Strategy6 min read
Measuring the unmeasurable: a practical guide to brand lift
Brand work does pay back — you just have to plan how you'll see it. A simple framework for putting numbers on the fuzzy stuff.
By Amara Okafor
Performance channels report back in hours. Brand building reports back in quarters. That mismatch is why brand budgets are the first to be cut.
The fix isn't to give up on measurement. It's to plan it before the work goes live.
Pick three signals
Choose one awareness signal (such as prompted recall), one consideration signal (such as branded search volume) and one commercial signal (such as new-customer revenue). Track all three before, during and after.
Use a control where you can
Geographic holdouts or matched markets let you compare regions that saw the campaign with regions that didn't. It isn't perfect, but it's far better than guessing.
