Beyond first impressions. Our two essential tips for measuring brand awareness.

6th February 2026

Chatting to clients, there appears to be a recurring current theme. A renewed focus on brand building. But with tighter budgets, and an increasingly critical eye on spend vs return, the struggle is balancing long term investment, with short term measurable impact.

It’s a strategic shift in many cases; build the brand, build the business, build value. Makes complete sense, always has. At a more tactical level brands have been impacted by AI in online searches, resulting in a more competitive paid media market as brands wrestle to remain visible. As a result, they’re considering a broader marketing and channel mix.

Now, back to a common pressure point for marketing teams. When the board asks “are we moving the needle” or “what’s the return” you need to demonstrate impact. The challenge is that brand awareness and perception doesn’t generally shift overnight. Fortunately, we’ve got a couple of handy tips that’ll give you a good sense of direction, using tools anyone can access.

Volume of branded searches

Tracking the volume of impressions for search queries that feature your brand name is an effective way to understand how often people are searching for you. Growth in this metric is a strong indicator that brand awareness and recognition is on the up, and your investment in brand exposure is paying off.

AI Search Effectiveness

With users increasingly turning to AI-powered search tools to research and compare available options. It’s important to understand how often your brand is being mentioned and cited by these tools.

Going a step further and monitoring the volume of website traffic you are seeing from these tools will give you a full picture of your effectiveness in AI search.