research questions on branding

• Jan 16, 2021

9 Key Brand Research Questions To Ask

Updated: May 27

There are 9 key brand research questions to ask that are vitally important to keep track whether the brand is seen in a positive light in the market. This is crucial for businesses or websites in ensuring they have a good brand name as it encapsulates the personality, values, goals and image that make the brand recognisable to the public.

In this post we will explore these key 9 brand research questions and the reasons why they should be used, which fall within the 5 levels of the brand research funnel below:

1. Brand awareness

2. familiarity, 3. consideration, 5. advocacy, other brand research question topics to include.

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The table above shows the 9 key brand research questions to ask respondents.

The top 9 brand research questions shown above fit within the brand research funnel to help measure different key metrics. The brand research funnel gives you an instant snapshot of conversion from awareness to users or advocates of the brand. Below is an explanation of how these 9 questions fit within the 5 levels of the brand research funnel and their importance in brand research .

There are 3 types of brand awareness questions below that cover spontaneous and prompted mentions to make up total awareness amongst your audience of brands within a category.

1: Top of mind awareness

This helps to gage which brands in a particular category that the target audience are aware of spontaneously. In this case the first brand that comes to mind for that market or sector. This is important to see how your brand does when people are unprompted and is an important part of brand recall .

Q. Please think about online banks that provide everyday financial services such as current accounts, savings accounts, mortgages and loans. Which online bank comes to mind first?

2: Total spontaneous awareness

This measure’s all the spontaneous brand mentions including the first top of mind mention as well. As mentioned above this is a good judge of success for a brand to see how they stand out within their category.

Q. Which other comparison sites are you aware of?

3: Prompted awareness

This is when a brand list is either read out or listed in a survey for participants to select brands, they are aware of that they have not already mentioned in the spontaneous awareness questions.

Q. You may have mentioned several of these already, but please indicate which of the following computer brands you know, even if it is only the name.

The familiarity question helps to see how good is the awareness of brands of those participants who answered they know the brand from it being merely a label they heard of to something that is more meaningful and part of their consideration set for purchase.

Q. How familiar are you with each of these brands as mobile phone providers?

It’s important to be in the consideration set of 3 or 4 brands in members of the target audience who are serious about buying that product or service type. It often takes that number of brands for many purchase decisions. This question will allow you to understand if your brand is part of that consideration set from those participants aware of the brand.

Q. Which brands would you consider when buying a large household appliance?

It’s also interesting to see which is the most preferred by the target audience even if they have not purchased the product or service before.

Q. Which of these BRANDS do you most prefer?

When asking participants about usage of brands it’s best to keep it within a timeframe such as past month, 3 months, 6 months or in the past year. The usage question will allow you to understand how brands compare in the market and the relative market share. It’s a very useful measure to hold to supplement the existing sales data you have.

Q. Thinking about your own home, which of the following brands do you currently have/use in your household? This could be for any type of domestic appliance?

Either overall customer satisfaction or likelihood to recommend questions (NPS) on a scale of 0 to 10 will help you to understand how well your brand is delivering on your promises. Those that give a score of 9 or 10 are likely to be advocates of the brand in raising awareness or to consider purchasing in the future. So, this ties in with the other measures in the funnel.

LIKELIHOOD TO RECOMMEND

Q. On a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being not at all to 10 being extremely likely, how likely are you to recommend BRAND X OR WEBSITE to friends or family?

OVERALL SATISFACTION

Q. Thinking about your overall experiences with BRAND X in the last 3 months, on a scale of 0 to 10 with 0 being not at all satisfied to 10 being extremely satisfied, how satisfied are you with BRAND X?

There are many other topics that can be covered in brand research and these include:

Channel of purchase

You can draw on important intelligence of the channel strategies of your competitors from where they bought the brand from and the brands used.

Behaviour in making the purchase decision

Find out what people were thinking in the lead up of the purchase, so did they seek advice from others, search for information online or looked at products instore. These are vital insights to gain an understanding of where your brand should be most noticeable in order to positively influence the purchase.

Switching patterns

This can serve as an early warning system of likely defection of customers when monitoring this on a regular basis. Possible questions for this would be around - do they intend on staying loyal to the brand? Or whether they are likely to change their purchase behaviour?

Profiling the audience

To get the latest understanding of their target audience many profiling questions are asked around demographics, attitudes and behaviour and is often linked to the segmentation profiles of a business.

Advertising awareness

So long as the sponsor of the research is not disclosed, you can ask questions around what advertising they remember seeing for a particular category? Do they remember the message of the ad? What brand was is it for? What was the source of the advertising? These advertising research questions help to establish how effective any recent brand advertising campaigns were.

Brand image

Brand image otherwise known as Brand association is normally asked towards the latter part of the survey to help ascertain whether the brand’s values are being positively associated with it or not. This is often a list of brand attribute statements on a 5-point agreement scale. It’s best a have a maximum of 10 statements to help avoid respondent fatigue .

Brand research helps to refine marketing strategies whether you’re at the start of your brand’s journey or in the middle to ensure the brand’s personality is positively conveyed and instantly recognisable amongst your target audience. It’s best to use brand research to monitor your brand’s progress over time to ensure you can efficiently and strategically move against your competitors and foresee any possible market trends by conducting brand analysis from the data that was gathered.

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• BRAND PERFORMANCE

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Brand Identity Questionnaire: 20 Questions to Consider

What's a brand identity questionnaire (& why bother completing one), what is a brand identity, and why do i need one, brand identity questionnaire, 1. who is your ideal customer, 2. what pain points do you solve, 3. what kind of personality do you have, 4. what is your competition, 5. how do you make your clients feel, 6. how are you different, 7. why do your clients trust you, 8. what's your story, 9. what are 5 words that describe you, 10. what's wrong with your existing brand identity, 11. what brands do you admire, 12. how can you simplify your brand identity, 13. how will you test brand perception, 14. what is your audience's "language", 15. how does your logo communicate your brand, 16. what is your font, 17. what are your colors, 18. how do you interact with customers, 19. how can you streamline visuals, 20. what does your voice sound like, bringing your brand identity to life.

Do you feel like defining a brand identity is a “fluffy” exercise with few measurable returns? Prepare to be surprised, because, in truth, a solid brand identity is the bedrock for developing customer loyalty and retention.

Consider one of the most famous brands in the world, McDonald’s. When he first partnered with the McDonald brothers, Ray Kroc set out to create more than just another burger joint: He wanted to create a brand.

Kroc’s mission was to create an experience of consistency. Uniformity and reliability are the cornerstones of the McDonald’s brand as we know it today. You can order a Quarter Pounder in Dallas and it should taste exactly the same as a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder in Detroit. 

The brand was about the food… but more than that, it was about an experience. It was about building up McDonald’s as a trusted, familiar name where you always knew you could get your favorite lunch… no matter what city you were in.

Building a brand identity hasn’t become any less important since the ‘50s. If anything, it’s become even more critical than ever. Research by McKinsey confirms that we're operating in an era of "digital Darwinism," or intense disruption . Well-defined brands that adopt the right marketing tactics are most likely to survive and win.

How do you know if your brand can evolve? This post will give you the twenty questions you need to ask yourself to build a consistent, customer-grabbing brand identity. 

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Nailing an impactful brand identity is a critical part of growth marketing.   Without a well-crafted and maintained brand identity, your marketing will always feel flat and one-dimensional.

A brand identity doesn't live in a vacuum. 

Think about it: you feel more connected with people you identify with. It's the same with brands.

If you feel like a brand "gets" you, you're much more likely to buy their products and become brand ambassadors. And no brand wins long-term without their customers becoming brand ambassadors.

Growth is a 6-part engine , and there are six levers that must all operate at peak efficiency for a brand to outgrow their competitors. Your brand identity helps improve every lever in your engine. Let’s look at each lever and how brand identity gives it a lift.

Awareness: Brand identity makes your brand more recognizable at a glance. Recognized brands get clicked on more in SERP and on social media. 

Acquisition: Potential customers are more likely to trust a brand they can identify with. Therefore, leads will be more inclined to join your email list or download your lead magnet. 

Activation: When you have a strong brand identity, prospects will remember your brand when they encounter the problem you solve. Then, they will be more inclined to book a call or check out your product. 

Revenue: People do business with businesses they know, like, and trust. A clear brand identity makes customers feel like they know you and can trust you. 

Retention: Your prospect has spent their entire buyers’ journey getting to know your brand. If your product or service delivers on the promises your brand has made—and aligns with the personality you’ve conveyed so far–they’re more likely to stick around. 

Referral: It's much easier to talk about and share a brand that has a clear compelling story. Referral is all about empowering your customers to tell your brand story: "Dollar Shave Club sends me these awesome razors to my door whenever I need them. I never have to worry about buying razors.”

That's why brand identity is so important.

It's not just a logo and a color scheme. It's what your customers think about when they think about you.

Your brand identity needs to be something they identify with. Otherwise, you're just another site in a Google search listing.

If you want to scale growth , you need to master the creation of a brand identity that begins before a customer knows you exist.

Your brand identity is how your audience perceives you.

Snap Marketing puts it in even simpler terms, stating:

"A brand identity is the face of your business."

Without a comprehensive, well-defined brand identity, your audience won’t understand who you are. And, if they don't understand who you are, they are never going to promote you.

It's important to note that brand identity is not the same as branding. Let’s examine the differences.

Branding is the process of personifying your business and determining how to present the business to customers. Branding includes customer service style, voice, aesthetics, and more.

Brand identity is the byproduct of effective branding. When you have a strong brand identity, customers will easily distinguish your brand from competitors, and your best-fit customer will be able to identify with your brand.

Brand identity isn’t just visual brand identity, even though marketers sometimes confuse the two.

Brand identity includes:

• Visual Brand Identity: Visual elements that represent your brand.
• Brand Voice: The way your brand communicates with the world.
• Brand Values: What your company stands for or believes. 
• Brand Personality: The energy your brand projects into the market. 
• Brand Message: The way you communicate all of the above elements—and your value offer—to potential customers. 

Together, these five components create the look, feel, and tone of your company to the outside world. But it's the fifth one that is the most critical.

If your message does not inspire and motivate your target market to want to buy from you, you're missing the boat. If a competitor nails their brand messaging, they can surpass you even if they have an inferior product. So, how do we craft a compelling, memorable, and profitable brand identity? Take the time to consider and answer these twenty questions.

• Who is Your Ideal Customer?
• What Pain Points Do You Solve?
• What Kind of Personality Do You Have?
• What is Your Competition?
• How Do You Make Your Clients Feel?
• How Are You Different?
• Why Do Your Clients Trust You?
• What is Your Story?
• What are 5 Words that Describe You?
• What's Wrong with Your Existing Brand Identity?
• What Brands Do You Admire?
• How Can You Simplify Your Brand Identity?
• How Will You Test Brand Perception?
• What is Your Audience's "Language"?
• How Does Your Logo Communicate Your Brand?
• What is Your Font?
• What are Your Colors?
• How Do You Interact with Customers?
• How Can You Streamline Visuals?

If your brand hasn't developed buyer persona profiles or robust profiles of your ideal customers, this is the first place to start. Your buyer personas should shape almost every aspect of your brand identity.

Determine what your buyer personas value from a brand. Are they looking for cost savings or the highest quality? Do they want deep relationships with their vendors or convenience? By understanding your ideal buyer's pain points and priorities, you can formulate a relevant identity.

Your ideal customer is about more than demographics. Consider also their buying habits, attitudes, and goals that your business can help them to achieve. 

For more information, we recommend checking out Fundamental #2 from our post The 5 Fundamentals of Inbound Marketing: A Simple Strategy for Better Growth

Your customers don't start looking for your company because their lives are perfect. Chances are, you offer a product or service that will solve a problem. Maybe you offer personal finance software, and they're tired of over-drafting their bank account. Perhaps you do compliance training, and they're worried about regulatory-related fines. Your customers need you because of an existing pain point or problem.

Your brand identity should instantly communicate how you solve these problems. Do you offer peace of mind? Workplace efficiency? The most convenient office supply delivery around? Regardless of how your brand connects with your customers, your ability to solve problems should be at the core of your brand identity.

Brand personality is defined as a "human set of characteristics" that are connected to a brand. Brands with a strong, well-defined personality instantly win some like-ability points because customers are able to relate to them on a personal level.

Human personalities are rarely single-faceted. Brand personalities shouldn't be, either. When you are in the beginning stages of defining your personality, it may be helpful to think in terms of archetypes. 

Some household brands and associated personality archetypes could include:

• Apple: Rebel
• Taco Bell: Jester
• REI: Outdoors-lover
• Target: Bold
• Subway: Optimist
• Whole Foods: Peace-lover

For some help identifying your brand personality, you can use the 49 Personality Archetypes chart , created by Sally Hogshead . To use this chart, you simply choose your brand’s primary and secondary competitive advantages, then follow the chart to find the personality that best suits those elements of your brand identity.

Competitive analysis can be a helpful first step toward developing any marketing strategy. Brand identity is no exception. The branding lessons you can glean from your competitors can vary significantly according to your industry, and the level of competition you're facing.

Related: Make Customer Acquisition Your #1 Competitive Advantage

Your competitors could be textbook examples of poorly-defined brand identity. They may have little-to-no voice consistency across digital mediums, and a logo that's unoriginal. Perhaps they have an excellent brand identity that's memorable, unique, and incredibly easy to like. 

Use your competitive analysis to identify gaps. Then, you can position your brand identity to move into the gaps to stand out. Are most competitors buttoned-up, professional, and conservative? Then an approachable, friendly, light-hearted brand may stand out. Regardless of where your competitors stand, use their statuses as a starting place for creating a brand identity that's objectively better. 

When your most satisfied new customers communicate with your sales or account management team, what do they have to say? Listening to the interactions of new, satisfied customers can reveal a wealth of information about how you make your customers feel. 

Do they express:

• Inspiration?
• New-found energy?

The most frequent positive emotion your customers associate with your company is critical information for building a brand identity. Use this emotion to select visual identity aspects, including the optimal colors and fonts.

What does your brand offer that your competitors can't? Perhaps more importantly, how can you communicate this in your brand identity?

Whole Foods is one of the most visible and well-known organic grocery chains. Their difference is communicated clearly in the brand's logo, which is green and includes a leaf.

It is important to note that simply being different isn't enough. As branding blogger Tito Phillips highlights, you need to actively "make a difference." This means actively carving out a niche, and continually playing to your strengths. Anyone who's shopped at Whole Foods knows the grocery chain isn't trying to compete on price. In order for Whole foods to maintain their "niche" of fresh, local, and specialty foods items, they can't compete on price -- and considering their brand identity, that's perfectly fine.

Conducting customer interviews or talking to your sales team can be an important tool for learning why your customers ultimately pick your company. The factor that leads to prospect trust and customer conversions can provide important clues to your brand identity. Your company's unique trust factor could be:

• Transparency
• Flexibility

Use this "trust factor" as an important tool for defining why your brand is different and building an appealing brand identity.

Brand stories are an important component of branding. This includes both your literal history -- such as how and why you were founded -- and the story of the role you play in your customer's life.

Your brand's story should ultimately position your customer as a hero on a mission. Perhaps you're able to make them more effective at their jobs, so they receive tons of compliments from their boss. Maybe your mortgage products help them purchase their first home and start a family. This story can be an important basis for your brand identity and marketing content.

An important exercise towards defining your brand's identity can be developing a list of five adjectives that describe your brand's personality, look, and voice. 

If Peloton were to create a list, their five words might be:

• Tribe-focused
• Transformative

What drove your CEO to start your company in the first place? How is your company different? By examining the values that run through your company, you can begin to develop a list of descriptive words.

Whether or not your organization has put effort into defining a brand identity in the past, you have some identity. It may not be cohesive or well-defined, but you have an identity in some form.

If your company is considering a rebrand or brand definition project, it may be important to consider why you're initiating this effort. 

Is your existing brand poorly-defined to the point that it's almost non-existent? Is it a poor fit with who you really are? Have you introduced a new leader or ownership team that's drastically changed your culture?

Understanding the reason you need to define your brand can reveal some important room for improvement. Use this knowledge to inspire the right kind of change.

You don't need to look towards brands with similar products, services, or customers. Developing a list of brands you admire can offer various types of lessons that can be helpful. 

Perhaps you admire Boxed Water for their values-forward branding and minimalist aesthetic. Maybe you're a huge fan of Zappos for their intense focus on company culture and customer service. These concepts can be translated to companies in different sectors.

Minimalism isn't the right approach for everyone, but no one benefits from a "cluttered" brand identity. 

The minimalist aesthetic and design movement is closely associated with concepts of modernism, rebellion, and edginess. It's the concept of stripping down a design or object to the bare elements necessary for function. 

While a truly minimalist brand identity may be appropriate for a creative agency or architecture firm, it could feel out of place for a corporate insurance firm or accountancy group.

It's possible to communicate elements of traditionalism, reliability, and values with a brand identity that's pared-down, but not minimalist. 

Ride-sharing company Uber is a great example of a company who uses simple, sans serif fonts, bold colors, and a basic logo. However, in Uber's case, they avoid appearing "too" minimalist. Simplicity is always better than confusion, but it's important to ensure you're still communicating the right message.

Once you've developed a brand identity, it could be important to "test drive" it in front of a group of your existing customers or qualified prospects. This audience may be able to provide important insights that your marketing team missed. Forbes contributor Ari Jacoby recommends:

• Capturing your customer's honest perception
• Shortening your information cycle, or how apparent critical info is
• Rethinking research to include A/B testing

If performing brand perception research isn't plausible for your company due to timelines or budget constraints, I encourage you to perform research on how colors, fonts, and other aspects of brand identity are perceived by the public. Existing marketing and psychology research can provide brilliant insight into your brand's future perception.

What are the words and terminology your customers use to describe your industry, products, and services? 

There's a good chance they don't head to Google to search for "enterprise productivity solutions." Chances are, they're looking for "startup apps," or "time-tracking apps." 

Keyword research can be a critical step toward defining your language. Another approach is to record sales calls and customer interviews to identify the actual words that your target customers are using when they discuss their problems, goals, and solutions. You can also read through niche social media groups and forums to see how people in your target market talk. 

Your company's logo is one of the most important aspects of your visual brand identity. 

Ultimately, you don't "own" your colors and font. Your logo will be one of the few original aspects of your visual identity, and an effective logo can create a lasting impression.

An effective logo design is:

• Original: contains some visual elements, such as color combination or design elements, that no other company has.
• Timeless: avoid incorporating trendy design concepts, to ensure your logo will "age well" over time.
• Adaptable: the logo should scale well from thumbnail to a much larger scale. It should also translate well to both print and digital formats.
• Memorable: While "memorable" can be a difficult concept to test, your logo should leave a lasting impression.
• Relevant : Your logo should be clearly connected to your industry or products and services.

Typography communicates a lot more than "just" letters. It can impart feelings of energy, fun, humor, traditionalism, and more. Much like colors, humans associated emotions and adjectives with fonts. 

Common font associations include:

• Serif Fonts are seen as authoritative, traditional, and respectable. Examples include Times New Roman, Georgia, and Garamond.
• Sans Serif Fonts are seen as modern, clean, and stable. Examples include Helvetica, Arial, and Verdana.
• Slab Serif Fonts are seen as bold, strong, and modern. Examples include Rockwell, Courier, and Museo.
• Script Fonts are seen as elegant, friendly, and creative. Examples include Lobster, Lucida, and Brush Script. 
• Modern Fonts are seen as fashionable, stylish, and exclusive. Examples include Politica, Eurostyle, and Matchbook.

Most brands' visual guidelines include a list of three or four fonts. This will often include primary and supporting fonts. By selecting typography from within the category that best aligns with your brand's values, you can get the right message to your target customers.

Humans subconsciously associate colors with emotions. Your brand's primary and supporting colors are an important component of your visual identity. By selecting colors that are associated with your brand values, you can instantly communicate your company's mission.

Common color associations include:

• Blue : Integrity, Trust, Tranquility, Loyalty, Intelligence
• Green : Money, Growth, Freshness, Environmental-Friendliness
• Yellow : Happiness, Originality, Energy
• Purple : Royalty, Spirituality, Luxury
• Pink : Femininity, Compassion, Playfulness
• Red : Power, Strength, Passion
• Orange : Courage, Originality, Success
• White : Cleanliness, Purity, Freshness
• Black : Elegance, Drama, Strength

It is important for global brands to take note that color associations can vary according to culture. Blue's perception in the U.S. may be drastically different than in the Middle East.

The voice you use to interact with customers via social media and content marketing is an extension of your brand voice. Are you humorous, or straight-to-the-point? Do you respond to questions with experience, or links to peer-reviewed studies? Your brand guidelines should include instructions for social media and customer interactions, in order to deliver a consistent brand experience.

Your customer interactions via social media, customer service emails, phone calls, and demos are vital to the successful communication of your brand identity. These touchpoints should be made by real people in real interactions, showing that your brand is not only helpful but also human. 

Once you've developed a visual branding style guide, assess it to see if it can be streamlined or improved. Your visual identity must be able to scale up and down across digital and non-digital mediums. Test the digital and print performance of your:

• Color combinations

When it comes to defining and documenting your brand voice, look to your customers for inspiration. When your buyer personas read and speak, what do they sound like?

• Are they academic or conversational?
• Do they reference studies and statistics frequently?
• Are they prone to incorporating anecdotes or stories?
• Are they long-winded or straight to the point?

Your brand's voice should sound relevant to your buyer personas' education level, language preferences, and tone.

Your brand voice or tone will change based on your identity. A brand that identifies as “fun” will have a radically different tone from a more serious brand. If you want your brand to be approachable, you’ll use different language from a brand who wants to appear more austere.

Let all the elements of your brand identity come together to dictate the voice you’ll use in your customer interactions, marketing, and other brand messaging. Taking all of these elements into consideration will help your brand voice be memorable and compelling while remaining consistent with the rest of your brand’s identity. 

When you’re able to answer all twenty questions on this brand discovery questionnaire, you’ll have all the tools you need to craft a brand identity that will help you stand out from the crowd—and help your ideal customers feel like they’ve found a ‘home’ with your brand.

With a strong, consistent brand identity, you can crush the competition, rise to the top of your industry, and grow your business. Without it, you run the risk of being just another Google ad your ideal customer scrolls past on their way to click through to someone else’s website. 

A strong brand identity is the difference between Apple, McDonald’s, or Ikea and all the long-forgotten brands they surged past on the way to the top. 

You may be anxious to scale your business before you know the answers to these twenty questions, but that’s no way to sustainably grow your brand. 

Instead, start by building your growth engine . Develop a clear and compelling brand identity, then create a growth marketing strategy that will get your brand in front of your dream customers. 

Want to know exactly how we help our clients build reliable growth engines that enable them to grow consistently and profitably? Download the Growth Playbook to steal the tools and strategies we’ve used to generate over $100 million in revenue for our clients.

Ryan's experience ranges from higher education to SMBs and tech startups. When not doing digital marketing, he's sure to be enjoying some kind of nerdy pastime.

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• Meet Sue Kirchner

The Most Important Brand Research Questions to Identify Your Brand

If you want to know what your brand is, ASK!

In order to Brand Strong, it’s essential to know what unique value you provide your customers not only to help you craft your marketing messages but also to target the right customers and focus your growth strategies.

The best way to identify your unique brand is to ask the people who interact with your company. Your brand resides in the mind of your stakeholders. It’s how THEY perceive you that matters, not what you want them to perceive. They are the ones who will decide whether to work with you again or to refer you to others based on what value they think you provide. So, you need to know what’s in their heads and that means asking them.

(If you are a start-up company, that’s a whole separate issue but you can still interview people to get feedback on what your brand could or should be. We’ll address that in another post.)

To help you on your journey to build a stronger brand that attracts clients, I’m giving away my ebook “ 10 Questions to Ask Your Customers to Identify Your Unique Brand . ” 

But who do you ask?

To get the most complete picture of what your brand is, you need to ask some basic research questions of everyone who comes into contact with your company. Customers, potential customers, employees, investors, strategic partners, suppliers, and even competitors have some idea of what your company stands for.

If you can, interview people from as many of these stakeholders groups as you can. At a minimum, interview your customers and employees. You want to know why they like working with you, what value they get from you that they can’t get elsewhere, and why they would recommend you to others.

How do you ask?

After years of helping clients identify their brand (and working on my own brand), I encourage you to conduct the interviews in person or over the phone. Sure, you can send an email survey using a service like Survey Monkey. While you might think that it will save you time, DON’T DO IT! It’s just too hard to get people to complete a survey. We are all time strapped and it’s easy to ignore an email plea. Plus, most people don’t like to write. So, your email responses tend to be brief and therefore not helpful. But the best reason is that phone or in-person interviews allow you to dig deeper if you don’t understand an answer or want to explore a really good insight. It takes a little digging to get at something as intangible as your brand. You just can’t do that with an email survey.

I recommend asking your interview targets if they are willing to participate via email and then schedule a time to conduct the interview. You can do it over the phone, with Skype, in their office, or go grab some coffee.

BRAND STRONG TIP: If you can, conduct some video interviews using Skype or Google Hangout. Why? Because if your interviewee says something great about you, you can ask them if you can use that portion of the video as a testimonial on your site, blog or social media accounts.

What brand research questions do you ask?

To help you get your brand identification research underway, I’ve created a sample survey for you to use. Since I don’t know your specific business, these questions are good for anyone. However, feel free to ask more specific questions regarding your competition or your industry.

I’ve concentrated my questions on your two main stakeholders – customers and employees.

Your employees work for you for a reason. Find out what it is. Do they like You, the owner? Do they believe in the mission of the company? Do you provide them with a creative outlet? Your employees, whether they are full or part-time, are your brand ambassadors. They touch your customers in some way and you need to know if they understand and communicate your brand appropriately.

Your customers have formed a perception of your brand based on what you have told them and their experience in working with you. Every time you touch that customer – through presentations, emails, delivering the product or service, and even billing them – you have an opportunity to strengthen or weaken your brand. Find out what they think now because if they think you stand for A and you think you stand for B, you have a brand disconnect that needs to be fixed.

Your customers buy from you because you offer them something of value. What do they value? Why do they continue to work with you? Who do they see as your competition?

So which customers do you interview?

You want to identify the customers who really understand your brand and value your product or service. Your best customers. Build off of their perception because you want to find more of them. You might be surprised at what they value. Then interview one or two customers who maybe aren’t your best to find out why that’s the case.

Important Interview Tips

• Not every customer or employee values your brand. Don’t be discouraged if one of your customers can’t think of a nice thing to say, if they don’t perceive your company as you thought, or they just can’t think of anything that makes you unique. Dig as deep as you can but then move on. Don’t try to change their minds or explain anything. Stick to the facts, Jack. If you don’t think you can be objective or you don’t think your customers will really open up to you directly, then hire a brand consultant to do the interviews for you. My customers hire me for that outside, third party objective all the time.
• These questions are designed to mainly focus on the positive. You want to know what you do well, not hear everything you do wrong. You want to build on your strengths and replicate your successes, so find out what they are. If a customer is unhappy, they’ll share that with you. You don’t need to ask for it. This is a not a customer satisfaction survey, it’s brand research. If you do get negative feedback, be happy. It’s an opportunity to fix things.
• If there is a disconnect in what they think of your brand vs. what you want them to think, don’t be frustrated. Develop a strategy to change their perception. Work on tightening up your marketing messages or being more consistent in your brand attributes so you can close the gap.
• Be creative with your questions. Sometimes the more surprising the question, the better the information collected. You want the emotions and feelings the person has about your company, so keep asking, “Why?” until you get the information you need.

To have a strong brand, you need to be strong enough to ask questions and hear the answers. So, on your mark. Get set. Go line up those interviews!

What other questions would you ask your customers or employees to identify your unique brand? I’d love to keep adding to the list.

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Branding Questionnaire: 15 Questions Ask Before Get Started!

Creating a strong and effective brand is critical for any business or organization’s success. It differentiates you from the competition, communicates your value offer, and resonates with your target audience. A branding questionnaire can be a helpful tool in getting the process started.

Collecting the right data and insights before starting the branding journey is critical. A brand identity questionnaire can help you gather vital information to establish your brand’s identity.

This blog post will look at 15 critical questions to include in your branding questionnaire to build a solid basis for your personal brand strategy.

Content Index

What is a Branding questionnaire?

Why your client needs a branding questionnaire, top 15 questions for your branding questionnaire, how questionpro helps in creating a branding questionnaire.

A branding questionnaire consists of a set of survey questions that helps businesses achieve their goals with basic marketing and branding strategies. A branding questionnaire is a series of questions designed to assist a company in developing its brand identity, brand voice, brand traits, brand values, strategic approach, customer loyalty , and other factors.

This questionnaire will inform your preferred choices for the agency or organization working on your new brand identity.  

Creating a branding questionnaire is one of the areas in marketing strategy that is often overlooked because it doesn’t always provide direct results that can be measured. But this is the difference between the most successful and average organizations. Successful companies know the importance of a branding questionnaire.

The key to designing an effective branding questionnaire template is to ensure the questions are relevant and help an organization understand what they need to fill in to give complete information. 

To help you start on the right track, we are sharing the detailed list of 15 questions you must have in your branding questionnaire.

When branding a business or organization, a branding questionnaire is helpful for knowing their needs, preferences, and goals. A clear brand identity survey is also a great way to inquire about competitors in the branding or marketing industries. A branding questionnaire is helpful for the following reasons:

Clarifying the client’s vision

Create a branding questionnaire to assist the client in articulating their brand’s personality, vision, and objectives. It encourages them to consider their target customers, demographic, intended brand personality, unique selling characteristics, and long-term objectives. This transparency guarantees that the brand identity process aligns with its goal.

Gathering relevant information

The questionnaire collects vital information about the client’s industry, rivals, and target market. This data assists the branding team in developing a complete understanding of the client’s business environment, allowing them to create a brand that stands out and resonates with the target audience . 

Establishing brand guidelines

Color preferences, font, imagery, and tone of voice are all explored in a branding questionnaire. These facts help to build brand rules, which ensure consistency across all brand touchpoints and communication channels. 

Enhancing collaboration

Including the client in the branding process through the brand identity questionnaire promotes collaboration and guarantees that the final brand reflects their brand values and preferences. The questionnaire enables the ideal customer to actively engage in the decision-making process and contribute vital insights.

Saving time and effort

A well-designed brand strategy questionnaire can help to speed the branding process by obtaining critical information upfront. The branding team can avoid unnecessary revisions and iterations because they have a solid base to build on from the start.

Have you tried walking with your eyes closed? It’s tough, right?

When you create a branding questionnaire without adequate information, it will fall flat on its face. This is why you must have the right survey questions to complete your questionnaire. Here are the top 15 questions you need to have in your branding questionnaire:

01. What are the three things you like about your current brand identity?

Even before you start designing or redefining a brand, it is important to know the aspects of the brand the client already likes. Just because a request to redesign has been sent doesn’t necessarily mean they want to change everything about their brand. It is essential you determine the areas that need to be revamped or should be maintained instead of getting rid of them entirely.

02. What are the three things you dislike about your current brand identity?

In the same manner, it is also vital to know what the things a client might absolutely hate or strongly dislike about their brand identity. Figuring out early on what your client is unhappy about will also set a tone for your team. It also lets you know which areas of the brand will need your immediate attention.

03. What’s the story of your brand?

Brands are primarily about storytelling, so you need t know what the story of your client’s brand is. Consider yourself the director, replacing the existing director of a top-rated TV series. Can you go to the sets without familiarizing the screenplay, story, cast, location, etc.? Getting a quick background behind the scenes will help you familiarize yourself with the original.

04. Are there any brands you particularly admire?

It is flamboyant and can be extremely challenging at the same time. Therefore, you need to clearly articulate what your clients want. 

Asking your clients some of the brands their like will give you an idea about their taste in design and how they would perceive their brand to be. It will provide a framework to start your process of designing and developing a strong brand identity .

05. Are there any particular terms you associate with your brand?

It is an excellent question to have on your branding questionnaire. Asking your clients a few terms they associate with their brand can help you understand their thoughts related to the brand, giving you an abstract idea. This simple question will help you design an awesome brand guideline .

06. What is your 10 years plan for your brand?

This question will help you or your agency understand your client’s long-term goals and aspirations, and you, in turn, can get a direction to start with your work. It also tells the client that you are willing to grow and improve their desired brand identity over a longer period and not consider this a one-time opportunity.

07. Who do you consider your competition?

Agencies need to understand what industry they are working with and who, in particular, the client is their direct competitor. It will give you an idea about their branding strategies and guidelines and how they approach a specific brand. Much of this information must be extracted through research and development.

08. What are your Unique Selling Points?

This question is important because this makes your ideal customers think about the factors that make their brand stand out in the market. Developing a brand that stands out is all about the impact it makes.

09. How does your Logo communicate your brand?

Just a logo speaks the story of a brand. The logo is the most integral part of a solid brand identity. There are some organizations across the globe whose logos speak louder than the brand itself. A logo must be created in a manner to suit the brand’s personality. Ask your client about their brand’s story and do they want to communicate through their logo.

10. Is there any specific target audience you wish to reach whom you haven’t?

Even if your client has a good grip on the market, there will still be a target audience that they would want to associate with. This is an untapped pool of potential people who will associate with the brand sooner or later. Your agency can keep this in mind while translating the design.

11. Who is the decision maker in your organization?

Right from the very beginning, it is advisable for you to know who is the final decision-making authority in the organization you are going to work with. It is good to accommodate suggestions, but channeling your energy in the right direction is also important.

12. Can you walk us through your approval process?

The ultimate goal of any task is to get the final approval on the ideas and design and know how exactly it will work. Make sure you have a good understanding of the client’s policies and procedures to avoid any confusion in the future.

13. What is your budget for this project?

Talking about the budget at the nascent stage of discussion is a great way to evaluate how important this project is for your client. If they offer a budget that is too low compared to the market standards, they are not a good fit for the agency. Deciding how much time, energy, and resources you will spend would be best.

14. What is the expected timeline for the project?

Branding means a lot of different things to a lot of people. Some clients won’t even have a complete idea of what they want from your agency, so you must discuss all the tangibles before the start of the project.

15. Is there anything else you would like to ask?

It is always a good idea to have one open-ended question . There should be scope for further discussion or addition to the existing brand context. It will help the client add any additional information/instructions they want you to use while designing their brand identity.

QuestionPro is a survey and research platform that offers a variety of features and tools for creating, distributing, and analyzing surveys, including branding questionnaires. QuestionPro can help you create a brand identity questionnaire in the following ways:

Question types and customization

Multiple choice, rating scales, text boxes, and other question forms are all available on QuestionPro. 

These question types can be used to create a questionnaire that collects the precise data you require for your branding project. In addition, you may alter the fonts, choose color schemes, and add your logo to the questionnaire to reflect your brand.

Logic and skip patterns

You can include logic and skip patterns in your questionnaire using QuestionPro. This feature is beneficial when specific questions should be shown or skipped based on the respondent’s previous answers. 

It allows the customization of the questionnaire experience, making it more relevant and efficient for participants.

Question branching

You can branch respondents’ answers in QuestionPro. This lets you guide participants through the questionnaire depending on their responses, showing them only relevant questions. It improves usability and reduces questions.

Collaboration and feedback

You can invite team members or clients to examine and provide feedback on the questionnaire using QuestionPro’s collaboration tools. This streamlines the review process and ensures the questionnaire fulfills everyone’s expectations before release.

Distribution options

QuestionPro offers several ways to share your branding questionnaire. These include emailing, embedding, posting, and using QR codes to share the survey URL. The software allows offline survey distribution via mobile devices or kiosks.

Data analysis and reporting

QuestionPro’s data analysis and reporting tools are powerful once respondents finish the questionnaire. Real-time reports, infographics, and data analysis help you understand reactions. Based on collected data, these features allow you to make informed decisions.

Integration and automation

QuestionPro connects with Salesforce, Zapier, and Microsoft Power BI to simplify and automate branding questionnaires. These connections allow communication of data and workflow automation for efficient data management .

LEARN ABOUT: Data Management Framework

QuestionPro makes it easy to create, distribute, and analyze branding surveys. Its features and customization choices allow you to personalize the questionnaire to your needs and provide a smooth survey experience for respondents. So, contact QuestionPro today to conduct your branding questionnaire!

LEARN MORE         SIGN UP FREE

Frequently Asking Question

 The most important things you should ask about your brand are: Have we set up a frame? Are we making the most of our equal points? Are the different points of view convincing?

A branding questionnaire uses survey questions to assist companies in their goals with basic marketing and branding methods. This questionnaire will help your brand identity agency understand your preferences.

Branding helps buyers connect with your products and services. Customers will buy from you if they trust you.

An organization’s brand guidelines maintain brand consistency across channels. They establish the framework for visual, verbal, and written communication and build a strong brand.

Strong brand identity comes from high design standards that are applied regularly to every part of the brand’s strategy. This is done via a brand style guide or brand book.

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Branding Questionnaire: 12 Questions to Ask + Form Templates

Updated: March 24, 2022

Published: August 02, 2021

We all know good branding when we see it. We recognize an image of the classic mouse ears or Cinderella’s castle and immediately associate it with Disney. We can easily identify the iconic design and ethos of Apple products. Even Mountain Dew has its own shade of green .

Branding is what customers remember and what they’re drawn to, so it's crucial for any company to establish a clear and effective brand. Still, developing or reshaping a brand identity can feel abstract in the earlier stages. There are no clearly defined KPIs to aim for, and the process is more qualitative and feelings-based than other company initiatives.

One of the best ways to do this? A branding questionnaire. In this guide, we’ll show you how to make one and why they’re useful for any branding or rebranding project.

What's a branding questionnaire?

A branding questionnaire is a set of questions designed to obtain key information about a business in order to achieve a desired brand identity. Usually, a branding questionnaire is designed by marketers, web designers, and other creatives within a marketing department to gain a better understanding of a client’s needs when branding or rebranding.

Branding questionnaires are a good way to get your clients thinking about their identity and what they stand for — and then, how to get those characteristics across in their branding.

There are some important elements of a brand identify questionnaire you'll want to make sure you include. These are:

• Business and product description
• Product necessity
• Competition
• Any other details you deem necessary, such as your role, participants, and/or client expectations

By making it a habit to start with a brand identity questionnaire, you'll inspire confidence in the client. They'll see how professional and capable you are to help them achieve their goals.

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• Understanding brands today.
• Incorporating brand in marketing.
• Creating brand strategy.
• Measuring brand impact.

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Why is brand identity important?

A lot goes into creating a brand's identity. Name, logo, and color palette are just a few facets of branding .

Not only that, but your brand is also your:

• Promise to customers
• Personality and image
• Point of difference
• Image in the eyes of consumers

Let's look at an example of a company with a strong brand identity: Coca-Cola .

In addition to being a beverage, Coca Cola is a:

• Team: A large, multinational group of people working together
• Story: A company that sold 25-gallons during year one of business
• Image: Its red and white logo and packaging are recognized globally
• Feeling: Anything else that pops into mind when you think of or consume Coca Cola

This is the Coca Cola brand and brand identity.

Another illustrative example is Xiaomi . When the product came out, its selling point was high-end features for mid-range prices — an “iPhone-quality product at less than half the price”.

This should have been huge for those who wanted the iPhone experience without the cost. But do you know many iPhone users who have switched to Xiaomi? Probably not. That's because these people are loyal to something that can’t be replicated: The Apple brand .

If you want your clients to follow in the footsteps of the most successful brands, like Coca Cola and Apple, a brand identity questionnaire is necessary. Now, let's look at how to actually create a brand identity questionnaire.

How to Create a Brand Identity Questionnaire

Creating a brand identity questionnaire is easy. All you need is a form builder tool to create and publish the questionnaire on your website. HubSpot allows you do this efficiently using the Free Online Form Builder . You can also use other tools to build forms which we'll list later on.

Here are the steps you can follow using the HubSpot tool:

• Click Start in the upper right.

That’s it! You’re all set up. You can further customize by creating tickets for questionnaire submissions, formatting the field display, and adding rich text areas in between form fields.

Once you’re done, click Style & Preview to reveal a preview of the form to adjust styles and test its features.

Click Publish in the top right to take your questionnaire live. This makes it available via HubSpot pages, external websites, or as a standalone page.

Branding Questionnaire Example

If you’ve had experience creating forms for other uses like contact , booking , or feedback , making a branding questionnaire shouldn’t feel out-of-the-ordinary for you. Below is a basic sample branding questionnaire made in HubSpot. It asks six fundamental questions for starting a brand design or redesign process.

For more prompts to include in your questionnaire, see our list of branding questions to ask before a brand redesign . Based on the specifics of your project, yours may require more questions to produce a comprehensive, actionable strategy.

Next, let's review some other branding questionnaire design tools to help you along the way.

Tools to Use for Designing a Branding Questionnaire

To create a branding questionnaire for your website, enlist the assistance of a great form building tool. With these, you can start from scratch or go off a form template that suits your needs. Here are some popular options:

With HubSpot’s WordPress plugin , you can create questionnaires and use them to collect client information on your website. Then, you can store data captured with your questionnaire in your HubSpot CRM .

An intuitive drag-and-drop editor makes form creation easy for those without technical skills. Even if you’re building your forms on WordPress, HubSpot lets you have the same great experience you’d get via Marketing Hub .

The editor allows you to fully customize your questionnaire. There are 1,000 form fields under 12 different field types that you can use to build out every aspect of your questionnaire.

HubSpot is also big on automation. To save you valuable time, your questionnaires are synced with your contact database and marketing automation tools. You can automate notifications based on progress within the questionnaire and simple email follow-ups that might otherwise consume your time.

WPForms is a popular WordPress form builder, trusted by more than 4 million users. Its drag-and-drop builder and 100+ templates make it a great choice for building all types of forms, including branding questionnaires. If you want even more functionality, you can opt for the Survey-add on to analyze your response data with interactive reports. WPForms is only available for WordPress sites and starts free. Paid plans start at $39.50 per year. 

3. Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a popular WordPress plugin that you can use to create any kind of web form you need, including branding questionnaires.

Questionnaires have a responsive design so your forms will look great via any device. And with over 30 form field options, you can customize your questionnaire to your liking and needs.

Additionally, Gravity Forms offers conditional logic. This means you can set up your questionnaire to gradually reveal fields according to what the user selects making it more personalized.

Gravity Forms’ plans start at $51 per year, but you can test-drive the fully-featured plugin with a free demo .

4. Forminator

Forminator is an all-in-one plugin that allows you to create almost any type of web form using a drag-and-drop editor.

Forminator integrates with tools including Mailchimp and AWeber to meet your marketing needs, as well as PayPal and Stripe for payments, and Trello and Slack for collaboration. For customer data management, you can also integrate it with your HubSpot CRM.

Forminator offers a free version and Forminator Pro, which you can test drive free for seven days.

JotForm is a form building tool famed for flexibility. It allows you to work on your projects from anywhere, even offline, making it one of the go-to apps for marketers and creatives who are on the move.

The editor is easy to use and allows you to create and edit questionnaires on the go. If you can’t access the internet, JotForm makes it possible to gather information with the offline data collection feature. Plus, JotForm is known for its collaboration features which make it easy for a team to complete a project.

JotForm offers a free plan limiting you to 100 form submissions a month, with paid plans starting at $19 a month.

Logo Identity Questionnaire for Clients

Lastly, let's review some important questions to ask while designing a logo for a client.

Questions to Ask When Designing a Logo

• What does your company do best?
• Who are your customers?
• What adjectives would you use to describe your brand?
• Who are your competitors?
• How would you describe your business to a friend?
• If your product was an animal/car, which one would it be? Why?
• Which logos inspire you?
• Which colors do you feel fit your brand the best?
• Do you have any fonts that you’d prefer to use on your logo?
• When do you expect the logo to be complete?
• Who will be my point of contact with your business during the process?
• What’s your budget for the logo?

Logos have a major impact on brand identity . A logo's design must be inspired by insight to be successful. Therefore, it’s important to know which questions to ask when designing a logo .

Here are the questions you should ask while designing logos and the answers to each question will help you determine.

• What does your company do best? This helps you understand the business.
• Who are your customers? This helps you know who you're trying to appeal to.
• What adjectives would you use to describe your brand? This helps you get a feel of the client’s ultimate goal.
• Who are your competitors? This helps you understand the market.
• How would you describe your business to a friend? This provides with a more casual and conversational pitch for your company.
• If your product was an animal/car, which one would it be? Why? This helps you stir the client’s imagination.
• Which logos inspire you? This helps you get a feel of what they want their logo to be.
• Which colors do you feel fit your brand best? This helps because color is an important part of a logo and overall brand identity.
• Do you have any fonts that you’d prefer to use on your logo? This helps guide your choice of typography.
• When do you expect the logo to be complete? This helps you determine the deadline.
• Who will be my point of contact with your business during the process? This helps determine who to reach out to when questions arise.
• What’s your budget for the logo? This helps ensure your rate is within their budget.

Something to note is that research suggests asking slightly fewer than 15 questions works best for clients. So ask your clients the 12 questions above to deliver a logo that not only meets, but exceeds, expectations.

Create a Branding Questionnaire

The best businesses have carved out a unique identity in the market. It’s not just about telling the outside world who they are and what they do, but also understanding their point of difference.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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Branding Questionnaire: 12 Questions To Ask When Developing a Brand Identity

In this post, we look at the importance of using branding questionnaires as part of your market research strategy to shape and hone your brand's identity.

Table of Contents: 

What is a branding questionnaire .

• Why do I need a branding questionnaire, and what is brand identity?
• How to create a branding questionnaire to solidify brand identity

Top 12 questions to consider when building your branding questionnaire

• Branding questionnaire example
• Branding questionnaire with quantilope

A branding questionnaire is a set of questions that companies should ask their target consumers to create a blueprint for their brand. It’s a way of pinning down what a brand is all about, almost like DNA -what makes the brand unique. A branding questionnaire is a great way to focus and decide on what you want to communicate about your brand internally, to your customers, and to any third parties who work with you on your branding or marketing strategies. 

Back to Table of Contents

Why   do I need a branding questionnaire, and what is brand identity ?

As mentioned above, a branding questionnaire is your means of narrowing down your business focus to the elements that are most important to your customers. Without one, you'll be left to make a guess as to which products, services, features, packaging , or design elements your consumers value - which could either be a lucky guess or a major flop; so why leave that to chance? Ask your target audience directly what it is they value from your brand and craft your brand strategy accordingly.  From the biggest and most famous brands such as Nike, Apple, and McDonald’s to smaller, local shops, brand identity helps customers decide what they buy and who they buy from. C ustomers need to decide whether they will put their trust in a local window cleaning service just as much as they need to decide which big-name sportswear they will purchase.  A brand identity encapsulates a brand’s values, personality, and overall ‘brand voice’. It represents the brand as a whole in a certain tone, communicating to target customers what's important to the brand and what they can expect from it. It also serves as an anchor for everything a company does, so that it can be referred back to at any point to ensure strategic decisions are in line with the foundational brand identity.

In a world where countless brands compete for market space, forming a strong brand identity creates a better chance of standing out. Creating an identity for a new brand is equally as important as refreshing an identity for an existing brand; it’s never too late to take a look at what’s at the heart of a brand and see if the core values or messaging around it can be improved.

How to create a branding questionnaire to solidify a brand identity 

An effective branding questionnaire will include all the questions needed to create a comprehensive profile of your brand in terms of voice, personality, and values.

The most efficient way of creating a branding questionnaire is through an online survey platform . A good platform will have a template that contains the most common and useful questions for a brand identity survey. It will also have a survey builder that allows you to easily drag and drop questions into your own questionnaire to make it unique and customizable to you.

To supplement your questionnaire, you may also decide to conduct other consumer research to understand how your customers’ perceptions of certain elements of your brand fit with the perceptions you were aiming to achieve. This might include logo design research , a brand awareness study, brand tracking , and/or concept testing - if you are considering rebranding or want to identify which propositions are most important to your target audience.

Interested in brand health tracking? Check out quantilope's modernized approach based on the acclaimed work of Professor Jenni Romaniuk of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute of Marketing Science (author of Better Brand Health and co-author of How Brands Grow ). 

There are some essential branding questions to keep in mind when building a dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_259973554" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-term-id="259973554">branding dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_259973551" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-term-id="259973551">questionnaire . Every dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_259973554" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-term-id="259973554">branding dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_259973551" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-term-id="259973551">questionnaire will be unique, as each business and corporation is unique.

Ask yourself these questions when drafting your dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_259973554" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-term-id="259973554">branding dropdown#toggle" data-dropdown-menu-id-param="menu_term_259973551" data-dropdown-placement-param="top" data-term-id="259973551">questionnaire to help guide actionable insights: 

1. What’s your brand’s story?

Marketing and branding are all about stories. They are at the center of every brand’s proposition and they are responsible for building engagement with the target audience. Within this question, you need to answer what the brand’s literal story is - how the company or product started, what’s behind the company name, how it developed along the way, what has made it the brand it is today - as well as the story that you want the brand to tell its customers. Which adjectives would you use to describe your brand? What is its personality? What is the brand’s purpose? What does it offer the customer? Why should customers buy into it?

2. Who is your ideal customer?

Customers are becoming more responsible than ever for shaping a brand’s identity. No matter how much you put into creating the identity, customers will recreate it based on their own experience of the brand and will perpetuate their perceptions via social media and other interactions they have with people.

Knowing who your customers are and who your ideal customers are (based on previous market research, or on knowing who you hope to target with your brand) will help reveal what your brand needs to do to appeal to them. Knowing this will help inform brand personality, values, and communications to effectively reach these people. Learning more about your target customers can also inform which media your customers use the most, what they will do to help spread the word about your brand, and which channels to invest in for the highest audience engagement. 

3. Who are your main competitors fighting for customer loyalty?

In addition to knowing who your customers are, knowing which brands you’re up against is just as crucial. You will need to know the rules of the category - what works, what doesn’t, and what customers expect from it. Within the competitive area, you'll need to know which brands are most successful and why. This will tell you which parts of their strategy your brand should emulate or build upon, or where your brand can offer something different, which leads into...

4. What is your unique selling point (USP)?

What does your brand have that no other brand does? This might be hard to pin down in a crowded category, but there is always something that a brand can claim as its own. It might be your business’ ethos - perhaps efficiency, environmental credentials, or striving for excellence - or more practical or visible benefits like cleaning power, taste, or some other aspect of performance. Whatever it is, this aspect that sets your brand apart should be at the core of your messaging.

5. What is your long-term vision for your brand identity?

You might have a good idea of where your brand is at now, but how do you see it progressing? Will it stay the same, build upon existing values, or develop new ones? Knowing the direction of travel for your brand will help you to establish what you need to do now to lay the groundwork and prepare your target audience.

6. What do you like about your current brand identity?

It’s good to identify what you like and what works amongst your customers, as these elements of your brand should remain stable over time to build loyalty. Make sure to distinguish though between what you like and what your customers like, as these might not always be the same things and, as all good businesses know, the customer comes first. 

7. What do you dislike about your current brand identity?

There may be some parts of your identity that used to work but don’t anymore. They may have become outdated, or the competition might have changed the landscape and certain characteristics of your brand just aren’t relevant in the new market setting. Again, check with your customers before you remove any elements that, to them, might be central to your offering.

8. How do your current logo design and branding efforts communicate your brand identity?

Having determined your brand values and personality, also be sure to examine whether your logo and other branding devices are in line with what you want to communicate about the brand. For example, if you want your logo or web design to imply a brand that’s modern and fun, are the current design elements getting this across? Are the color themes holding it back? Consumer research can be invaluable here; launch a survey to explore your existing logo and any alternatives, evaluate your website, and get reactions to your advertising concepts or ideas .

9. What logo designs and other brands inspire you?

Identifying other logos and brands that you love - whether within or outside the category in which your business operates - can bring inspiration to your own brand’s visual identity. Consider what it is about that branding that you admire; are you drawn to a clean design, smart lettering, good use of color, or something else? How do those logos relate to the brand that they represent?

10. Which fonts best represent your brand?

Some fonts are traditional, some modern, some intricate, some subtle...the number of fonts available is endless, so narrowing down the words you would use to describe your brand identity should help you decide which fonts suit it best. If you’re a delivery company, you might want to use a font that suggests an element of speed while a mattress company might choose one that implies calm and relaxation.

11. Which colors do you want to make up your brand design? 

We know that colors can provoke emotional reactions in people and it’s worth looking at the semiotics involved here to decide which colors will best communicate the feel of your brand. Speed and urgency might mean that red or orange are featured prominently in your branding materials; purple or blue might be good choices to convey calmness and relaxation.

12. What is your brand voice?

Having thought about which separate visual elements would work well for your brand and what your unique selling point is, think finally about how your brand would speak if it could. Is it reassuring? Bubbly? Confident? Caring? This will guide the tone of your communication. Using personification techniques in market research can help establish how customers perceive and think about your brand.

Branding questionnaire example

Oatly, a brand of plant-based dairy product alternatives, came to quantilope with the vision to broaden its brand perception beyond simply being a vegan-only lifestyle brand. To determine what that new brand positioning should be to appeal to a wider audience, Oatly knew they needed data-backed market research insights to drive their future strategy. 

quantilope's automated Consumer Intelligence Platform enabled Oatly to take full control of its branding questionnaire while still having support from quantilope's certified research team as needed. In a fraction of the time it would take with a traditional research agency, Oatly was able to set up, launch, and analyze insights to guide its branding decisions. 

"Other options we were evaluating exhibited limitations in terms of survey question dimensions. This would have meant too many compromises for us. quantilope, on the other hand, provided balance. It allowed us to execute the research ourselves guided by both its platform and personal support, and with no change to our internal processes whatsoever." Sandra Schlicht (Business Insights Manager for Oatly DACH).

In leveraging quantilope’s intuitive platform navigation and advanced features, Oatly was able to quickly generate meaningful insights about their target audience to clearly identify actionable consumer groups and unmet needs for dairy alternatives. 

To read more about quantilope's branding questionnaire capabilities, check out the full client case study here .  Back to Table of Contents

Branding questionnaire with quantilope: 

Establishing a solid brand identity using a branding questionnaire can be a central pillar of your branding and communication approach. There are a number of   online platforms offering tools to build a branding questionnaire, so it's important to choose one that will generate real value for your business. 

quantilope's intuitive, end-to-end platform allows market researchers to automate every step of their research process for fast, flexible, and reliable consumer insights. Start with a pre-built template and customize from there, or build your branding questionnaire from scratch using drag & drop modules. With a library of templated descriptive metrics and 12 advanced methods to choose from (like an A/B test or implicit association testing ), you'll be able to cover all angles of branding questions to define or further understand your brand identity. 

Whether you're looking to test brand features , finalize logos , draft marketing collateral, test product concepts , or some other form of branding material, quantilope makes the research process efficient from start to finish. Begin analyzing results with real-time charting before fieldwork even wraps up to get a head start in building your final branding study dashboard. 

Beyond quantitative surveys, quantilope also offers a qualitative approach through its video research tool, inColor . Video-based responses bring you face-to-face (virtually) with your consumers, bringing your findings to life with engaging footage. This is a great method for exploring the emotional side of your brand identity in detail. 

To learn more about building a branding questionnaire with quantilope, get in touch below!

Get in touch to learn more about branding questionnaires!

Related posts, mastering retail price optimization for maximum profitability, quantilope academy is now open to the broader insights community, quantilope & greenbook webinar: tapping into consumers' subconscious through implicit research, master the art of tracking with quantilope's certification course.

• Market Research
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• 13 Important Questions to Ask on Br ...

13 Important Questions to Ask on Brand Perception Surveys

Surveys are simple yet powerful tools that can provide valuable insight into your brand.

What is your business doing right? Where are pain points that have room for improvement? How satisfied are your employee s? What do your customers think about your brand?

Brand perception in the eyes of your customers is a critical piece of your marketing equation. While engineered customer personas certainly hold merit as you’re planning the next marketing campaign, the best way to measure brand perception is straight from the customer.

What is a Brand Perception Survey?

The purpose of a brand perception survey is to understand how your customers, prospects, stakeholders, and employees perceive your brand.

Think of some popular brands and the immediate association you have with them. For example, when you think of TikTok, you probably think of a young audience, short videos, and dancing.

But brand perception goes even deeper. Do customers trust your brand , or did they have a bad experience that makes them immediately feel a negative reaction whenever they think about your company? Do prospects already know what kind of goods or services you offer? Does your business have a memorable name? A recognizable logo?

In 2019, Doritos demonstrated just how confident it was in its brand perception and identity when it launched an “anti-ad” campaign with no logo and no brand name in order to appeal to a Gen Z audience. The company claimed the iconic triangle shape of their chips and branded colors were enough to still be recognizable even without traditional advertising. And they were right.

But Doritos probably wouldn’t have taken that bold leap without plenty of outreach and surveys to gauge their customers’ perception of their brand first.

How Do You Test Brand Perception?

The concept of brand perception can be tricky to nail down, since a precise measurement is impossible to take, and opinions of your brand will vary from person to person.

Companies rely on brand perception surveys to achieve three primary outcomes:

• To understand how past, present, and future marketing campaigns impacted (or need to impact) overall brand perception
• To identify and minimize the gap between qualities the brand wants to portray, and how the customer actually feels about the brand.
• To find opportunities for improvement based on customer experiences and perceptions.

In order to get a somewhat accurate pulse of consumer perception of your brand, your survey should focus on these four factors:

1. Cognitive

Cognitive questions uncover concepts and associations that a customer connects with your brand. The Doritos example using a triangle and branded colors is a prime illustration of cognitive brand perception.

Open-ended questions and multiple-choice word lists can be especially helpful to determine what connections are being made with your brand.

2. Emotional

These types of questions will help you to gauge the emotional connection a customer feels with your brand. Measuring your customers’ emotions can be a subtle way of analyzing their brand loyalty and trust in your company as well.

Scale questions, such as “rank on a scale from 1-10,” and open-ended questions often provide the best insights on how customers feel about your brand, and whether that pulls them closer to your brand or pushes them farther away.

3. Descriptive

What kind of language do customers use when describing your brand to others? Is it positive, negative, or neutral?

Focusing on the language and descriptions your customers are using can help future marketing campaigns to either build up and reinforce positive perceptions using the same type of language, or try to redirect your customers’ word choice and perception by presenting alternative vocabulary.

Open-ended questions are usually best for this category, so customers can tell you exactly what words they’re using rather than selecting from predetermined choices.

4. Action-Based Experiences

Asking your customers about their positive and negative experiences is particularly effective when it comes to learning more about the performance of your customer service team and the functionality of your ecommerce shopping experience.

While multiple choice and scale questions are a quick way to analyze overall satisfaction in your company’s services, it’s a good idea to have at least one open-ended question at the end of the survey where customers can elaborate on why they gave the score they did.

After all, a brand perception survey isn’t going to be helpful if you don’t know the reason a customer is upset about their experience.

13 Brand Perception Survey Questions You Should Be Asking

You have several options when it comes to determining the best audience for a brand perception survey.

If you’re interested in obtaining data on a segmented portion of your audience, such as first-time customers or prospects who have heard of your brand but not committed to a purchase yet, then you can limit your questions to a specifically targeted demographic.

But if your goal is to get an all-encompassing view of your brand as a whole, you can send tailored brand perception surveys out to employees, vendors, business partners, stakeholders, new customers, long-term repeat customers, former customers, leads, focus groups, and anyone else you feel might be able to offer valuable insight.

Brand perception survey questions to ask customers:

• Are you familiar with our products/services? If so, how did you discover our brand?
• How would you describe our products to a friend?
• When you think of our brand, what comes to mind?
• If you had to describe our brand in three words, what would they be?
• How likely are you to recommend our brand to your friends?
• How would you describe your last experience with our brand?

Brand perception survey questions to ask employees:

• What did you know about the company before you applied for a position here?
• What factors made you want to work for us?
• What makes you happy about working here?
• If you could change one thing about the company, what would it be and why?

Brand perception survey questions to ask prospects and leads:

• How did you become aware of our brand and the products/services we offer?
• What have you heard (both positive and negative) about our brand?
• What was your first impression when you interacted with our company for the first time?

How Do You Write a Brand Perception Survey?

The good news – you don’t have start from scratch and waste time staring at the ominous blank page, wondering where to begin. Survey templates are an accessible asset available to help you, offering brand survey examples you can build from.

But before you dive into the templates, start by taking a step-by-step approach and developing a strategy.

First, identify the goals you want to achieve with your brand perception survey. What is the ideal response rate you’re looking for? How will your results impact your marketing goals? What factors about your brand are you specifically hoping to identify (i.e. customer service, brand recognition, online shopping experience)?

Next, consider your audience. Are you sending one survey out to a segmented population? Or will you need to create several difference versions of your brand perception survey for employees, customers, leads, et cetera?

Then, create your list of questions that fit the needs of both your survey objectives and the audience you’re targeting.

Some factors you should be mindful of when creating your survey:

• Time: If you want to maintain an average-to-high response rate , try to keep your survey relatively short. People are less likely to complete the survey if it takes too long.
• Complexity: Simple is better when it comes to surveys. Don’t overwhelm your audience with complicated instructions and questions that don’t make sense.
• Anonymity: Some respondents, especially if you’re sending out surveys for employees and stakeholders, may not complete the survey if they’re concerned about negative consequences for less-than-favorable answers.
• Question Types: Open-ended questions are a fantastic way to gain valuable insight in your customers’ own words, but they take more time and effort to answer. Vary the types of questions you’re asking in the survey to keep your respondents engaged.

When done correctly with a targeted, strategic approach, brand perception surveys can be a powerful tool to help your business represent the qualities you value.

Are you ready to create your brand perception survey? Sign up for FREE and get started!

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• Artificial Intelligence
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• UX Research

How to Conduct Brand Research – Practical Guide with a Case Study

Pablo Laboreo

How you present yourself to the world, visually and in terms of message, constitutes a real science and many companies do a good job of that. Still, how users react to your brand strategy lies relatively out of your hands. Words, logos, brand colours just trigger things – their power resides in associations. Previous experience with a specific brand deeply influences the way people perceive it. Today you can get to know these peculiarities better  to (re)shape your brand identity. Let’s jump into branding research!

It will take you just eight minutes to read this article, you will know about:

An “inclusive” marketing strategy. What’s it got for product teams?

• When does the time come for this type of research?

How we build stronger brands with user stories

A snapshot of tools and techniques.

• How we conducted brand research on our UX studio brand

Takeaways on branding research

Ask 100 fellow product managers and UXers to define branding and who should do the job. Many will start talking about visual identity and taglines, graphic designers and marketers. Indeed, marketing teams have traditionally overseen branding but the times, they are a changin’! Not that we want to take over marketers’ jobs (we love marketers!) but bringing the users’ voice into the brand identity process sounds like a good addition.

When we add a user research to branding, personal stories from your target audience start to flow. It fills gaps you hadn’t even thought about. Knowing these stories can give product teams a lot more confidence to take bolder design AND branding decisions. It will also make your product stand out. This could also translate into reduced budget needs for marketing campaigns once you’ve better defined your market target.

Wait, don’t we already do this in a market research? Well,  my colleague Dan took a comprehensive look at how market research and user research differ , as well as when and what to use each type of research for. In this article, I want to zoom into the branding process and make a case for incorporating users stories when you create your brand.

Brand Management: When does the right time come for this type of research?

Good news: You can do it now, whichever stage your brand finds itself now. We at UX studio make no secret how we believe in the value of research . We do! More or less optimal times to do it may come around, but including research in your project never happens at the wrong time.

Have you already got your product out there? Do research! Specific methods can find out what customers think when they encounter your brand, and validate your message (or not). Or perhaps, while working on something new, you need to figure out how to best present it to the world. Do research! When performed at early stages, research services help find the right tone and character of the new brand. Get to know your potential users, their current choices, how they communicate and which approaches they prefer.

Let’s have a look at typical brand elements that a comprehensive research strategy (market + user research) can shed light on.  

Brand awareness

Finding out who knows about your brand and the journey they took to get to know it forms a basic yet crucial first step. Understanding how large an audience currently recognises your branding can help you track improvements over time. You also want to identify more effective communication channels, so you don’t waste money and effort on the wrong platforms.

Brand perception: Associations

Human minds amaze me. Words and images evoke ideas, which “trigger many other ideas, in a spreading cascade of activity in your brain ,” ( Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman ). Brand associations refer to the ideas and qualities that pop up in people’s minds when they encounter a certain brand. Research facilitates getting these right.

In turn, this helps your branding in many ways. It can differentiate you from the competition, project positive feelings or make it easier for customers to remember and choose your product over others.

Brand affinity

Making users familiar with your brand and aware of the attributes you want them to see in it sounds pretty good. What if we could level up one? You probably can recall a person you felt related with after just a couple of minutes. Something indicated you could easily get along and become friends. Brand affinity deals with this, creating a real connection. By understanding your users and the traits they associate with your product, research unlocks the possibility to design branding that connects with their personalities.

Value proposition

In a simplified way, value proposition represents the answer to your users’ question, “What can you do for me and why should I care?” Research will inform you not only about the problems of your potential users that your brand may offer to solve, but also the why’s behind it.

What makes this problem important? How do they perceive it? (Perception plays an important role here.) As part of research, we can test the value proposition and fine tune it before the official launch, increasing your chances of hitting a bullseye instead of just the edge.

Competitors analysis

Assessing where your brand stands compared to your direct competition can further fill out the picture. Learn what users like and don’t like about other products and their value propositions. How do they make their choice and what gaps can you still target?

We can select from many tools and techniques; which one you want depends greatly on the specifics of your brand, timing and audience. You probably should use a combination of several. To better keep track of all insights and emerging patterns, we recommend building a research system:

• Surveys – online, by email or telephone. They mostly provide quantitative data and help collect users opinions/views on a large scale. When using surveys, you need to keep specific biases in mind and interpret the results with care.
• Interviews – with the external (users, clients) and internal (employees, partners, investors) community. When carried out by experts, interviews provide one of the most effective setups to dig into reasons and personal stories.
• Focus groups – in person. Running discussions or activities with a group of people can make for great fun and many insights as you observe interactions between several individuals and one or more brands at the same time. Marketers, psychologists and other experts have developed a large collection of techniques over time. UX studio staff have run personifications, storytelling, collages, associations and even “brand parties”. (Source: Ripple kaufen in der Schweiz )

• Analytics tools – to measure traffic, origins, demographics of users arriving to your landing page or products. Search data can also add to the picture, as one user’s search session may often contain several (related) searches.
• Testing – looking for proof. Many techniques can help validate existing or re-designed branding and value propositions. These include fake landing pages, A/B testing, five-second tests, content testing, associations, metaphors, etc.
• Social listening tools – even more data. Some licensed tools let you scan for and listen to conversations in social media and on the web about your brand. Ever wanted to hear what others are saying about it when you’ve left the room?

Case study: How we conducted brand research on our UX studio brand

Some weeks ago, we at UX studio  decided to re-review our own branding. We do this on a regular basis (and recommend everyone to do the same!). We usually kick-start with a list of questions we wanted to get answers for, for example:

• What do people think of us as a UX agency?
• What do they think of our design?
• What do they think of us as a team?
• How do they perceive us compared to other agencies?

Identify the audience

We started by mapping all stakeholders currently interacting with our brand. This means our past, existing and prospective clients and employees, user-testing participants, training courses and meetups attendees, potential CSR partners, our UX Blog readers, social media followers and literally anyone else who accidentally bumps into our UX studio website and content.

Get to know their stories

Several methods helped us find out what they thought. We carried out a large batch of live interviews with employees and partners. We conducted online and telephone interviews with existing and past clients. Online surveys also played a role. Apart from getting answers for our initial set of questions, such an exercise also allowed us to identify the main channels through which people currently hear from us for the first time. This also informed us of their initial reactions.  

First insights and action plan

Although we’d undertaken a rebranding process not so long ago, we learned a lot! Many positive insights confirmed that our brand strategy performs quite well in some ways. Besides, we found some other things we could improve💪 For instance, some users seemed confused about our positioning or the range of services provided.

We collected all the improvement points and prioritised actions that we needed to take. Finally, the team set up specific goals and an action plan with a focus on redesigning the website – including tone of voice, information displayed and optimising our value proposition.

Methods used

Excited about the task, we carried out a comprehensive evidence-based redesign plan that included (in varying order and number):

• Analytics: We checked out what most of our visitors do and what pages they visit.
• User testing: We tested the old site and continuously tested the new pages throughout the redesign phase, including our value proposition.
• Interviewing: We carried out a lot of interviews with product managers worldwide.
• Data search: We analyzed the use of certain keywords and how it related to our website with the help of a daily keyword rank tracking tool .
• Five-second testing : We used this technique to first check brand perception from our main page.
• Comparison tests: We applied these to other leading agencies’ websites.

Results and next steps

By the end, we had revamped our main page and created a shiny new design services page, enhanced our brand image, and crafted a more clear value proposition. And we validated all this through the research.

Users started to show a higher affinity to our brand and to associate UX studio with most of the values we take pride in as a team. These included knowledge, humaneness, youth, professionalism, excitement and “walking the talk”.

To celebrate, we wrapped up the exercise by sharing the results and feedback with all the team and opening the floor to more improvement ideas. And no doubt, we will do it again in a few months.

Of course it succeeded from a business perspective. Also knowing what the broad community thinks and feels about our brand helped everyone in UX studio connect at a deeper level with what we do every day: research+design.

In many cases, brand success will depend on the ability of yours to stir positive feelings in the minds of many different people. Therefore, strong branding results from a collaborative effort. Like it or not, you should involve your users. And yes, that means user research.

A cross-functional branding strategy that involves marketers, designers and researchers reduces risks of getting it wrong. It also lowers marketing campaign expenditures because you now also have a qualitatively-refined target audience.

Whether you are just starting your branding identity process or already maintaining a presence out there, incorporating user research always makes good sense. Apply diverse and highly adjustable tools and techniques for your branding needs and timeframe. However, use a combination and keep track of the insights over time. Reviewing and (if necessary) refreshing your branding from time to time makes for a healthy practice!

Want to read more?

Do you rely on user personas to design and market your product? Keep in mind some common traps and how to overcome them .

For a more comprehensive view of what we do at UX studio, check out our free ebook, the Product Manager’s Guide to UX Design . In it, we describe the basics of our process.

More into in-person learning? Reach out to us if you are thinking about organising an in-house UX training for your team. We definitely have some ideas! 😉

Let's talk

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Useful Questions To Assess Branding Research Quality

Summary: branding research quality can be gauged by asking a set of questions to determine what it reveals about the audience, its category drivers, and value..

2 minutes to read. By author Michaela Mora on January 21, 2011 Topics: Brand Research , Market Research Cartoons , Survey Design

It is not uncommon to see marketers questioning branding research quality and feeling disappointed when insights from the data seem obvious.

Often, they feel they wasted money in branding research, expressing their disappointment by saying aloud “I didn’t need to do research to know that.”

My question is always: Why didn’t you act on such obvious insights? The answers are often:

• I wasn’t sure
• Too obvious, there must be something more to it

What Can Obvious Insights Tell Us?

In a recent article about how insights can be used to build strong brands by Notre Dame Marketing Professor Carol Phillips, she argues that we should not reject an insight just because it seems obvious.

Before putting an obvious insight aside, we must first ask if it:

• Reveals something about the target?
• Relates to the category driver?
• Captures how consumers want to feel?
• Speaks to an enduring value?
• Challenges the brand to act in new ways?

Assessment Questions

I agree with Professor Phillips when she says that if you can answer yes to some or most of these questions, chances are you have an insight for building a powerful brand.

At the same time, I think these questions can be used not only to spot relevant insights (pun intended) to help build a brand but also to assess the quality of the branding research provided .

These questions should guide the research design and the analytical approach of any branding research endeavor to be able to obtain actionable insights, obvious or not. A branding research study that can’t answer yes to at least one of these questions is totally useless. Isn’t it obvious?

To learn more about how to design brand tracking studies, check the article Brand Tracking Studies – How To Design Them .

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40 Questions for a Smart Branding Strategy

But how do you create an effective branding strategy? What should you consider when it’s time to develop a new or revamped brand? What do you need to know to do branding right?

As marketing and branding consultants , we’ve developed branding strategies and brand identities for many types of organizations.

Here are 40 questions we ask when we’re creating a smart branding strategy for a client.

Your Organization & Mission

• Why does your organization exist? What is your mission or purpose?
• What does your organization do? What types of products and services do you provide?
• What kind of organization are you? How would you describe your company? How do you see yourselves?
• How do you want others to see your organization?

Your Business Objectives

• Why are you developing a new brand or revamping your brand identity? What are the business reasons behind the new branding? What do you hope new branding will achieve?
• What new story do you want to tell the market about your company with a fresh brand?
• What is the timeline for launching the new brand? Is there a business reason or a major event driving this timeline?

Customers, Prospects & the Customer Experience

• Who buys your products and services?
• What specific problems are customers trying to solve when they turn to your business?
• How do customers choose suppliers like your business? What factors are most important to the buying decision?
• Why do people choose to do business with your company rather than your competitors?
• What do customers and others experience when they interact with your company on a day-to-day basis? How do you make people feel?
• How would your customers describe you?

Your Value Proposition

• What is the most important value you deliver to your customers?
• How do you communicate your value proposition? What do you say about your business at every step in the sales and marketing process?

Your Marketplace

• What markets do you serve?
• What is your current market position and market share? For example, are you the largest company? A smaller player? Middle of the pack? A regional leader? An upstart? A newcomer?
• What market position do you want to achieve? Who do you want to be?
• How much awareness is there of your brand in your marketplace?

Your Competitors

• Who are your primary competitors and how are they branding?
• What sets you apart from competitors? What are the key points of differentiation that belong in your brand identity?
• Are there fonts and colors to avoid in your new brand because they are used by competitors?

Your Current Brand

• What is the history of your current brand? How was it developed? What is it intended to represent?
• Are you planning a full replacement of your brand or are you looking to update and refresh the existing brand?
• Do you expect resistance within your organization to the idea of changing your brand? What are the reasons for resistance?
• Do you have standards in place that govern the use of your brand across your enterprise?
• What do you like about your current brand?
• What do you dislike about your current brand?
• Is there equity in your current brand worth retaining? Should any elements from your current brand be used in the new brand?
• Have you conducted recent research on perceptions of your brand? What perceptions do people have?

Your New Brand

• How do you think your company should be positioned in the marketplace?
• What are the top three to five key marketing messages to use as “proof points” to support your positioning?
• Besides your company name, what elements belong in your brand, such as an icon symbolizing your business or a brief tagline that states your value proposition?
• Will you need variations of the company brand or related sub-brands for divisions, units, or product lines?
• What attributes do you want customers and prospects to associate with your brand every time they encounter it, in all media? “That’s the company that is….”
• What is your brand persona or point of view? For example, are you strong, stable, creative, quirky, trusted, smart, safe, dependable, helpful, edgy, expert, etc.?

Brand Launch & Deployment

• What is your budget for brand development and deployment?
• Have you inventoried the uses of your current brand and identified the full range of applications for the new brand, from tiny social media icons to building signage and vehicles?
• Do you have a plan in place to launch the new brand, both internally and externally?

Marketing the Brand

• How will you capitalize on your new identity in sales and marketing? A new brand is an ideal opportunity to generate attention and get people to see your organization differently. Your branding strategy should include a comprehensive plan for making the most of this opportunity.

Do you need help with branding? Our Cleveland marketing agency has extensive experience in branding strategy and brand development . Contact us if you’d like to learn more.

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The complete guide to brand perception surveys.

7 min read Who owns your brand? Your marketing team? Your public relations staff? Your CEO? In a very real sense, your customers own your brand. It is what they think it is. It promises what they say it promises.

What does a brand perception survey do?

Brand perception surveys help you understand how your brand is perceived in the mind of customers, prospects, employees, and other stakeholders. They paint a picture of the mental real estate your brand owns and how it compares to that of your competitors’ brands.

At a very simple level, a brand is just an idea connected to your product. For example:

• Simple + Computer = Apple
• Cola + Youth = Pepsi
• Rebel + Motorcycle = Harley Davidson
• Pictures + Temporary = SnapChat

Do you know how many customers recall or recognize your brand name and logo ? Use our free brand awareness survey template to find out.

Why are brand perception surveys important?

Brand perception can be formed over time through different customer experiences . A customer’s personal experience with your product or service can spread throughout a market and solidify a positive or negative reputation among those who may know nothing about your company at all.

Brand perception surveys hold a key position in promoting positive brand equity – the value premium a brand brings to a business. Businesses want to maintain high levels of brand equity as this can have a knock-on effect on sales and profits.

As customers have ‘ownership’ over the brand’s image in their minds, it’s important that businesses can influence this. To do this, you first need to measure brand perception regularly, track it over time, and identify what drives improvements.

A brand perception survey is a painless and cost-effective way to measure your customer’s views on your brand. It’s regularly employed by brand managers as it provides more flexibility than in-person workshops: surveys can be completed in the target audience’s own time.

Best Practices : Discover how to increase response rates in your brand perception surveys. 

Questions to ask in a brand perception survey

There are 4 core human factors that lead to brand affinity:

• Cognitive – the concepts that a consumer associates with your brand
• Emotional – the feelings that a consumer associates with your brand
• Language – how a consumer describes your brand
• Action – the experiences a consumer has with your brand

When you design your brand perception survey, focus on these 4 key areas that will help you understand the cognitive, emotional, language, and action factors of your brand. The following sections will describe each area and provide some example questions to start you off.

These questions should draw out the associations that consumers connect to your brand. You can start off with open-ended questions and then tighten using multi or single-select lists.

Example questions :

• Open-ended question: When you think of [your brand], what comes to mind first?
• List question: Which of the following words describe [your brand]?
• Positive to negative scale question: Of the words you selected, how do you feel about each?

These questions should attempt to identify the feelings connected to your brand, and if those draw them closer to the brand or pull them away.

• Open-ended question: What kind of feelings do you experience when you think of [your brand]?
• List question: How would you describe your level of emotional attachment to [your brand]?
• List question: When you think of [your brand], how do you feel?

These questions teach you how consumers internalize and understand your brand by asking how they would describe it to others.

• Open-ended question: Which three words would you use to describe [your brand]?
• Open-ended question: How would you describe [your brand] to a friend?
• List question: Which words would you use to describe [your brand]?

These questions should answer how positive or negative a consumer’s previous experience has been with your brand.

• Open-ended question: How would you describe your last experience with [your brand]?
• List question: Which best describe your last experience with [your brand]?
• Scale question: On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend to a friend or colleague?

Who should you send your brand perception survey to?

Try to take into consideration who the best audience for your survey is. The kinds of insights you can draw from your survey will depend largely on who you invite to participate. For example, if your brand is about comfortable maternity-wear, you may choose to survey one (or more) of three different audiences:

• You may want to get a wide pool of responses from different backgrounds indiscriminately, including expecting mothers, new mothers, partners, friends, and family. This could provide a 360-degree perspective that gives very general insights.
• Alternatively, you could focus on expecting mothers, then women thinking of having a child, etc. in a segment-by-segment approach , sorted in order of product market relevance. Your customer perceptions will then be from very focused, but relevant markets.
• You might also choose to send your survey to people from each possible stage of the customer journey . This focuses on audiences with greater involvement and brand affinity, shown by increased sales activity. In our maternity wear business example, the survey could be given to:
• Non-customers that have no knowledge of your brand
• New customers who have experienced it for the first time
• Current customers have the experience of purchasing a product
• Long-term repeat customers that enjoy using your brand
• Former customers that did not enjoy using your brand

In this way, you would gain customer perceptions from different perspectives along the customer sales cycle, helping you focus on process and product improvements.

Each of these three approaches provides unique and valuable insights.

Getting started with a brand perception study

Brand perception surveys have three main outcomes:

• Understand the impact of your marketing campaigns on brand perception.
• Resolve the gap between the brand qualities you want to portray and how the customer actually feels.
• Identify areas for improvement based on customer perceptions.

Tracking and managing these three stages can be hard to do without an intuitive solution.

The Qualtrics Brand Perception Study is a solution that gives a 360-degree understanding of how effective your marketing and messaging is. It’s an all-in-one product that helps you:

• Understand if your product experience is aligned with your brand values .
• Track how well consumers are accepting the ideas you try to associate with your brand. The ideas they associate with your brand help determine their affinity towards it.
• Measure how your brand is positioned against relative competitors.

Watch a video about the Qualtrics Brand Perception Study

Prebuilt reports, like below, show you instant analysis of your data, so you can spend more time delivering results.

Over time, results can be monitored and compared to see how your brand perception changes across different audiences.

Better understand the health of your brand with our free brand awareness survey template

Related resources

Brand Perception

Brand Sentiment 18 min read

Brand intelligence 12 min read, brand recall 10 min read, brand image 10 min read, brand identity 12 min read, brand perception 11 min read, request demo.

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Branding Market Research: Methods, Tools, & Template

Topics covered ✅.

• Branding research process
• Brand study report
• Brand research examples
• Types of brand research
• Brand research template
• Brand research methods

Investing in branding market research is a proven best practice to delight your potential customers.

When you’re aiming to promote yourself or your business, having a deep understanding of your brand is a must for informing your future marketing campaigns.

Your potential customers are likely engaged on multiple different platforms where you would invest in marketing strategies, so your branding market research will help you conduct the optimal content research to fit each of those channels.

For example, platforms that might form a multichannel B2B content strategy include your personal website, emails, newsletters, and the many social media channels.

By the end of reading this article, you’ll have learned various tips and tactics to add to your toolbox while compiling your own branding market research.

1. M ap your customer journey

You already know that your marketing strategies will be more sophisticated than copying and pasting one piece of content everywhere.

Therefore, your branding market research should include the types of market research that dive deeply into your ideal customer journey to guide your content strategy and marketing campaigns.

Your ultimate outcome should be to create an ideal customer profile that defines your comprehensive market.

• Journey - Where are your potential customers on their customer journey when they should hear about your product or services?
• Time - What is the time of day they are actively searching for solutions?
• Buying habits - What are the key criteria (like price, quality, convenience, etc.) that factor into their buying habits?

To address these types of questions, your market research methods could include online surveys, other types of surveys for research , interviews, sensitivity analysis about buying habits, and more.

Even if you don’t have a marketing team, you may want to consult with product development market researchers to ensure that your product and services are optimally designed for your potential customers.

You should consider using both quantitative and qualitative data within your branding market research.

Pay attention to the unbiased behaviors of your potential customers as they use your prototype or similar products and marry that data with rich testimonials captured from online surveys.

We could write an entire book about crafting online surveys to assess potential customers, but for the sake of brevity here, we will simply mention that this element should inform the types of market research you choose.

However, if you want to dig deeper into types of market research, we recommend checking out the work done by Drive Research, which published a really high-quality overview of 11 Types of Market Research to Consider in 2022 .

Claim My Free Branding Market Research Template

This hub is ready-made and pre-populated with free tools, examples, and PDFs for your branding market research.

Creating a compelling piece of content

Each customer journey and target market will have its own specific optimizations that you need to keep in mind to have maximum success when you roll out marketing campaigns.

That’s why deeply understanding your customer journey will enable you to create compelling pieces of content that serve to delight and build trust with all of your potential customers.

Investing more into your branding market research upfront will help you to make tactful optimizations efficiently in the long run.

Your end result will be marketing campaigns that look effortless to your potential customers, as each compelling piece of content you distribute suits its medium perfectly, earning you a sleek and professional presence across each platform.

Positioning your marketing site for your customer journey

You want to invest in a marketing site that is based on your segmentation research and serves as a home base for all your marketing campaigns.

Your marketing site can play an important role in helping you reach your target market and potential customers.

A “hub-and-spoke” approach is great if you are trying to drive traffic to your site.

In this model, your site acts as the hub of your core content strategy while the other marketing strategies are the spokes, effectively distributing marketing campaigns to drive traffic back to your site through search terms and compelling pieces of content.

Now that we’ve covered the types of market research, factors of understanding your customer journey, and upfront branding market research you will need, you should be in a position to plan for growth marketing strategies.

2. Use m ultichannel marketing strategies

Choice matters.

Realistically, it is asking a lot of your audience to seek your content on a platform that they rarely want to use for any other reason.

At first, a multi-channel approach to marketing strategies gives you the perfect environment to A/B test and determine what pieces of content and marketing campaigns work best.

This does, however, require you to have a strong understanding of the platforms your potential customers like to use and when you should post your content to help them to see it.

Luckily, you will have this information handy from your previous online surveys and various branding market research assets.

In the beginning, you should aim to give your potential customers as much of a choice as possible, and they should be able to use the platforms they want and still have access to your marketing campaigns and content.

3. Expand your reach to potential customers

Of course, if you’re only posting your content in one place, you are limited in the reach of your content. Being on more platforms gives you not only a larger pool of potential customers but access to different audiences .

When expanding, you need to consider the demographics of your users and the audience research tools you are considering.

Are that audience and channel valuable to you?

Do they align with your products and services?

A multi-platform approach doesn’t mean you have to be everywhere, but you certainly should aim for the largest possible target market across those different channels.

Optimize your branding market research process and marketing campaigns

A multi-channel approach to marketing campaigns is a great opportunity to build a strong and consistent brand image across different platforms.

There is a tricky balance between matching the tone of the platform and keeping the brand image consistent, but when you pull it off, it gives your content an element of authority and professionalism.

Brand consistency does absolutely not mean posting the same content everywhere.

Understand that your potential customers are on different platforms for a reason and leverage the strengths of each medium to your advantage.

There’s a spectrum here from copying and pasting the same content everywhere on the one hand, to creating unique but unrelated and inconsistent content on the other.

You want to be somewhere in the middle and allow each platform to highlight the many facets of one coherent brand identity.

4. Leverage online surveys before investing in a new target market

While a multi-channel approach can offer tremendous benefits, that’s not to say that it doesn’t come with these potential hazards.

First, you will naturally gravitate to your favorite platforms you are most comfortable with, and a multi-platform approach can often push you out of that comfort zone.

Particularly when you are adding a new platform to your marketing strategies, it’s worth taking some time to run a few online surveys to understand the platform deeply.

This will, of course, take time but as mentioned above; you can get much more out of a platform if you are more familiar with it and understand what your potential customers are actually thinking, as well as the overall tone and features of the platform.

This extra effort involved in conducting online surveys has obvious benefits, but that comes at a cost of time and therefore money.

For many, this investment is still a straightforward decision, as the reach of a wider audience and a chance to build a strong brand identity across many platforms is well worth that investment.

However, you shouldn’t be blind to the potentially significant time investment required in getting this right and weigh that against what you’re seeking to gain from being on these platforms.

5. Continuously seek to understand your customer

A successful multichannel digital campaign is going to take some planning, and this is what can make it sometimes tricky to pull off.

Before you post, you need to have a sound idea of your current level of engagement relative to where you want it to be and what a successful strategy will look like.

This includes, as we mentioned earlier, understanding your audience deeply.

Continuously seek to understand the platforms that your potential customers like to use and how they like to use them.

If you’re struggling to know where to start, look for competitors on these platforms and see what they’re doing and see what methods you think they are employing successfully or not so successfully.

Don’t underestimate the value of refining the customer journey as you proceed and periodically evaluating your content strategy based on surveying the buying habits of your customers.

By surveying buying habits, you can supplement your branding market research and achieve a level of planning to ensure that one channel doesn’t overshadow or contradict another channel.

Deliver your products and services to customers through timely marketing

Time your marketing campaigns to ensure that you’re not over-saturating different platforms with your output. We all know those pages that post way too much and how disinterested we become in them.

It’s also important to consider how these efforts will intersect with your broader goals. If your strategic imperative is to drive traffic, then what is your strategy to convert that into sales?

Race Acronym: Reach, Act, Convert, Engage

Consider the RACE acronym to help you think about your brand strategy and the role that a multi-platform approach can play in it:

• R – Reach: Reach is the goal of any multichannel approach. You want to maximize your reach with your potential customers by utilizing different channels to get your compelling pieces of content to them.
• A – Act: Once your content strategy has a broad reach, how successful is it in encouraging the reader to interact with it and click through to your marketing site? Click-through rate is a great metric for analyzing your overall content success.
• C – Convert: Of the customers that interact with your content, how many of those translate into sales?
• E – Engage: This step is a measure of continual engagement. Building long-term relationships through your content is really powerful, and it’s useful to think about the percentage of customers that regularly come back and engage with your content.

A final word on branding market research

We hope that the various tactics and tips we’ve suggested will help to guide and inform your branding market research process.

All of the techniques we have covered are things we integrate into our own marketing strategies.

However, your products and services will certainly warrant unique marketing strategies of your own, which is to be expected.

As you go forward, keep in mind that while the merits of conducting branding market research are enormous, these initiatives can be difficult to plan and manage.

So, we urge you to stay patient, and if you should have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’d like to chat.

If there’s one takeaway to gather from this piece, it is to keep your marketing campaigns manageable and don’t feel that you need to be in places that don’t bring value for the extra effort that they require.

How to do brand research: analyze your brand and discover why it matters

Whether you’re launching a new brand or updating your existing one, it’s important to get your product, personality, and messaging right. Your brand is the face of your business, but it can’t rely on the elements and aesthetics that appeal to you personally—the most important factor is that it appeals to your target audience and they connect to it. The best way to strike this fine balance? Brand research.

What is brand research?

Brand research is pretty much what it sounds like: it’s the process of conducting research relating to brands and branding. Most brands are more than just what they sell. They have an abstract collection of ideas that relate to their ‘personality’ and customer base. This could be a recognizable logo, like McDonald’s golden arches (said to be recognizable to many children even before they can speak ) or the Nike ‘swoosh’. It also refers to typefaces, colors, and even the tone of voice used on their packaging, like Innocent Smoothies’ colloquial messaging.

Reviewing analytics by Subzero_ via 99designs by Vista.

Why is brand research important?

You might be conducting brand research as a way to keep up with current trends, cultural shifts, or unprecedented events that have had an unexpected impact on the way you run (and the way consumers interact with) your business.

Whatever your reason, the most important aspect of brand research is to gain an understanding of the perspective of two different groups: your external customers, clients and users; and also your internal employees, investors and stakeholders. Gaining this understanding will ultimately be the most useful input to shape the future of your brand.

We all feel like experts on our own brands, which is why it’s necessary to take a step back and digest the points of view of those who aren’t so close to it. There’s likely to be aspects that you love, which your customers don’t relate to and elements you’re considering dropping that your customers value highly.

Without researching the opinions of those most familiar with your brand as well as those discovering you for the first time, you could progress into a rebranding strategy that actually alienates your audience. And that’s exactly why brand research is so important.

Start by discovering how your brand is perceived right now. Then, as you steer your brand in the direction your audience wants it to go, you can start altering the elements that will best appeal to your current and prospective customers.

An illustration of an interview by Wiell via 99designs by Vista.

Types of brand research

As you probably remember from your years in education, research is a lengthy business. It’s not just about reading a few articles or reviews but really delving into your audience and their needs and what you, as a brand, can do to keep them interested. Fortunately, there are a few tried-and-true methods of brand research that any company can adopt.

Customer surveys

Surveys are a quick and (relatively) easy way to gather a lot of information in a short time. It’s a good starting point for your brand research, as you can ask your audience directly what they like, don’t like, and would improve about your brand and then work to implement those ideas. This input can also guide other areas of brand research, like your brand awareness and how you compare to competitors. Just bear in mind that you want more than a yes or no answer, but also that your customer is likely to want to finish the survey quickly—the sweet spot is about three minutes . Ask varied questions that delve into the parts of your brand you really want to know about, and be sure to share the survey with a wide range of audience members, not just your regulars. The more perspectives you can take on board, the better.

Brand awareness analysis

Brand awareness research helps companies understand how well consumers—whether or not they are direct customers— know their brand. It might sound like a process that works in favor of larger brands, but it can be used to test the efficacy of something as intangible as an advertising campaign or, if you’re a local business, how well members of the community know what you do.

You can do this in the form of a survey if you have access to networks much wider than your existing audience. Alternatively, interviews and focus groups work well to produce unbiased results. These can dig a little deeper than a survey as you can lead the conversation and ask more follow-up questions than a written survey will allow.

There are many different facets to brand research; find the approach that works for you and delve in. Illustration by OrangeCrush via 99designs by Vista.

Audits and focus groups

Bringing together multiple interviewees with an external interviewer helps the conversation flow in a different way from your in-house surveys and interviews. Firstly, interviewees will feel more at ease to speak freely to a third-party interviewer than they might with a spokesperson for your company. Secondly, bringing a group of people together helps to spark more ideas and inspires wider conversation than one person might have alone.

On the other hand, a one-on-one customer interview is a brilliant and effective way to get to know your customers on a personal level. Not only are users of your business likely to want to share their input and feel valued, but since they already know your brand you can delve into some deeper lines of questioning with the knowledge that they will already have some understanding of what you do.

Competitor analysis

As well as analyzing your own brand, it’s useful to conduct the same kind of research on your competitors. You should know what they’re doing, and review what you think they’re doing well and what is missing—these are the kind of details you can apply to your own brand development. Use this information to analyze the best keywords to boost your digital marketing, the key products your customers are shopping around for, and even whether you’re actually doing better than the brands you thought you were up against.

You can do this by simply reviewing their websites and social platforms, or by using specific tools. For example, Sprout Social can help you analyze how your social media performance compares to that of your competitors, and Google Adwords will help you understand where you rank on search engines against your competitors using industry keywords and phrases.

Customer feedback

After you’ve implemented the suggestions from your brand research and surveys, it’s important to check back in with your audience. One effective way of doing this is to host a smaller number of user interviews to see what they think of your improvements, whether you’ve implemented them well, and if there’s anything you’ve missed. Everyone likes to feel that their opinion matters, so this is sure to do well for your brand’s reputation with the interviewees involved, as well as helping you understand whether your changes have hit the spot.

A branding guidebook by John Baiatul via 99designs by Vista.

What is brand research for?

The key outcome to aim for when conducting brand research is to gain an understanding of how external and internal sources see and understand your brand. Next, it is to make improvements that will encourage brand loyalty and brand awareness.

High levels of brand awareness will mean a person knows your brand by its logo or slogan or knows what you do without ever having used your services. It might not sound that useful to you right now, but when they do need your product or service, you’ll be one of the first brands they think of.

Brand loyalty leads to brand advocacy, where your customers ultimately help do your marketing for you. People who like your brand will recommend it to others as well as continue to support you themselves. For some brands with limited audiences, this can help to reduce costs in other areas of advertising. It can also help secure forecasted profits, for example, Apple knows that with each new product launch fans will queue overnight to be one of the first to buy, which can often lead to sell-out product launches.

But you don’t need to be a globally recognized company to secure success from brand research. Even a small increase in brand recognition can lead to increased brand equity, no matter how niche or local your business is.

Web app analytics by Adrian Hufsa via 99designs by Vista.

How to take your research even further

Once your brand research is complete, there’s one thing to keep in mind: your customer’s opinions will keep changing. The perception of your brand and its competitors will always impact the purchasing decisions of your customers, so regularly conducting a thorough and strategic analysis of your brand landscape is key.

It will keep you on top of your game, ensure you’re always in the know about your audience’s wants and needs and are less likely to fall behind your competitors when it comes to keeping up with trends in your industry. In a digital world, your audience will be evolving faster than ever. It’s up to you to make sure your brand can keep up.

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20 Brand tracking questions every brand manager should ask

24 successful entrepreneurs and brand managers share the 20 most important questions that businesses should be asking their customers.

Why is brand tracking so important? 

How to use brand survey questions, brand tracking survey questions, brand perception survey questions, brand functionality questions, brand recall questions, the benefits of tracking brand perception , track your brand awareness in-house.

Successful entrepreneurs and brand managers share the 20 most important questions that businesses should be asking their customers. 

Are you launching a brand perception survey soon to find out what your target group really thinks about you, but you’re not sure how or what to ask? Don’t worry, we’ve got your back. 

Based on the advice of 24 successful entrepreneurs, brand managers and our own team of research experts , we’ve made a list of the exact questions every brand manager should ask their customers to measure brand perception.  

Looking for intel into how your target customers act and buy? Check out our top consumer behavior survey questions .

If you had a direct line to your customers, what would you ask them? Market research offers the opportunity to uncover a wealth of insights — information you can use to enhance your product or service, improve your marketing or gain a competitive advantage. Here’s how some top brands found success from their brand tracking projects. 

When it comes to evaluating company performance, brand tracking is worth its weight in gold, so let’s make sure you get it right. As well as being a way to measure the success of some marketing activities that are otherwise pretty difficult to identify, brand tracking can help you gain a full understanding of your market and how your brand stands against its competitors. 

Before we dive into the main list, here’s a taster of the questions Brand Managers should ask their customers:

And there’s more! Here’s how brand tracking can help your business and what you need to know before you create your brand tracker. 

Simply launching a survey with all these questions could lead to some pretty chaotic results that really don’t tell you anything. Pick good survey questions based on the goal of your survey. 

For example, you may be interested in brand perception and how customers view your brand qualities against your competitors. Or, perhaps you’re more interested in brand awareness or brand recognition and want to see that grow over time; this can have huge impacts on growth of market share. Perhaps your survey needs to serve a rebranding process , where your brand’s image or company name is under evaluation. 

The goal of your brand survey dictates the questions you want to include. Many use a brand management tool or customer insights software to help set up their surveys.

When creating your brand survey, remember to ask the right demographic questions to better understand how your target audience reacts to your brand differently from other customer cohorts. 

You should also uncover how far along people are in their buying journey with you, as this may impact results. 

All of this provides more valuable insights and additional context for your answers so you can craft stronger and more targeted campaigns based on the results, and be more confident in the outcome. Let’s dive into these questions! 

Get a head start with our brand tracker template!

Make data-driven brand decisions based on what consumers think about and want to see from your brand

Which questions fall into this category? Essentially, those that directly relate to the usage of a product and showcase brand built efforts. Brand trackers determine how customers buy and use your products, and will help your customer insights team better understand your target audience. 

1. Which of the following, if any, have you purchased in the past 12 months?

It’s important that you qualify all prospects before considering their results for your study. You want to make sure you’re talking to the right audience, so obtaining demographic information is important too. These questions tend to significantly reduce your audience size, but if you’re performing market research for, let’s say estate planning, do you really want to include a 16-year-old student in your test group? Probably not. Bret Bonnet, Quality Logo Products

2. On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being high), how would you rate [Brand] on the following attributes?

The most important thing for businesses to know about their brands is how well aligned their desired brand attributes are with audience (prospect, customer, employee) perspectives. The way we’ve done this is by asking this question. We provide a list of desired brand attributes — generally between 5-10, which would include things like “high quality,” “innovation,” “customer service,” etc. This type of feedback is very important because, as we all know, companies don’t define their brands — consumers do. Knowing how consumers are currently defining your brand, and comparing those perceptions to your desired brand identity, can help you spot opportunities for improvement as well as areas of strength that you can capitalize on through your communications. Linda Pophal, Strategic Communications

3. How would you feel if you could no longer use [Brand’s] product/service?

Let’s get into some qualitative data on how people feel about what you do — specifically, how they’d feel if they couldn’t use it anymore. The answer to this question will give you valuable insight into how important your product or service is to your customers, how much they value it, and how easy it would be for them to replace.

4. Why do you buy from [Brand]?

I survey all our customers twice a year, and this is the most important question I ask. Whatever reasons they give, you no longer need to guess what your customer wants. You can then make these important points and USPs more obvious in your marketing and communications. This should result in increased sales and customer loyalty. Adam Watson, Hollywood Mirrors

When we asked this question in 2016, we expected price to be the number one reason people bought from us. It turns out 74.3% of the responses were related to service and communication. This prompted us to invest more in technology that helps our team communicate with customers in a timely manner. We believe it is why we have expanded into new markets in 2017 and experienced excellent year-over-year growth.   Mike Wolfe, Delgado Stone Distributors

Answers to this question give us data about how our marketing is performing. We can separate which messages reach consumers and which ones do not. The data also tells us which features of our product or service appeal most to consumers. When we launched a new integrated accounting solution, we used the data to further improve the features that have the most impact on consumers. We made our software completely seamless and automatic and marketed it as such and it was a huge hit. James Nowlin, Excel Global Partners

When we did our first market research, this question allowed us to understand how a potential customer would search for our service on the internet and this is the way we have generated millions of dollars in revenue positioning us in search engines with the same exact keywords that the users really use for search. Cristian Rennella, oMelhorTrato.com

5. Where do you buy [Brand’s] products/services from?

Do you know which customers are most likely to buy from which distribution channels? Are you matching the needs of your target customer? This question helps you figure out if your brand marketing activities and sales channels are aligning with where your customers are actually spending their money. Streamline your work and concentrate your efforts on the areas that matter. 

Brand perception is all about feeling, specifically what the customers feel your brand represents. These can be particularly helpful answers in determining how aligned you and your customers are in terms of company values–and how strong their brand loyalty is. An individual customer’s perception of a brand will come from multiple sources: so it’s a holistic way of looking at your company’s overall image. 

6. Is it obvious what [Brand’s] purpose is?

New companies pop up in the market, or the existing ones innovate until their products are basically alike. If you’re not looking to start a fight for your customers’ attention using product pricing, it’s good to know that brand purpose is increasingly important to consumers when making a purchasing decision. 

Building a strong brand purpose that aligns with the views of your target customer can strongly increase the likelihood that they’ll buy from you — it’s important that if your brand has a purpose, it’s immediately obvious. 

Don’t forget to give these insights more context. Combine this question with another one in your brand awareness survey that asks people to describe what your purpose is, to see if it matches what you were aiming for. If people think you have a very clear brand purpose, but it doesn’t align with what your product marketing team had in mind, it’s time to change your messaging.

7. What was your first reaction to [Brand]?

First impressions are incredibly important, no matter how many retargeted ads you throw at people who left your website. 

In a world where we are constantly scrolling, swiping, and shopping, our attention span has become incredibly short. In 2000, we were at about 12 seconds . That’s right, even back then, you didn’t even have time for a quick elevator pitch. It’s gotten worse: only twenty years later, we struggle with holding our attention for only 8 seconds.  

Meanwhile, more marketing messages than ever are being fired at us. So, how do we decide which brands we like, what ads we click on, and why we bounce off a webpage in a matter of seconds?

Knowing you literally have no time to lose when trying to reach your customers might show you that a touch of mystery in your marketing efforts should be used with care. Asking what first caught someone’s eye, especially someone who, in the end, chose to buy from you, will help you create stronger brand messages and engaging content that will lure potential customers into that buying journey. 

8. How would you describe [Brand] to a friend?

You can define your brand on paper, but to know if it translates correctly to the real world, you’ll have to ask your customers. You might be surprised to hear what words they use to describe you. This type of question is critical for brand perception surveys .

This can serve as a great follow-up question after the NPS. Finding out how someone would describe your brand in their own words lets you see what stands out most for them, and whether that’s aligned with your own image of your brand. 

Asking for a description can help you determine how your brand’s personality is perceived. Moreover, it will show if customers are more focused on things like product features, price and availability, or if they can’t help but mention what you stand for and what your mission is. 

9. How likely would you be to recommend [Brand] to a friend, family or colleague?

Here’s an example of an NPS question asked in a brand tracker focusing on makeup brands .

This Ultimate Question , as founded and described by Fred Reichheld, is designed to measure customer loyalty and is the question behind your Net Promoter Score. If a customer makes a personal referral to someone they care about, it is very likely they are a loyal customer and promoter of your business. It encompasses not only what a customer thinks, but what they feel too. NPS is a customer experience metric that holds value to any company. Lisa Kenny, SynGro

The reason this question is so important is it lets you know where you stand with the customer and where to begin the conversation. If someone’s a “detractor,” you need to fix their concern or be prepared to lose their business and have them vent about you on social media. If someone’s a “passive,” you need to determine what you can do to move them to “promoter” versus letting them slide back to a “detractor.” Finally, if someone is a “promoter,” you want to get a testimonial, referral, or them talking about you on social media. Tom Smith, Insights from Analytics

10. What are your biggest pain points with the current market offerings?

Asking this question highlighted the functionalities that were lacking in my competitor’s products and allowed me to conduct further tightly-focused market research targeting these gaps. By doing so, I eventually succeeded in building a platform with functional features that were otherwise missing in the marke t, thus solving a problem for users and differentiating my product from a sea of competitors. Sophie Knowles, PDF Pro

The answer to this question can be game-changing. For instance, my client who is a life coach, originally thought that her clients were craving someone to talk to, someone that would listen. But after asking this crucial question, she found her clients were frustrated with previous coaches and therapists that only allowed them to talk and air out their feelings. In fact, her clients wanted her to not only listen but also provide a structured game plan of what they should do at each turn. Britney Kolodziej, JAM Marketing Group

The reason this question is important is that unless your product is truly 100% unique, your product will be compared to how the need you are fulfilling is met by other businesses. When we started our business to provide Shopify store design and marketing, we asked this question. By far, the biggest finding was that customers hated the poor communication and lack of ability to discuss a project over the phone before committing. Based on this, we made this one of our key USPs, and use this in all of our branding and marketing. Adam Pearce, Blend Commerce

We run a dental clinic, and we’ve had huge success by asking this question. We tend to bring the change they want to see, whether it’s lowering our rates or changing the environment. Not only does this give our firm a huge boost in clientele, but this enables us to evolve for the better. Dr. Ameerzeb Pirzada, Z Dental Studio

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You’ve guessed it. These questions are designed to find out how your product or service actually works, and whether the user genuinely benefits from it. Use these answers to determine your brand’s ability to satisfy consumer needs- and build your brand from there..  

11. What problem/s are you trying to solve?

When you know the problem, you can address it. And, as you figure out more of your customers’ problems, you can build a more robust (and valuable) product or service that solves everything. Kenneth Burke, Text Request

I work in inbound marketing, so creating accurate buyer personas is crucial to creating targeted content. When asking this question, often people are willing to talk about what obstacles are in their way to reach a certain goal. With that information, I am able to create content that helps these people or businesses get to the core of their problems and eventually solve them. Kay Nordenbrock, KN – Consulting & Copywriting

If you can help customers fix their biggest problems then you will always be a partner, not just a vendor. I have customers who have come back many times looking for help over the 16 years since I started a global branding firm. It’s because they know we care and that we love solving their problems so they can sleep well at night. Paige Arnof-Fenn, Mavens & Moguls

Regardless of how good you think your idea is, if your customers or a potential market are not interested, it simply won’t work. Organized Health asked this very question and, based on the results, we slightly pivoted our target audience. You have to listen to what people are saying. If that means changing your idea or perhaps completely discarding it, it has to be done. Give your customer base what they want, and rewards will come your way. Dylan Macdonald, Organised Health Technologies

At the end of the day, unless you are able to make your customer’s life a little easier/better/more efficient, you are probably not providing them with something they should spend their money on. Dan Salganik, Visual Fizz

Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or even our own individual experience as consumers, we know products are purchased based on a level of safety and comfort the consumer is feeling. If a consumer doesn’t feel the product solves a need, they won’t feel pushed to make a purchase. Kelley Lauginiger, American Freight

12. How would you rate your last experience with [Brand]?

Last impressions are just as important as first ones — if not more. For most companies it’s easier and cheaper to get clients to come back, rather than to start a new sales cycle with a new customer. To achieve this, it’s important to focus on thank-you pages, shipping updates and next-purchase deal offers as in your initial content marketing. 

Don’t lose focus once the deal is closed. This question will help you determine whether your sales process is contributing to or detracting from your brand image. 

The image your customers form of you as a company, one they’d possibly return to for their next purchase, is still being formed after they buy your product, or even after they receive it. Those are extra moments in which you can reinforce your mission, vision and values, making sure you’re the first one they think of again for a second purchase. 

13. How much would you expect to pay for [XYZ]?

Price testing is an important part of launching a new product , but it’s never too late to consider whether your product or service meets price expectations in the current market. You could be losing potential customers by making your product too expensive, or missing out on profit margin if you’ve massively undervalued your service. 

14. How can [Brand] do better?

 Every brand should ask their customers how they can further meet their needs. This can be tricky in a non-service-based industry. For our ecommerce jewelry business, we segmented our email list to our VIP customers (as defined by frequency of purchases) and sent an open-ended survey. We came back with some great suggestions, including a more robust rewards program, early access to sales and promotions, and suggestions for content they would like to see more of.  This not only gave us valuable insight to better serve our loyal customers, but it also increased engagement with our VIP customers as they felt a part of the process to better their experience. Kimmie Marek, 7 Charming Sisters

This is a great open-ended question. Consumers, especially those that purchase your products, are each connected to your brand in different ways. By asking what they want to see, you are able to get a sense of the way your consumers connect with your brand. Do they want to see more communication? Products? Support? Without asking this question, it is difficult to get a feel for this type of thing. A company doesn’t always need to churn out new products to grow their brand. If your consumers want to see something other than products, make it happen. Jameson Slattery, Colorescience

This question lets us improve customer retention by making the process of buying and using the product continuously smoother. It is also beneficial for content, social media, and promotional efforts: we know (after developing the features and services requested by the customers) what benefits to communicate to the audience, and in what words. Using this approach, we learned that in some locations users were primarily looking for free shipping for their international gifts and were willing to compromise on other aspects of the delivery service. So we knew how to develop the service in these locations and what to advertise to the customers. Natasha Kvitka, Gift Baskets Overseas

15. If you were in charge of this brand/product/service, what’s the first thing you’d change?

Want to know what would make customers come back, stay or buy in the first place? Make them the CEO of your company, or at least for a few minutes. Your customers will very likely have things they’d change about your brand if they were in charge, whether it’s a small tweak to a product description through to a complete brand refresh.

Nobody knows better what your customers want than your customers. By asking them to tell you the first thing they’d change, they’ll prioritize.

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Measuring brand recall is about finding out how memorable your brand is, usually with little prompting. With time, you want your brand to be at the forefront of customers’ minds for your specific industry/product/service.

16. What do you think is [Brand’s] best quality?

No, you’re not fishing for compliments or wanting to show off: this question can actually help you identify why people consider you or buy from you. The next step? Double-down on that — or step it up in other areas, depending on the outcome of the rest of your survey. 

What people like about you most isn’t necessarily the reason why they purchase your products, but it certainly does help: consumers are buying more and more from the heart, not from the head. In fact, Harvard professor Gerald Zaltman recently concluded that 95% of our purchase decision-making takes place in the subconscious mind . 

17. How would you describe [Brand’s] product?

That’s right, don’t just ask how they would describe your business, ask about your products and services too. This gives you even more insights into the buying reasons your customers have. You could identify gaps here, or undiscovered markets full of people who would love to use your product, but don’t feel addressed with the way you market it right now. 

18. Thinking about companies that provide [X], what companies come to mind?

This question is for unaided recall and can be followed by a second question for aided recall, “Are you aware if any of the following companies provide X?”The combination of these two questions explains how well you are known by your target market. It should be analyzed by looking at current customers and potential customers, separately. The responses to these questions tell us how much marketing we need to do and whether it should be mass marketing or specifically targeted. It is also often used to determine the effect of advertising. For one client, I administered a survey prior to, and after running television advertising, we saw a significant increase in awareness after the TV advertising campaign. As time went on, the advertising was stopped. As we continued to administer the survey, we watched brand awareness significantly decline. Senior management began discussing the need for TV advertising. Neal Kreitman, ABN Partners

19. Which competitors, if any, did you consider when shopping for [XYZ]?

 This question yields so much data. Sometimes you think you know who your competitors are, but answers to this question will often surprise you. We’ve uncovered competitors we didn’t know we had.  We then use the answers to investigate those competitors online and see how their brand and their website compare to ours i.e., what are their search engine rankings, how successful are they on social media, where else do they appear online and ultimately, the big question, what can we learn from this competitor? Danielle Kunkle, Boomer Benefits

Understanding brand perception is a crucial part of developing a successful business. A strong knowledge of how customers perceive your business is the most effective way to boost company growth while saving time and money in the process. 

Implementing a brand perception survey helps you get all the information you need to develop your brand identity and adjust your products and marketing strategy to shifts in customer demands and expectations. 

Successfully measuring brand perception is a task in itself; it comes from product use, experience, functionality and reputation, taking a number of factors into account. It’s a notoriously difficult, ‘multidimensional’ metric, but it’s not impossible. The main difficulty is that it’s determined exclusively by customers, so once you’ve nailed your brand perception surveys and comms, you’ve won half the battle.  

Tracking brand perception helps maintain a concrete, positive connection with your customers. By listening to, and acting on feedback from your customers, they will feel valued and more likely to engage with your brand in the future. 

The image a brand manager has of their brand may differ hugely from how customers actually perceive it: evaluating brand perception can help you close this gap and improve alignment.

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So, there you have it — the 20 burning questions brand managers and business owners want and need answers to! 

It just goes to show that you don’t have to ask hundreds of questions in your brand awareness surveys to get key data for your business, and that you can monitor your brand health in-house. If you think this would suit you best, make sure check out our guide on how to do it yourself , full of valuable tips to get professional-level results. 

Back to brand tracking know-how. Now you have your questions, you need to create your survey; if you’re not sure where to start, check out our brand perception survey template . 

The responses to these 20 questions can give you reliable insight into everything from how you’re currently performing and what you could be doing better to who your competitors are and how you compare. 

The key is to make sure you’re asking these questions at regular intervals. Successful brand tracking is not a one-off survey, but rather a continuous effort for businesses. Market research follows the same principles: work out what you’re doing right/wrong, make adjustments, measure the results, rinse and repeat. 

Monthly or quarterly tracking might be best suited to measuring the success of a timed event, like an advertising campaign. It’s a good idea to ask questions before, during and after the event. 

Annual or bi-annual tracking is also super useful for evaluating changes in customer usage or sentiment. This kind of tracking helps you spot any changes in your brand’s awareness and perception before they become an issue.

This is invaluable information for developing your business strategy, and with an online customer survey, it can be at your fingers and on your screens in next to no time. 

If you need support with your brand tracking strategy, check out our list of 11 brand tracking tools for marketers . 

If you’ve got a lot on your plate at the moment and want to outsource your brand tracking work. Have a look at our comprehensive list of 15 brand tracking companies that’ll help you enhance your market research. 

The Experts’ Guide to Brand Tracking

How to look at the impact of things like audience reach, panel diversity, and survey design to help you decide whether your current brand tracker is up to scratch.

A brand tracking survey is a tool which helps businesses to monitor their brand’s performance, usually over a period of time. The survey provides consumer feedback which determines your company’s brand health , helping you to make informed decisions to increase sales and deliver more effective campaigns. 

A brand survey’s goal is to understand your brand identity, according to your existing customers. For determining brand perception, a great question is “How would you describe our brand to a friend?”. For brand functionality, “How would you rate your last experience with [Brand]?” and for brand awareness, we’d recommend “What was your first reaction to [Brand]?”. In terms of brand tracking, start simple with “Why do you buy from us?”. Read on to discover a further 16 recommended brand tracking questions. 

Brand tracking determines the health of your brand by providing valuable insights into your company’s performance. It helps you stay ahead of the competition by catering more directly to your customers’ needs, working out what you do well, and finding out which areas need attention. It’s essential to improving your brand’s image and supporting marketing efforts by gaining a different perspective. To reap the full benefits, read our brand tracking guide .

Customer Research Lead 

Nick joined Attest in 2021, with more than 10 years' experience in market research and consumer insights on both agency and brand sides. As part of the Customer Research Team team, Nick takes a hands-on role supporting customers uncover insights and opportunities for growth.

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Strategy , Design

A complete list of rebranding survey questions..

Jason Vaught is the director of content and marketing for SmashBrand. He has two decades of experience in the CPG industry as an omnichannel retailer and brand owner.

Rebranding a business can be a risky job. If things don’t go as planned, a company can lose its brand value overnight. The best way to reduce the risk is to discover the customer perception through relevant rebranding survey questions. 

Rebranding survey questions are slightly different from typical rebranding questions , which lays the foundation of the rebrand. The branding questionnaire is explicitly tailored to augment the rebranding strategy and conduct a detailed brand perception survey. 

If conducted properly, such surveys help companies avoid common pitfalls during rebranding. This article provides a systematic approach to conducting an insightful brand perception survey. You will learn how each survey question helps gather market research data. 

Brand Perception and Awareness

A Branding strategy that lacks knowledge of how consumers perceive their brand identity is like shooting arrows in the dark. It will do more harm than good. Businesses must have a good understanding of their brand perception. A company may ask the following question during a brand awareness survey to understand its brand recognition:

Asking Customers to Describe the Brand in Three Words.

A company may ask its potential customers to describe its brand in a simplified way. It provides a snapshot of their top-of-mind perceptions of the brand image. Their descriptive wording reveals the brand attributes and associates that are prominent for them. 

Tracking changes in these brand descriptor words over time can indicate whether the rebranding efforts are successfully shifting perceptions. This rebranding survey question gives you a baseline understanding of brand awareness from which to evolve the branding strategy.

What First Things Come To Mind When You Think Of Our Brand?

Consumers can associate different things depending on how they perceive the brand identity. For example, when thinking about Baskin Robbins, the first thing that comes to mind is a refreshing, flavorful ice cream. Companies may ask their customers to first associate with the brand, which uncovers the core components of brand awareness and recognition. 

The unaided top-of-mind mentions indicate what the brand is best known for logo, tagline, product, spokesperson, or other association. After rebranding, the company can measure whether new brand elements and messaging successfully displace dominant associations. This brand research question provides directional input for transforming brand identity through a rebranding project .

What Do You Think Our Brand Stands For?

Before launching the rebranding campaign , collecting information about the values and attributes the audience associates with the brand is imperative. It helps the brand research and inform rebranding. Their responses paint a picture of your current brand positioning and personality. If there is a misalignment between the real and perceived brand meaning, then a well-defined rebranding strategy helps realign it. 

How Familiar Is The Audience With The Brand?

Companies can ask this question as a social media poll to gather insights from their target audience. The vote may contain various options, for instance, very familiar, somewhat familiar, or unfamiliar. The percentage of respondents answering these questions offers a benchmark awareness metric to improve through rebranding product designs, packaging, and other brand elements. As brand awareness increases through a rebranding effort, familiarity levels must rise. Companies may use this metric as a key performance indicator to measure the rebranding success. 

Brand Experience and Loyalty

Learning about customer experience and brand loyalty is another crucial element for rebranding survey questions. The brand experience contains all the touchpoints a customer has with the brand; It shapes their satisfaction and loyalty. A company may ask for positive and negative experiences to uncover its strengths and weaknesses. 

Brands may use brand loyalty metrics like Net Promoter Score and brand value. These metrics represent the equity and trust the brand currently enjoys. Strong loyalty means higher rebranding risks , whereas declining loyalty signals a need for change. Here are a few rebranding survey questions that one may ask from their audience to learn about brand loyalty:

How Satisfied Is The Customer From The Experience With The Brand?

This question helps companies to gain meaningful insights about customer satisfaction with brand experiences. The percentage of highly satisfied vs dissatisfied provides a benchmark to improve through the rebranding strategy. As companies execute logo rebranding , new branding guidelines, and other rebranding checklist items, they should continue surveying satisfaction to ensure better experiences. If customer satisfaction drops during the rebranding rollout plan , it signals missteps to address quickly.  

What Aspects Of Our Brand Do You Value The Most?

Discovering the brand attributes and touchpoints that drive value helps to focus rebranding strategies on enhancing strengths. If quality or customer service are highly valued, make it a priority in rebranding announcements and ensure continuity. It is one of the most important questions before and after rebranding, which ensures the reasons for rebranding align with the customers’ priorities. 

Any Negative Experiences with the Brand?

When conducting a brand perception survey, companies must ask their customers if they have encountered any bad experiences. It allows them to become familiar with their shortcomings, which may become a loophole in their marketing campaign. As you develop a rebranding checklist , addressing past pain points through improved customer service, quality control, or other best practices for rebranding can rebuild value. 

How Likely Are You To Recommend Our Brand To Others?

This brand loyalty question elicits the Net Promoter Score, quantifying the number of loyal brand promoters versus passives and detractors. A low NPS signal rebranding is needed to boost advocacy. Track scores over time to measure whether a rebranding successfully increases positive word-of-mouth and referral marketing. Managing rebranding costs can be justified by gains in brand equity and customer lifetime value.

Impact of Rebranding

The impact of rebranding can be both positive and negative. Companies must thoroughly research the potential effects of a rebranding effort before executing the brand transformation. Asking specific survey questions can uncover how customers may respond to a new brand identity compared to the existing brand image. 

Directly asking customers about the potential impact of proposed changes to a brand’s visual identity can help guide the redesign of logos and other branding elements. Conducting surveys can also help determine if a rebranding effort would make customers more or less likely to purchase, indicating the potential risk of losing existing brand fans versus attracting new customers.

Continuous brand tracking surveys after a rebrand measure its impact on brand awareness, consideration, preference, and other key brand health metrics compared to existing brand positioning. A/B testing with a control group helps isolate the rebranding impact. Surveys ensure brand repositioning through rebranding aligns with consumer habits and attitudes.

How Would A Visual Rebrand Affect Your Brand Perception?

This question gathers open-ended feedback about potential logo redesigns, new color palettes, and other visual elements under consideration in rebranding. The qualitative insights reveal whether a new visual identity positively or negatively impacts customer brand image perceptions. 

This directional input is invaluable for determining which design concepts to move forward with and which to avoid when taking steps toward rebranding . It mitigates the risks of alienating loyal customers through visual identity changes they dislike.

Would A Rebrand Affect Your Purchase Likelihood?

By asking this question, brands may learn whether the target customers will be more or less likely to purchase after the rebrand. It can be helpful to avoid pitfalls like the Tropicana’s rebranding failure. The percentage of responses indicating “more likely” versus “less likely” forecasts sales impact. This information guides data-driven rebranding strategies. Using a Positioning Scorecard completes the before/after picture of the rebranding’s commercial impact.

Competitive Comparison

Competitive comparison plays an essential role in rebranding surveys. It provides a valuable context on how your brand stacks up against key players in the minds of the target consumers. It benchmarks your brand’s current positioning and reveals potential white space to differentiate.

The branding questionnaire may include the following questions to learn about competitive comparison:

How Do You Think Our Brand Compares To Competitors?

Asking customers to compare your brand against competitors on attributes like quality, value, and innovation highlights relative strengths and weaknesses. The goal is crafting a solid brand identity and rebranding strategy that capitalizes on competitive advantages while improving areas where you lag behind rivals. The qualitative feedback reveals relative strengths and weaknesses versus rivals through the customer’s voice.

What Do Competitors Do Better Than Us?

Asking where competitors outperform your brand makes it easy for customers to pinpoint areas of weakness you need to improve through rebranding. For example, if the competitor of an energy drinks company is offering lower prices, the company can reposition around delivering more excellent value at an affordable cost. Competitive gaps are one of the most essential ingredients of rebranding to differentiate rather than playing catch up. It informs priorities for strengthening your brand identity and experience.

What Do We Do Better Than Our Competitors?

Finally, the branding questionnaire may directly ask consumers to list all areas where the current brand performs better than its competitors. If customers consistently cite superior quality or customer service versus competitors, keep these pillars central in rebranding. Lean into existing strengths through consistent messaging and experiences that exemplify competitive advantages over rivals in areas that resonate most.

Customer Needs and Expectations

Without understanding the needs and expectations of the target audience, a company must never consider rebranding. it is because there will be more guesswork than facts, which can negatively impact the customer experience. The primary purpose of rebranding surveys is to learn about what consumers want. Ask about the main benefits they seek; pain points to be solved, and must-have features. Conducting surveys uncovers shifts in customer expectations that warrant a rebranding to align with emerging trends. 

What Improvements Would You Like To See From Our Brand?

Every company must have good connections with its intended customers. It must directly communicate with its target audience through various channels. The advantage of this connection is that a company may ask its audience directly about the change they want to see in the current brand strategy. 

It can reveal a lot of drawbacks and shortcomings in the current strategy. Making the customer-requested improvements demonstrates listening to needs and closes experience gaps. It builds brand affinity by showing the rebrand is focused on solving customer problems.

Are There New Products Or Services You Wish We Offered?

A company may ask for suggestions for new products and services its target audience might need. It reduces the risk of diluting brand recognition and builds intuition for a successful brand expansion. Adding relevant offerings that customers explicitly ask for strengthens perceptions of the brand as innovative, responsive, and focused on their evolving needs. The rebranding can then highlight new solutions tailored to customer demands.

What Do You Need Most From Our Type Of Products/Services?

Getting to the core needs fulfilled by your product category allows the focus of the rebrand to fulfill these table-stakes expectations. If speed and reliability are fundamental for logistics services, the rebranding can emphasize flawless on-time delivery. Asking directly about the most essential needs ensures they take center stage in refreshed branding and experiences after rebranding.

Best Practices for Rebranding Survey Questions

Well-designed rebranding surveys provide valuable insights to guide branding strategy. Here are some best practices for effective rebranding research:

• Use online survey software (such as Survey Monkey) to reach a large, demographically representative sample. It ensures statistically significant results.
• Ask open-ended questions to uncover qualitative feedback in customers’ own words. It provides richer insights than multiple choice alone.
• Test branding concepts with image-based questions. See which potential names, logos, and visual identities resonate most.
• Measure essential brand health metrics pre and post-rebranding. It quantifies the impact on awareness, consideration, preference, and loyalty.
• Segment results by customer demographics and psychographics. Uncover if rebranding perceptions vary across target segments.
• Consider researching through an expert branding agency ( discuss your project with SmashBrand). Their experience with rebranding surveys yields proven question sets.
• Schedule ongoing tracking rather than one-off research. It monitors the impact of rebranding over time as perceptions evolve.
• Test competitive positioning questions. See if a rebranding differentiates your brand from key competitors.

Data-Driven Approach to Rebranding 

SmashBrand leverages in-depth customer research to guide strategic rebrands that resonate. Our analytics uncover hidden insights to inform every rebranding decision. We identify untapped growth opportunities and unmet customer needs. Then, translate these into differentiated brand positioning and experiences that drive results. Contact us today for impactful brand development. 

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Branding Dissertation Topics & Thesis Ideas

Published by Natasha Flecther at January 2nd, 2023 , Revised On June 4, 2024

Are you looking for unique and intriguing branding dissertation topics , ideas and topic examples? If yes, continue reading this article because it provides several branding dissertation topic suggestions for your consideration.

However, before reading the topics list, let’s quickly look at what branding is and how it is performed by marketers.

List of Dissertation Topics For Branding

Many topics can be covered in branding dissertations. You can use the following list of popular branding dissertation topics for your next paper.

• A comparison between brand equity and perceived risk
• The positive and negative facets of a brand’s marketability
• A study of advertising’s results during a recession
• Comprehensive analysis of how brands use impulsive buying
• An analysis of the ROI effects of celebrity endorsements
• A study exploring augmented reality’s effects on marketing encounters
• The influence of appealing marketing on consumers’ decisions
• A survey of branding methods and strategies in the age of sustainability
• An assessment of branding’s historical and contemporary contributions
• An examination of B2B branding tactics in the UK’s emerging markets
• Using digital techniques to raise brand salience: Use
• Social media marketing to build small business brands
• The consequences of luxury brand marketing strategies to create brand loyalty and consumer pleasure
• The importance of celebrity endorsement on the UK fragrance industry’s brand image
• A comparison of social media marketing versus billboard advertisements
• The effects of unethical behaviour on brand perception
• Targeting customers in ethnic markets
• Use social media marketing to build small business brands
• A thorough examination of how corporations market to customers
• Brand management’s effects on the fast-food sector
• Networking and establishing contacts
• Branding’s importance for small firms in the UK
• A study of the impact of poor branding on company sales
• The influence of appealing marketing on consumers’ decisions to patronise upscale restaurants in the UK
• The importance of colour psychology in influencing consumers’ decisions to buy premium brands
• A survey of the relevant literature on the challenges and possibilities in brand portfolio management
• How is brand identity formed and influenced in the context of the digital age?
• What effect does customer engagement with products and services have on brand personality?
• How can B2B industries efficiently develop brand equity?
• What are the key success factors and risks associated with brand extensions?
• In what ways does brand experience help in the establishment of a durable brand reputation?
• What role may social media play in brand crisis management?
• What effects does branding have on gaining clients and marketing ROI?
• What is the importance of consistent brand messaging in building a strong online identity?
• How does branding affect how digital marketing efforts turn out?
• How does brand communication influence consumer trust and loyalty?

Our list of topics will help you start writing a perfect dissertation . We have also curated a list of marketing dissertation topics , marketing management dissertation topics , and online marketing dissertation topics for you to check because they are related to the subject of marketing.

The Different Areas Of Branding Dissertation Topics We Can Help You With

There are many types of branding; some of them are given below:

Functional Branding

Branding of this type emphasises function over appearance. In contrast to how a product looks or sounds, it is more important how it performs its intended function.

Visual Branding

This branding includes functional and non-functional elements such as colour schemes and logos. The goal is to create an appealing image for your product or service.

Also Read: A Report on Chanel’s Brand Identity

Symbolic Branding

This type of branding aims to create an identity that represents who you are as a company and what you stand for. Starbucks, for example, use a coffee bean logo instead of a cup in its logo.

Brand Identity

Essentially, this is how a brand looks and feels. It is created through symbols, colours, fonts, etc. Studying your competition to understand what your target audience likes is essential to developing a brand identity.

Brand Positioning

Brand positioning helps position your product or service to increase the familiarity of your target audience. For your product or service to compete on an equal footing with existing products, most brand strategists also use market segmentation analysis and customer satisfaction surveys.

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An organisation’s brand is one of the most powerful ways to differentiate itself and build customer loyalty. Ensure your brand is represented correctly by understanding the difference between a logo, brand name, and brand identity.

Whether it’s about creating a memorable brand image or bringing your brand to the forefront, harnessing the power of branding is crucial. By shaping consumers’ minds with a specific company image, many big brands have brought their brands into the limelight.

Branding is an intangible marketing tool that assures customers that their products and services are high-quality and stand out from the crowd. Additionally, it promotes brand recognition across multiple channels, converting first-time buyers into loyal customers. The mentioned above list of branding dissertation topics should provide you with some ideas about what to write about.

Or you could look at our dissertation proposal writing servic e and dissertation writing services to get customised topic suggestions, thesis outlines, chapter-by-chapter delivery of your dissertation, free revisions, and so much more.

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How to find dissertation topics about branding.

To find dissertation topics about branding:

• Research recent branding challenges.
• Explore consumer behaviour trends.
• Analyse successful brand strategies.
• Investigate brand perception shifts.
• Examine cross-cultural branding.
• Select a niche area aligning with your passion and expertise.

What does a brand identity represent?

All the things that make a company memorable and unique are part of its brand identity. The company’s essence can be found in its name, logo, tagline, and other identifiers representing what it stands for in the minds of customers, employees, and investors.

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Check out our 25 out-of-the-box quantity surveyors’ dissertation topics to help you ace your quantity surveying dissertation project.

Urban planning is an essential tool in creating vibrant and healthy communities. It is the practice of balancing the needs of a society with limited resources to ensure equitable development and long-term sustainability.

Here’s a list of the 65 latest and most controversial yet interesting dissertation topics on gender to help you with your gender dissertation and research.

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Brand Perception Surveys - 7 questions to ask + 2 examples

Home / Product / Brand Perception Surveys - 7 questions to ask + 2 examples

Think when someone blurs an image and asks you to guess it...

and you guess it wrong.

This is just like the results of brand perception surveys since they can differ greatly from what you're trying to convey.

Your audience's perception might differ from the brand message you send; that's why you should measure brand perception.

• Brand perception surveys ask customers how they perceive your brand or service.
• These surveys help you determine the strength of your brand image.
• This survey provides insights on brand quality and reliability, brand messaging, and your campaigns.
• Brand perception surveys usually include seven (or more) questions, starting with a number rating.

Let's start with what these surveys do:

What Is a Brand Perception Survey?

Brand perception is about how your brand is perceived and evaluated by your customers (everyone, actually) when they see or hear about it—regardless of how you want to be viewed in the minds of customers.

For each individual, this perception can be supported for different reasons. For example,   customer perception can be formed due to:

• the previous customer experience a customer had with your brand,
• word-of-mouth marketing : your brand's reputation among your target audience,
• the underlying feelings a consumer associates with your brand.

You can conduct this type of brand survey to determine the strength of your brand image in your target audience, and it can provide you with valuable insights, just like any other market research.

Branding was a newly discovered concept in the 1500s; brand image and brand awareness weren't as crucial as they are today until David ‎Aaker, a brand strategist, coined the term "brand perception" in his book in 1991.

As the brand perception study emerged, marketers understood that they could benefit from this concept in their marketing strategies and utilize the findings in relevant marketing campaigns.

That's how brand perception surveys became a powerful tool in supporting marketing efforts.

What insights do brand perception surveys provide?

Brand perception surveys illustrate what your customers think and feel about your product or service; thus, these surveys shed light on:

1. Brand quality and reliability

The first insight that brand perception surveys provide you with is related to your product or service since these surveys enable you to track your brand image.

Hearing stories about each unique customer experience will help you see your brand from your customers' point of view and grasp why they perceive it in a specific way.

Ultimately, the type of questions present in this survey will count as the first step you take toward discovering opportunities to enhance your brand , learn more about customer expectations, and gain a better understanding of your brand’s image.

2. Brand messaging

The second insight you gain from brand perception surveys verifies whether your brand messaging got across the right way .

A successful survey's data would display how your customers perceive your brand, how your brand makes them feel, and how they describe it to others.

Upon acquiring this data, you might come across an unexpected result from a specific percentage of customers (if they don't answer a set of questions the way you expect them to).

Analyzing the answers to these brand survey questions and segmenting them will help you determine the gap between your actua l product quality and your assumed product quality.

Not only does it depend on the customer journey, but brand perception also changes due to positive and negative experiences, the quality of customer service, and even your current customer base (which might be far from ideal).

In other words, this insight will enable you to minimize the gap between your current and your intended messaging.

3. Brand advertising campaigns

Here comes your third type of insight: the impact of marketing.

Your marketing team will investigate what your consumers associate your product and service with , encountering obstacles and solutions along the way.

For example, you'll get to discover how your customers feel and how much they trust your brand and gather feedback regarding the impact of your marketing efforts.

Seeing if your campaigns work the way you mold will help you decide whether to:

• continue your current marketing messaging,
• plan a new marketing strategy ,
• or take a different road based on the ideas you get from your customers.

Keep in mind that it's in your hands to change your overall brand perception with your future marketing campaigns.

7 Brand Perception Survey Questions

It's time to introduce you to the questions of this survey, here comes the question number one:

1) How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend or colleague?

At first glance, this might seem like a brand loyalty survey, but the first thing that needs to be assessed is how likely customers are to recommend your brand.

This 1-10 scale question is designed to help you determine whether your customers are happy enough to promote your product and become brand advocates .

This is always a good practice as you can ask them about the reason why - if they aren't likely to promote your product.

2) How did you first learn about our brand?

The question of brand awareness provides valuable insight into channels that are the right fit for you.

These channels can vary from word-of-mouth marketing to social media channels.

You can utilize the information you get from this question to revise your marketing strategies , understanding how some channels benefit your business more while some stay in the shade.

PS: It also gives you a solid idea of the channels that you should dote on more 😉

3) Is there anything else you'd like to share about our brand mention?

‎This one is a follow-up question for you to get a more detailed explanation regarding the question prior.

Plus, this open-ended question allows you to acquire qualitative data by hearing of:

• personal stories of customers,
• customers' ideas and suggestions,
• customer concerns,
• and customer service experiences.

4) How much do you trust our brand?

Combining quality and reliability, this question deals with how much your customers believe in your brand.

The rating might depend on several factors, from brand affinity to brand offers, but it displays your brand strengths and weaknesses based on the feedback you gather.

By segmenting the customers who rated low, you can send them a follow-up email asking them to explain why they did so instead of making the survey longer.

This can help you pinpoint the key areas that your brand needs to improve and enhance your overall brand value.

5) How would you describe our brand?

Here comes the question that you can use for brand association .

You have the chance to limit the answers to three words, which is the general approach, but you also can allow them unlimited options.

Moving on, you can easily ‎acquire the attributes your audience matches your brand when they think of you.

These adjectives will come in handy when you're testing whether your attributes align with your brand messaging, as you will have the data to develop it.

6) Has the perception of our brand changed since you first heard about us?

This thumbs-up/down question is here to learn more about whether your users' perceptions have changed ever since they heard of your brand and started using your products.‎

7) Could you tell us why?

‎This follow-up question requires your users to provide more details regarding the change in their perception, whether good or bad.

2 Examples of Perfect Brand Perception Surveys

In this example, Groove keeps ‎it short and simple.

It starts by asking how likely your customers are to promote your brand without any incentive.

The answers you collect will show your brand's possibility of organic growth based on the satisfaction of your current customers.

Then, the open-ended question asks why you gave that score.

By learning the reason, you can improve the weaknesses your customers state about your product and ensure long-term success.‎

‎Frase starts the survey by asking customers to rate their willingness to recommend your product.

By measuring how likely customers are to become brand advocates, you can analyze if your brand message matches your customers' ratings.

After the rating process, Frase will send an email to explain the reason behind your choice.

For example, if you give a low score, a representative may ask you to hop on a call to learn how they can improve.

To sum up...

Brand perception surveys aim to understand how your customers perceive your brand.

With these surveys, you can check whether your messaging matches your customers' brand image and refine your brand in the areas that need improvement.

Thanks to these surveys, you'll get more insights on your:

• brand quality and reliability,
• brand messaging,
• and the performance of your advertisements.

You can keep this survey short, like the examples I provided above, or make it lengthy with the 7 questions I introduced to get more details—it depends on your purpose, channel, and audience.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Money blog: Major buy now, pay later firm collapses - warning issued to customers of big high street chains

Welcome to the Money blog, your place for personal finance and consumer news and advice. Let us know your thoughts on any of the topics we're covering using the comments box below.

Tuesday 25 June 2024 20:43, UK

• Major buy now, pay later firm collapses - warning issued to customers of big high street chains
• Nvidia shares slide after briefly becoming world's most valuable company
• PrettyLittleThing deactivating customers' accounts for making too many returns

Essential reads

• Women in Business : 'Her baby was choking' - How accident in cafe and £400 turned into a genius business idea that's about to go global
• Money Problem : 'I bought a new car but it's been back to dealership six times with same fault - what can I do?'
• Barcelona to ban all holiday apartment rentals by 2028
• Basically... Guarantors
• The mortgage chokehold facing old-age Britons
• Best of the Money blog - an archive

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A major buy now, pay later platform has collapsed into administration.

Payments have been suspended for Laybuy users, who number in the hundreds of thousands, according to savings platform Raisin UK.

The lender has disabled its website and app, with customers unable to create accounts or receive and make payments.

"At present, the administrators are not accepting any new transactions for Laybuy; however, it is critical that customers continue to make their repayments as normal," warned Kevin Mountford, Raisin UK founder.

If administrators can sell the business, customer debt would be sold on and they would be expected to have made all their payments, he said.

"This news will be incredibly frustrating for their customers across the globe and will be unsettling news for the thousands of users in the UK who have used Laybuy for purchases from leading retailers like Amazon, Marks & Spencer and Next."

He called for buy now, pay later platforms to face better regulation to protect customers, especially given they contribute to credit scores.

Two Bristol-based start-ups are trialing whether urine passed at Glastonbury festival can be used as eco-friendly fertiliser, reports The Times .

Peequal, which provides the UK's largest music festival with female urinals, and NPK Recovery have developed a way to recover nutrients that encourage plant growth from waste, such as nitrogen and potassium.

This week, Peequal will collect thousands of litres of festival-goers' urine to be processed at NPK's lab, before it is administered to plants in a greenhouse.

Premier League clubs raked in a record £6bn in revenues in 2022-23, but their combined losses grew too - by 16%.

Deloitte's Sports Business Group report found pre-tax losses for the top-flight clubs of £685m over the period.

Wages and costs associated with player transfers were blamed for the red figure.

Read more here ...

Thames Water is not in line for nationalisation should Labour win the election, its shadow business and trade secretary has said.

"I wouldn't want to see a nationalisation. I think there should be a solution that falls short of that," said Jonathan Reynolds in a Bloomberg TV election debate.

Thames Water has been plunged into crisis, with representatives of its multinational syndicate of shareholders refusing to inject the billions of pounds of funding required to bail it out.

Just one week ago, Nvidia became the world's most valuable company.

The chipmaker - whose shares had risen nine-fold since the end of 2022 -  overtook Microsoft  as its stock market valuation reached $3.34trn (£2.63trn).

Since then, the shares have fallen by 13%, declining in each of the last three trading sessions.

That has been enough to clip more than $500bn (£394bn) from  Nvidia's  stock market valuation.

So what's going on?

Read my analysis here ...

Amazon has announced another Prime Day sale next month. 

The discount event, which is only available to Prime members, will be held on 16 and 17 July. 

It typically takes place twice a year - once in July and again in October, with deals dropping regularly on a range of products. 

Based on last year's event, Which? expects the online giant to offer discounts across most of its departments, including electronics, kitchen appliances, baby products and health and personal care.

The consumer website predicts an Amazon Fire TV Cube, Ring Stick Battery Cam, Instant Pot Vortex 4-in-1 air fryer and Shark cordless vacuum could be some of the big ticket items on sale. 

If you aren't already a Prime member, you might be able to sign up for a free trial before the sales begin, and then cancel it before you get charged. 

To do this, you should cancel within 30 days, or you'll be switched automatically onto a regular membership, which is £8.99 a month.

If you're a student, you can get six months for free. You'll need to prove your course enrolment by providing Amazon with your university email address. 

Just 18% of companies in the UK are led by women, and while data suggests female entrepreneurs are on the rise, men still receive more funding and are entrusted with higher average loans to get them started.

In an eight-part series every Tuesday, Money blog reporter  Jess Sharp  speaks to women who are bossing it in their respective fields - hearing their stories, struggles and advice for those who want to follow in their footsteps.

This week, she has spoken to Jenni Dunman, the founder and owner of Daisy First Aid... 

Many people dream all their lives of starting a business - for Jenni, it was literally an accident.

"I was on a day off and went for a coffee with a friend, she had her daughter in a high chair, her daughter choked, and she didn't know what to do," Jenni explained.

"Being a police officer, I already had first aid training, so I was able to pick her daughter up and give her back blows, remove the blockage really quickly and she made a full recovery.

"I went home to my husband that night and said 'why don't parents know this really basic stuff'."

The genius idea of first aid classes aimed at giving medical attention to children was born - and now, having started with just £400, Daisy First Aid is on the brink of going global.

It has been quite a journey for Jenni, who left education at 16, moved out of her family home and worked three jobs just to make rent. 

Living in Crystal Palace in southeast London at the time, she says she wasn't surrounded by the best crowd and after losing a child and ultimately trying to take her own life, she decided to make a drastic change. 

"I went through a really dark time in my life and sort of decided at that point after hitting rock bottom I either had to try again and be successful or completely change my life," the 44-year-old said.

Jenni joined the Metropolitan Police. 

"I wasn't living in a particularly nice area or hanging around with particularly nice people, so I decided I was just going to completely cut ties with everyone," she said.

Back in the days of her training, the police would cover the cost of accommodation and food for new recruits during their 18-week course, she explained. 

"I basically had somewhere to completely restart my life. It completely changed my life. I loved it."

Jenni eventually worked her way up to detective sergeant, met her husband in the force when he came to her rescue, and was one of the first officers on the scene during the 7/7 Bombings.

"I think probably that's where I found my love for first aid initially," she said. "I really loved that side of things". 

The emergency situation that sparked her idea 

Several years later and now a mother-of-two, Jenni was finding it difficult to juggle work and her busy home life. 

It was while she was pregnant with her third child in 2013 that she came up with her business idea, sparked by the incident in the cafe.

"They do all these amazing parenting classes but if your baby stops breathing, or they choke, or they have a seizure, why aren't they taught this basic first aid?" she said.

Jenni started searching online at what big organisations were already offering, and found a gap in the market with classes directed solely at parents. 

One pavilion, two customers and a friendly favour 

Initially, she started by setting up one first aid class in her local pavilion in Sutton and putting a post on Facebook inviting people and their babies to come along. 

The two-hour class taught people about the signs of meningitis, how to deal with burns and seizures, and broken bones in a way that was "simple and easy to remember". 

Her initial start up costs came to £400, which was mostly spent on mannequins for the class.

"I had two bookings, which both paid £25, and I asked all my friends to join me to make it look busy, so they all came with their babies and we had a great class," Jenni said. 

After that, word spread quickly and she started getting more and more customers as her business organically grew. 

"I took a career break from the police and I started getting bookings from London, Surrey, Kent... I realised I was actually onto something," she said.

Learning, learning, and more learning

As her company blossomed and she struggled to fill demand, Jenni started looking into how it should be structured. 

From the beginning, she wanted a work-life balance that she hadn't been offered in the police, and worked her hours around the school run and pick up. 

Using Google and teaching herself, she came across the idea of franchising. 

"I knew nothing about starting a business, I knew absolutely zero, so I very much learnt along the way. I learnt how to franchise and tried and tested the model," she said. 

"I took on two franchises, who were both female police officers who lived in other areas, and taught them how to grow their business and do what I was doing.

"It just sort of exploded beautifully and really quickly scaled into what it is now, which 115 franchises across the UK with plans for worldwide expansion.

"We have helped to save hundreds of thousands of babies' lives." 

'I get offers for investment - but I turn them down' 

Daisy First Aid is now planning to launch in Dubai by the end of the year, with Jenni having aspirations to take it to Australia and Europe as well.

"What was supposed to be a little business for me, to help me get a little statutory maternity pay, has ended up being life-changing for me and my other franchisees," she said. 

Unlike many businesses, Jenni has never taken any investment, funding the initial set up herself and growing it ever since. 

"I probably get offers of investment twice a month, but I have never taken investment, so I own 100% of the business. Some people think I'm crazy, but I'm just really happy," she said. 

"The model we have works so beautifully and we know we can replicate that anywhere."

What about the challenges? 

Jenni said the "biggest battle" she had overcome was her own mind, and it was something she still had to work on every day.

"I think that most of us are taught from our parents, our ancestors and beyond, to just survive life and stay safe... you know, go to school, get a job, get a pension, retire and then you die," she said.

"I really think now that we can remove those blocks just to open up because we are meant for more." 

She explained how she has had to work for the last 20 years to get over the fear of failure but also the "fear of bragging and success". 

"By far, my biggest challenge is myself and my own self sabotage," she added. 

"There are so many fears that we all have that stop us from achieving more."  

Jenni's advice 

Jenni confessed that she was "massively obsessed" with learning, and advised others to research and teach themselves the skills they lack. 

"All the information is out there online, whatever you need, you can find it out, but also don't be afraid to ask other experts for help," she said. 

She recalled the first time she hired an accountant, and she asked him to explain everything to her like she was 10.

"Sometimes as entrepreneurs, people expect us to know everything, but we're never going to know anything. We can be brave enough to ask other experts, though.

"There are so many people who will give up their spare time to help you, and there is so much information online, so it doesn't have to be costly." 

She also takes these five daily steps to keep her mindset positive:

• Practice gratitude - take time to remember and feel grateful for positive things in your life 
• Set out your goals - write them down and illustrate them
• Be mindful of your words - stop moaning and don't be negative. Changing the words you use out loud and in your head can have a positive impact
• Create a wave of happiness - do one thing a day to make someone else happy - it will encourage them to do the same
• Leave positive reviews and give compliments - if someone has done a good job, tell them about it.

HSBC is the latest lender to announce a wide range of mortgage rate cuts as swap rates improve.

While the details of the changes won't be published until tomorrow, brokers believe the move will prompt more reductions from other high street banks.

And if a Bank of England rate cut comes in August, "all bets are off", Katy Eatenton, mortgage specialist at Lifetime Wealth Management, told Newspage.

"Summer is here and the sun is finally shining over borrowers, who have been in the swap rate shade for too long," she said.

While the market has been lethargic over the election period, these reductions could "be the starting pistol to a campaign of 'summer sizzlers' from lenders", said Andrew Montlake, managing director at Coreco.

He said the period could be a "good time to bag a deal" before a new government is elected.

HSBC is following in the footsteps of Barclays and MPowered Mortgages, which cut their rates yesterday.

Justin Moy, managing director at EHF Mortgages, said: "Rate cuts across the majority of their range will be welcome by all types of borrower, and will accelerate the reaction from other high street lenders."

But a broader market shift is still needed to truly spark the housing market, said Ranald Mitchell, director at Charwn Private Clients.

Nestle is abandoning its new recipe for Nesquik milkshakes following a backlash from shoppers.

The food giant swapped out maltodextrin for rice flour in an attempt to improve the product's texture, but consumers complained it left a "vile sludge" in their drink.

The food giant is returning to the original ingredients for the products, strawberry and banana-flavoured milkshake mix, next month, The Grocer reports .

"The new recipe for banana Nesquik is utterly disgusting with a vile sludge left at the bottom of the glass. Your quality control has messed up big time here," posted one shopper on X.

Another wrote: "Whatever you have done to the strawberry powder recipe, please change it back. 

"I opened a new tub yesterday and it tastes weird and gets really thick at the bottom. I have a pint or two a day and it's never been like this."

Others took to Reddit to vent: "The last two weeks have been miserable with the sludge at the bottom and I thought I had a ruined batch of powder."

Sky News has contacted Nestle for comment.

A spokesperson for the company told The Grocer: "Our aim is always to have the best possible recipe on the market and we sometimes make changes that aim to improve on existing recipes.

"On this occasion the change has not been popular with consumers and we have listened to their feedback.

"We can confirm the old recipe is going back into production and it should be in stores in July. We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused."

By  James Sillars , business news reporter

We're going to start with some more big movements for Nvidia's share price.

The AI-leading chipmaker claimed the crown from Microsoft last Wednesday to become the world's most valuable listed company.

The stock was going great guns and up by 170% in the year to date at that point.

However, the stellar rally stopped in its tracks, and Nvidia's shares have since entered so-called correction territory, according to analysts.

Nvidia's market value was, at one stage, more than 10% below its peak, losing around $430bn over three days.

It's now worth $2.91trn, according to LSEG data.

Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, wrote this morning: "The selloff hit suddenly, right after the company stole the status of the world’s most valuable company from Microsoft.

"There has been no bad news regarding the company's fundamentals on the newswire, no analyst downgrades, no soft forecasts, no rumours of slowing sales.

"It's just that the end of last quarter and the first half may have brought some investors to take some profit and go to the sidelines."

Nvidia currently stands at number three in the value table behind Microsoft and Apple.

Elsewhere this morning, the FTSE 100 has opened flat following a 0.5% gain on Monday.

It is trading at 8,287 - up just five points.

We are still keeping a close eye on the oil market as costs climb. A barrel of Brent is $1, up on yesterday at $86.

The latest increase was attributed to new forecasts of strong demand during the traditional US summer vacation (forgive the Americanism) season.

The number of job vacancies across the country has marginally increased this month, but there are areas where companies appear to be hiring more. 

Research by Adzuna found London has the most job vacancies, with 154,506 roles being advertised, followed by the South East with 131,973 - an increase of 1.2% since April. 

In Northern Ireland, the number of opportunities has fallen by 1.5% to just 7,790.

In terms of cities, Cambridge offers the most chance of finding a job with just 0.34 unemployed people per role and 7,276 jobs available. 

This is followed by Guildford (0.49) and Exeter (0.63).

Bradford remains the hardest city to find a job, with 7.94 jobseekers per role. 

Rochdale and Middlesbrough also have high jobseeker-to-role ratios, at 4.86 and 4.57 respectively. 

Monthly advertised salary figures have also fallen for the first time since October 2023, down 0.11% to £38,765. 

This is despite the recent National Living Wage hike to £11.44 per hour.

While slightly weaker salaries could help relieve some tightness in the labour market, it may also suggest increasing vacancies for entry or junior-level roles with lower salaries.

In comparison, annual salaries are still up 2.69% compared with May 2023. 

Unsurprisingly, London was found to be offering the highest average salaries at £44,863, which is up 1.47% on last year. 

Wales was the region with the lowest typical salary at £34,048. 

Basically… a guarantor is someone who agrees to cover another person's bill in the event they can't pay it.

Guarantors are sometimes required when taking out a loan or mortgage, or moving into a rented property, if the person responsible for the bills doesn't meet income requirements.

For renting, a landlord might also request a guarantor if the tenant has limited renting history, a low credit score or other factors that would deem them at risk of missing payments.

Who can be a guarantor, and what are they responsible for?

The simple answer is - almost anyone.

Often it'll be a parent - especially for young people renting for the first time or taking their first steps onto the property ladder - or a spouse.

But friends and other relatives can be guarantors too.

The basic requirements for being a guarantor are:

• Aged over 18, or over 21, depending on who is making the request
• Good credit history
• Financial stability - a certain amount of savings or income

Being a homeowner will also make you more desirable as a guarantor, as it shows that you have a way of covering costs if you need to. You usually have to live in the UK too.

What the guarantor is legally responsible for can vary depending on what's written in the guarantee.

In the case of renting, the guarantor is usually responsible for paying rent if the tenant can't for any reason. They might also have to cover repairs if the tenant damages the property.

In extreme cases, the guarantor might be called on to cover legal costs faced by the landlord due to the tenant.

What happens if the guarantor can't pay?

If you can't pay the lender or landlord what you owe, they may turn to your guarantor at this point, if another agreement can't be worked out.

In the rare event that the guarantor can't - or even won't - pay, they could be taken to court. It's likely that remediation action would be taken before it gets to this point, but the guarantor signs a legally binding contract, so it can happen.

Not paying the debt could also impact the guarantor's credit history.

Read other entries in our Basically series...

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Letter to the presidents of the federal research granting councils.

Dr. Tammy Clifford Acting President Canadian Institutes of Health Research 160 Elgin Street Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A 0W9 [email protected]

Alejandro Adem President Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council 125 Zaida Eddy Private, 2 nd floor Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1R 0E3 [email protected]

Ted Hewitt President Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council 125 Zaida Eddy Private, 2 nd Floor Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1R 0E3 [email protected]

Dear Drs. Clifford, Adem, and Hewitt:

In Budget 2024, the Government of Canada announced a number of actions to modernize the federal research support system, with the aim of bringing strategic vision and coordination to the system while preserving its features that have led to Canada’s strong record of research excellence. Along with critical investments to support research and research talent, the Government announced the creation of a new capstone research funding organization within which the granting councils will continue to exist, with their focus on supporting excellence in investigator-driven research and actively contributing to the collective and strategic direction of the new organization.

The creation of this new organization represents a major step forward to modernize federal research support—one that will increase the impact of federal funding through better coordination and stronger connections among diverse actors, with a view to driving collaboration and harnessing Canadian research to better meet and address emerging challenges.

The Government has committed to share further details on the creation of the new organization in the 2024 Fall Economic Statement. As such, your collaboration and support on this file in the coming months, as the presidents of the federal research granting councils, will be critical.

Canadian researchers are active and committed. It is essential that the full breadth of the research community be engaged as part of the efforts to achieve the Government’s vision for modernization and the creation of the new organization. Cultivating productive relationships with the research community and taking their perspectives into account as we move forward will be important to ensuring the strength of the new organization.

Within this context, we are asking you to jointly undertake engagement with the research community, to be completed by July 2024. To the extent that it is feasible, we would encourage your consultations to be done collectively, with the goal of bringing together diverse, cross-disciplinary perspectives from researchers at all stages of their careers. As part of this effort, we ask that you also invite the Canada Foundation for Innovation to join the community in discussing the ways infrastructure can best enable research.

This engagement will inform the Government’s work in the coming months and provide researchers with an opportunity to add input into key objectives such as support for internationally collaborative, interdisciplinary, and mission-driven research. It will also be important to respond to the community’s questions and understand their needs and concerns. We ask that you work with Dr. Mona Nemer, Canada’s Chief Science Advisor, in developing your engagement plan, recognizing her valuable perspective on Canada’s research ecosystem. Further, we ask that Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Health Canada officials be invited to observe all engagement activities. Further details outlining our expectations are appended to this letter.

Following this engagement, we ask that you work together to collectively report back to us on your findings by July 2024.

Should you have any questions, our respective officials would be pleased to respond and work closely with you as you prepare for this important engagement.

Please accept our best wishes.

The Honourable François-Philippe Champagne, P.C., M.P. Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

The Honourable Mark Holland, P.C., M.P. Minister of Health

c.c. Dr. Roseann O’Reilly Runte, President and Chief Executive Officer Canada Foundation for Innovation [email protected]

Appendix - Modernizing the Federal Research Support System for Future Success: Engagement Parameters

Canada’s three federal research granting councils are highly successful at delivering on their core mandate of fostering world-class research excellence in their respective domains. However, as concluded by the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System, there is a growing need to effectively support the collaborative, international and interdisciplinary approaches increasingly necessary to address complex societal challenges and respond to emerging opportunities. An organization that has a clear mandate to deliver in those areas across the research system would significantly enhance Canada’s research support system and better position it for the future.

To ensure the continued success of Canada’s research enterprise, Budget 2024 announced the intent to create a new capstone research funding organization that will include the three granting councils. It is expected that the new organization will provide greater value and results for Canada’s science ecosystem by:

• Helping to improve coordination and support for research that involves multiple disciplines, enabling Canada to better respond to emerging domestic and global challenges and opportunities, such as climate change, transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence, and preparing for an aging population.
• Enhancing critical connections between research and the end users of knowledge, including industry and civil society.
• Ensuring that Canada speaks with a stronger, integrated voice on the international stage, enhancing Canada’s ability to be a valued partner in international research.
• Preserving aspects of the system that have led to Canada’s strong record in disciplinary research, including maintaining strong connections to the federal Health portfolio.
• Bolstering efforts on issues of importance to the research community, including reinforcing equity, diversity and inclusion across the ecosystem.
• Streamlining and harmonizing policies, programming and systems where appropriate to reduce administrative burden for researchers and institutions.

Purpose of Engagement

The engagement aims to gather valuable input from the full breadth of Canada’s research community to:

• Inform the details and design of the new capstone research funding organization (within the parameters set out by the Budget 2024 announcement and the expected outcomes of modernization) to be announced in the 2024 Fall Economic Statement.
• Inform the longer-term implementation plan of the new organization to advance key objectives articulated in Budget 2024, including internationally collaborative, interdisciplinary, and mission-driven research.
• Identify any significant risks to mitigate or avoid related to the implementation approach.

A Proposed Vision for the Capstone Organization

Consistent with—and building on—the Budget 2024 announcement and the expected outcomes identified above, the government proposes the following details of the new organization.

It is expected that the mandate of the new organization would align with and advance the current mandates of the granting councils, such as promoting and supporting research and research excellence, developing research talent, and mobilizing knowledge, toward achieving social, health, environmental, and economic benefits for Canadians.

Recognizing the importance of disciplinary and fundamental research as the foundation of a strong and thriving research ecosystem, such research would continue to be core to the mandate of the new organization.

As announced in Budget 2024, the new organization would also be mandated to advance:

• Research involving multiple disciplines : As a single organization with a mandate not defined by research disciplines, the new organization would have the flexibility to design and deliver programs that support research that transcends disciplinary boundaries across the granting councils, whether multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, or transdisciplinary. The granting councils would retain their ability to foster such research within their respective domains. Recognizing their key role in advancing interdisciplinary and integrative health research, it is expected that CIHR’s health research Institutes would continue to exist within CIHR.
• Mission-driven research: Footnote 1 The leadership of the new organization would have the authority and the accountability to leverage the capacity of the research enterprise to respond to missions, as well as to strengthen linkages between research and downstream innovation, supporting more strategic and impactful contributions to the economy and society.
• International research : The new organization would serve as a key centre for international research funding partnerships, opening up new opportunities for international collaboration, enhancing knowledge mobilization, providing greater insight into global issues, and supporting a more strategic and coherent delivery and impact of Canadian research globally.

Proposed Structure

Within this frame—and with a view to creating a more strategic, coordinated and agile research support system—it is proposed that:

• The new organization would be led by a single CEO with a diverse board of directors that would be responsible for driving coordination across the organization and ensuring it is a strategic player within the broader science ecosystem.
• The board would encompass a broad range of expertise, including performing and administering research within and across diverse disciplines, knowledge mobilization and translation, research partnerships (including private and not-for-profit sector perspectives), and strategic planning.
• The CEO would be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the new organization and implementation of the strategic vision of the board.
• The granting councils would continue to exist within the new organization as discrete entities that support excellence in investigator-driven and strategic research within their respective fields, while maintaining strong connections with their research communities and ensuring that programming continues to meet their communities’ needs. Peer review would continue to be at the core of assessing excellence.
• The granting councils would each continue to benefit from disciplinary perspectives and advice to inform their activities, including through disciplinary advisory bodies, with the potential for some members to be cross-appointed to the board to ensure a linkage between disciplinary communities and decision making.
• An executive committee, composed of the CEO and heads of the councils and other key executives, would be created to drive strategic coordination across the whole organization.
• The new organization would include a dedicated unit—separate from the three discipline-based councils—to support research involving multiple disciplines, as well as international and mission-driven research. This would include delivery of most tri-council programming, consolidating and building on the expertise and experience developed by the councils in delivering cross-cutting programs, including peer review. It would also be mandated to create stronger policy and program linkages to industry and civil society to translate and apply research.
• Some administrative and corporate functions would be consolidated to better align capacity and processes within the single organization and to ensure that researchers and trainees experience reduced complexity and administrative burden when applying for and receiving federal funding.

This approach is intended to allow the granting councils to continue to do what they do best – supporting research in health, STEM, the social sciences, and the humanities – while supporting a more integrated and coherent ecosystem that maximizes the benefits of world-class research to Canadians.

Discussion Questions

Based on the proposal above, and the parameters set out in the Budget 2024 announcement, feedback is sought on the following questions:

• coordination among the granting councils, Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and other key players to more effectively meet needs of the research community?
• the interface between researchers and research support?
• support for the modern research enterprise, including international research, interdisciplinary research, and industry-academia partnerships?
• What should be the early priorities for the new organization?
• How can the new organization best support mission-driven research, including in coordination with the CFI and other key players?
• How can effective linkages be built between the new organization, disciplinary communities and the broader research community?
• What are the key considerations around the integration of CIHR in the new organization and the preservation of connections to the Health portfolio?
• What are the key principles that should guide additional decision-making around design and implementation of the new organization?

It is expected that the granting council presidents will work with the Chief Science Advisor to develop the plans for research community engagement. While recognizing time constraints, the approach to engagement will be representative of the full diversity of Canada’s research community, including representatives from universities, colleges, research hospitals and health research institutes, and from early career researchers to established investigators.

A joint report on the engagement findings will be provided to the Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry and Minister of Health synthesizing what was heard from across the research community. The report is to be submitted by July 2024 to ensure that input from the engagement can meaningfully influence decision-making related to the new organization. ISED and Health Canada officials would support the presidents in developing the report. The final report may be made public at the discretion of both Ministers.

Final decisions regarding implementation of the capstone organization will be informed by this engagement, and confirmed by the Government in the 2024 Fall Economic Statement.

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What Is Customer Service?

The definition of customer service is evolving. Here’s what every service professional needs to know.

Customer Service Defined

Customer service is so important that it is now considered a strategic function for organisations across industries. In fact, 85% of service leaders say their org is expected to contribute more revenue this year.

Why is customer service important?

In one word: retention. Happier customers are more likely to continue doing business with you. This helps your bottom line. It’s less expensive to keep current customers than to attract new ones.

Customer service is also a differentiator that sets your brand apart from competitors that offer similar products or services. Service teams not only answer questions; they personalise each customer experience. In fact, 88% of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.

Meanwhile, subpar customer experiences contribute to churn. Eighty percent of shoppers will abandon a retailer after three bad experiences, for example. Great customer service is important for your brand reputation, too. After all, customers are quick to share negative experiences with the masses online.

Discover the latest trends and gain valuable insights from more than 5,500 service professionals.

Read the Salesforce “State of Service” report for an in-depth look at the findings.

The seven pillars of great customer service

1. Connect customer service to the broader organisation

The key is to connect service to your customer relationship management (CRM) system. This will give you a complete view of a customer’s interactions with your company. When a customer reaches out, the agent has all relevant data on a single screen — demographics, order history, preferences, and more — so they know how to help. And they'll know who to pull in from another department to help resolve the issue, if need be.

2. Offer support on every channel Today, great customer service happens everywhere — email, social media, text, and, of course, the phone. No matter the channel, customers want fast, convenient, and high-quality support. Here are the channels every service leader needs to scale support:

• Mobile : The vast majority of service organisations use messaging apps (79%) and mobile apps (78%) to deliver customer service. Mobile options offer asynchronous communication. Customers and agents can access a log of past interactions and keep the conversation going over an extended period.
• Social Media : Eighty-two percent of service organisations use social media channels . Integrate marketing and customer service data to give both teams a single view of the customer. This will help them to better collaborate and determine the appropriate next steps if a customer reaches out with a problem or complaint.
• Email : Email is the most-used service channel , tied with phone support. Customers like email for its convenience. It also gives them the ability to see a written record of their correspondence and the option to add attachments, such as a receipt. With the right customer service technology , you can automatically turn an email into a case and route it to the right service team member.
• Chatbots : Seventy-three percent of decision makers say their organisations use chatbots . Chatbots use AI to analyse data and answer routine questions quickly. Based on the customer’s request, the chatbot shares relevant content. If the case is complex, the chatbot puts the customer in touch with an agent for further support.
• Video : Some cases need face-to-face interaction, but not necessarily in-person service. Examples include rebooting a piece of equipment or replacing a part yourself. That’s why 77% of service organisations report using video support. With visual remote assistance , customers have the option to connect with an agent or technician through video. The expert guides them through the steps to resolve an issue on their own.

3. Strike the perfect balance between quality and speed Sixty-eight percent of agents say it’s difficult to balance speed and quality. Omni-channel routing directs cases to the right agent and gives managers a bird’s eye view of contact centre activity . This ensures that agents are on the right cases based on their skills and availability.

Another way to help agents meet expectations for fast support is through automation . Automated workflows guide agents through the steps to complete an action. You can repurpose these workflows on your self-service channels to help customers complete a process on their own, too. For example, you can walk a customer through the steps to initiate a return.

4. Train Agents On Soft And Hard Skills

Agents today must actively listen, exhibit empathy, showcase product knowledge, and deliver a personalised experience to every customer, all while resolving cases quickly.

• Interpersonal skills: At the end of the day, it’s how you make people feel that matters the most. Teach agents the basics of communication, including listening, positive language, persuasion, and empathy. Express the importance of putting yourself in the customer’s shoes.
• Product knowledge: Update all employees on any new releases or updates. Encourage agents to study company protocols, products, and services. Provide opportunities to shadow and collaborate with experts to improve their product knowledge.
• Technical expertise: Ensure your technology is intuitive for agents. Train them on the latest features and functions. Ask agents for their feedback so that you can improve the experience for every employee.

5. Act as one team

Although agents often work one-on-one with customers, they still need a sense of professional support and camaraderie. Maintain open lines of communication and collaboration. This is especially important with a remote workforce. Daily standups are an easy way to keep everyone connected and united.

6. Turn customer service into a revenue driver

Once the agent solves the issue at hand, they can take the relationship further by upselling and cross-selling. AI can help : It analyses the customer’s data — such as past orders and likelihood to buy — to recommend relevant products or services to the customer.

Beyond adding incremental revenue, customer service can support your business strategy. Agents glean customer insights and feedback every day. Consider inviting your service team to present customer feedback at company meetings. These insights can yield great product innovations or improvements.

7. Change up how you measure success

Handle time is an important metric, but it doesn’t tell you the whole story. Analyse a range of customer service metrics to better understand the customer and their relationship with your company overall.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind:

• Revenue: Review your contact centre analytics to determine if quality customer service is contributing to a higher number of transactions or greater sales per customer.
• Customer retention: Pay attention to what happens after the customer disconnects. Has a frustrating customer service experience contributed to churn?
• SLA performance: Most companies have service-level agreements (SLAs) for the contact centre, including items such as the most amount of time customers should wait on hold, for example. Compare your SLAs against actual performance according to your contact centre analytics. This will help you to identify improvements to meet SLAs.

The meaning of great customer service today

Even though the definition of customer service has changed over time, the sentiment remains the same: It’s the magic behind customer loyalty. Your service team understands the customer in a way that no other department can. They have the power to make customers feel special and understood while meeting their expectations. That’s a win for your team and your entire organisation.

See how you can solve cases faster on the #1 platform for customer service.

Service Cloud saves your employees time with a powerful, connected agent workspace so they can focus on what’s important, your customers.