand tracking as a one-off exercise
– Sample sizes are too small or aren’t robust
– Failing to act on insights

Addressing these will help ensure brand health data remains useful, not just informative.

How TRA designs brand tracking programs

Our brand tracking programs are designed around three core principles:

Always-on and consistent measurement
Our continuous tracking programs provide always-on measurement of categories, brands, and competitors across markets. We sample and report daily, reducing blind spots and enabling timely, informed decision-making. Similar principles apply to Tracking Dips, whether measuring annually or more frequently, being able to draw clear comparisons is critical for strategic direction. Programs are also designed to scale, supporting consistency across multiple markets (such as Australia and New Zealand), right through to global markets (with some clients operating in 20+ markets), or seamlessly integrating local expertise into existing global systems.

For brands transitioning, we maintain alignment where it matters to protect continuity in key metrics while strengthening diagnostic insight.

Data integrity and comparability
Your decisions are only as good as the data you base them on. We take a systems approach to data integrity and efficiency, with award-winning data and survey processes, delivering trustworthy insight for confident decision-making.

We partner with established and reputable global panel providers, to gain access to hard-to-reach audiences, with strict adherence to ISO standards, GDPR, and global privacy requirements.

Measure what matters
Every brand operates with unique objectives, and in different categories, competitive sets, and stages of growth. Over and above this, there are also cultural trends, economic indicators, changing customer expectations, new innovations and behavioural shifts that can impact brands at any given moment. All our brand tracking programs apply this context in the design phase to ensure we are measuring what matters. We then apply the same context, and layer in brand and marketing theory and human science-led insight to extract value from the data.  

Building long-term brand value

Brand health metrics create a shared language for understanding brand performance and momentum. When layering in diagnostic frameworks, Brand Edge and Creative Edge, they help teams make clearer decisions, invest in activity that elicits value, and act with confidence to build brands that last.

If you’re tracking brand health but struggling to translate the data into clear decisions, we help teams make sense of what the signals are really saying. Get in touch to talk it through.

FAQ

What is brand tracking?

Brand health tracking is the ongoing measurement of how people perceive, experience, and behave towards a brand over time, usually alongside a defined competitor set, using consistent metrics and methodology.

How often should brand health be measured?

The frequency of a brand tracking program can vary depending on category dynamics, budget, and decision cycles. Many organisations track continuously, while organisations with limited budgets or slow-moving categories may opt for monthly, quarterly or annual “check-ups”.  

What’s the difference between brand tracking and campaign measurement?

Brand tracking focuses on long-term brand strength, while campaign measurement looks at short-term activity and response.

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