Brand Awareness Survey Questions: Selecting the Optimal Style

February 16, 2012

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Two weeks ago, I wrote a blog post on 8 research design factors to consider when planning a B2B brand awareness research project to test the aggregate impact of marketing awareness and outreach initiatives. In that post, I established that an online brand awareness survey is the most effective means for testing and monitoring the impact of these types of marketing initiatives. Last week, I shared some insights on determining sample size needs for your inaugural brand awareness survey when you are cost and resource constrained.

In this post, I’ll build on that argument and share 6 examples of commonly used types of B2B brand awareness survey questions.

Respondent Qualifying Questions: These are questions that qualify a respondent for your survey and identify key characteristics to categorize respondents into specific subsets of your target audience. This series of questions generally include the following information and are asked at the beginning of a brand awareness survey:

  • A respondent’s company or organization
  • The main industry that their company operates in
  • Respondent’s role in company
  • Company size in terms of employees or revenue
  • Current number of customers using their product or services
  • Whether or not the respondent currently uses the targeted type of products or services
  • Whether or not the respondent’s company has a need for the products or service of interest

Unaided Company/Brand Awareness Questions: These are questions used to identify which companies or brands the respondent is most familiar with in a certain sector or market place. Suggestions are not given with these questions. These questions must be asked before aided questions, so as to prevent bias being introduced by respondents being exposed to the brand names in the aided questions. Similarly, they must be asked before the company syndicating the survey is disclosed to the respondent.

Example 1: What is the name of the first customer relationship management (CRM) solution that comes to mind?

Example 2: Which companies come to mind when you think or hear CRM solution?

 

Aided Company/Brand Awareness Questions: These are questions used to identify the total universe of brands or companies that the respondent has heard of or is aware of. These are company or brand recognition questions, encouraging the respondent to provide a list of companies/brands and allowing you to ask which companies/brands they recognize and associate with a certain sector or market place. These questions must be asked before the company syndicating the survey is disclosed to the respondent.

Example: Below are 4 levels of familiarity with a CRM solution. Please select your highest level of familiarity with each product listed below.

 

 

 

Sample Aided Brand Awareness Question

 

 

 

 

Unaided Perception: These are questions used to identify the respondents thought(s) about the target brand/company or target competitors in the market place. These are open-ended questions and these unaided perception questions should not be asked until after the last brand awareness question.

 

 

Example: What are the first words that come to mind when you think about Sugar CRM?

 

 

 

Relative Company/Brand Perception Ranking Questions: These are questions used to gauge a respondent’s relative perception of a company or brand amongst target customers that your company has not formally interacted with. In these questions, respondents are asked to rank the brands/companies against one another as if they were considering purchasing a certain product or service.

Example: Based on your current knowledge of these companies, how would you rank these CRM providers against one another? Please respond to this question as if you were considering purchasing one of these companies CRM solutions.

 

Sample Brand Perception Ranking Question

 

 

Overall Company/Brand Perception Questions: These are questions to gauge the respondent’s feelings about each company or brand that they are aware of in the market place.

Example: How would you rate your overall perception of the following brands?

 

Sample Overall Brand Perception Question

 

Now you know the most common styles of brand awareness survey questions and should be ready to start designing your own brand awareness survey.

Next week, I will share 5 business benefits of doing a regular brand awareness survey.

 

Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy

<strong>Brandon Hickie</strong> is Marketing Manager, Pricing Strategy at <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>. He previously worked at OpenView as Marketing Insights Manager. Prior to OpenView Brandon was an Associate in the competition practice at Charles River Associates where he focused on merger strategy, merger regulatory review, and antitrust litigation.