Businesses should be as invested in their brand health as all of us should be in our personal health. Just as the annual well visit is an act of disease prevention, a brand health program is an investment in the future of the business. A systematic approach to measuring brand health transforms subjective perceptions into actionable intelligence, providing an early-warning system that identifies threats before they impact your bottom line. By regularly monitoring key metrics like brand awareness, consideration and competitive positioning, you gain the strategic insights needed to optimize marketing investments, maintain pricing power and build lasting customer loyalty. More than just a measurement, a robust brand health program serves as your roadmap for sustainable growth — helping you make data-driven decisions that strengthen market position and drive long-term business value.
Relationship-Focused Metrics
- Customer lifetime value (CLTV) and account penetration metrics reveal the long-term value of customers and empower B2B leaders to make informed decisions about marketing and customer retention strategies. These insights can also highlight areas in which the customer experience can be improved to boost loyalty.
- Customer NPS scores are important for B2B businesses since they’re typically referral-driven and have longer, higher-value relationships. Conducting quarterly or biannual surveys enables brands to get a sense of customer satisfaction and their propensity to refer peers or change brands.
- Employee NPS scores are also critical to assessing brand health as they tie directly to the brand experience. Digging into areas of dissatisfaction can help manage reputational risk as well as prevent costly employee attrition.
Decision-Making Process Metrics
- Brand awareness and perception surveys set a baseline understanding for if and how the brand is considered within buying committees and/or by ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Through these surveys, which typically run every six to 12 months, brands can measure how well they are trusted, to what level they are viewed as experts in their fields and how they are positioned against key competitors.
- Win/loss surveys should be built into the sales process to understand exactly why decision-makers decide for or against partnering with the brand. While it may feel uncomfortable for leaders to inquire, the responses — good or bad — are a gold mine for improving the sales process and differentiating brand messaging.
Engagement Quality Metrics
- Content engagement is a prime indicator of brand credibility and what prospects are or are not interested in learning. Whether the focus is on web pages or thought leadership, engagement is about more than clicks. By tracking metrics such as time on a page, scroll depth, social shares and/or comments, businesses can gauge content effectiveness, identify what resonates with audiences and refine their approach for increased visibility and brand loyalty.
- Tracking lead origin may be the ultimate indicator of how well your sales and marketing teams align. Capturing where leads come from — whether they convert or not — can uncover valuable opportunities to increase brand awareness, refine marketing strategies and grow referral channels. These insights, along with relationship survey results, may also reveal how brand perceptions influence deal velocity and size.
- Retention and renewal rates, which are especially important for subscription and/or service business models, are a sure sign of brand health. They may also help to future-proof the business by capturing early indicators linked to an expanding number of competitors, high pricing, or capability gaps.
Get a brand health program started.
If you’re new to tracking brand health and the thought of implementing a brand health program intimidates you, rest easy. The key is starting with metrics you can act on and building complexity over time as your program matures. You may also want to partner with an experienced firm that can get you started more efficiently and — if your team is lean and your tech stack is low — more cost-effectively. Once you gather key indicators and get a clear sense of where and how your brand strategy should shift, it gets much easier to grow a stronger, healthier business on a continuous basis.