Brand awareness is key to increasing the chance that a company — even one that commands a premium price — will be part of the consideration set for potential buyers. When a brand is already top of mind, it can generate shorter sales cycles, more efficient sales and marketing efforts and higher conversion rates. The challenge? Brand awareness can seem intangible. For those new to implementing a brand awareness program, it also can seem daunting. Luckily, a growing set of tools makes the challenge much more approachable than it used to be.
Here are four relevant and practical ways to track brand awareness for your B2B business — and how to get started with each.
01
Use surveys to capture brand-name recall and associations.
Brand surveys remain one of the most direct ways to understand how well your business is known within your target market. They help answer questions like: Do prospects recognize your name? Can they describe what you offer? Who do they associate with you?
Tools to try:
- Qualtrics or SurveyMonkey for custom surveys
- Survey alternatives (e.g., Pollfish) for quick audience panels
- LinkedIn polls for informal pulse checks with professional audiences
Tips:
- Ask both aided and unaided recall questions to measure true awareness.
- Conduct surveys quarterly to spot trends over time.
02
Measure website traffic for visibility signals.
Website analytics can help measure brand awareness by monitoring direct traffic (those who type in the URL or use bookmarks), branded search volume (those who use branded keywords) and referral traffic (visitors who arrive from an outside link) — all of which indicate how many people are actively seeking out your brand.
Other important signals include overall traffic growth, new versus returning visitors, time on site and content engagement. These reflect a general increase in visibility and interest over time. Analyzing these metrics in conjunction with marketing campaigns helps determine whether your visibility efforts are succeeding.
Tools to try:
- Google Analytics for direct and organic traffic insights
- Google Search Console for branded keyword performance
- Ahrefs or Semrush to monitor search trends and competitor visibility
Tips:
- Track branded keywords separately from non-branded terms.
- Compare traffic before and after campaigns to measure lift.
03
Leverage social listening to understand brand buzz.
For B2B businesses, current and prospective buyer conversations happen across digital channels that include social media, industry forums, blogs and review platforms. Social listening tools can help monitor brand-name or product mentions, lend insights into overall brand sentiment and measure a brand’s share of voice.
Tools to try:
- Brandwatch, Meltwater or Sprout Social for comprehensive monitoring
- Hootsuite streams for lightweight listening
- G2 and other B2B review sites for qualitative feedback
Tips:
- Track not only mentions of your brand, but also those of your competitors to gauge relative visibility.
- Look at sentiment and context; awareness alone isn’t enough. The hope is to find positive perceptions of the brand but, if not, the business will have insight into what’s not working.
04
Gauge share of voice across industry channels.
Understanding how often your brand appears in media, analyst reports and broader industry conversations offers a clear window into brand awareness. Tracking both brand mentions (quantity and quality) and share of voice (your brand’s visibility compared to that of your competitors) reveals whether your presence is growing, stagnant or overshadowed within your category.
Tools to try:
- Meltwater or Cision for PR coverage, news monitoring and competitive benchmarking
- Brandwatch or Talkwalker for cross-channel mention tracking and SOV analysis
- G2, Gartner or Forrester for analyst reports and category presence
- Mention.com for lightweight monitoring across blogs, social and news
Tips:
- Track not just quantity, but quality, as well as in which publications and what context the brand is mentioned and whether messaging is represented accurately.
- Compare share of voice against that of your competitors to identify gaps or campaign impact.
- Look for patterns in sentiment, publication tier and message consistency to understand the quality of your presence.
Bring it all together.
By combining these approaches, B2B marketers can turn something as seemingly intangible as brand awareness into a set of clear, trackable signals. Each method — from surveys to web analytics, social listening and industry-wide visibility — offers a different perspective on how your brand is perceived and recognized in the market. When used together, they create a more complete picture of brand health and help guide smarter marketing investments. With the right tools and consistent measurement, brand awareness becomes not only manageable, but a powerful driver of long-term growth.