This blog shares seven practical tips for improving brand tracking, from choosing the right metrics and survey questions to making trackers more adaptive, contextual and actionable.

Brand trackers – the most ambivalent research tools of all times. A true love/hate relationship for many researchers and research users.

While brand tracking keeps a finger on the pulse and allows you to continuously measure brand performance, it often leads to frustration among its users. Why? Because trackers can become static, repetitive and unidimensional, often lacking relevance, credibility and actionability.

So how can we turn the tide and make brand trackers future-proof?

From ‘alarms’ to ‘radars’

Brand trackers are all too often used as ‘alarms’ that should go off when there’s a problem. Yet trackers should work more like ‘radars’, determining the position, velocity and distance of brands and helping managers take proactive action.

Only when trackers evolve from ‘alarms’ to ‘radars’ can they grow into true management decision tools.

Seven tips to crack your tracker

1. Don’t track for the sake of tracking

Start by asking yourself which key performance indicators are worth tracking over time in your brand tracking survey. Critically evaluate the significance of each performance criterion. Does the item directly influence your brand strength and impact your strategy?

If the answer is ‘no’, you should instantly discard that question from your survey.

It is not because you have always measured your brand performance through traditional brand funnel thinking that you should continue to do so. Stop tracking for the sake of tracking and revise your tracker survey, question by question.

2. Use clear consumer language

Make sure that each question is written in clear consumer language. Always ask yourself if your average consumer will be able to answer your questions.

As researchers and marketers, you need to keep in mind that the average consumer is not like you, so avoid using marketing jargon. Here’s a simple trick: ask yourself whether your next-door neighbour would be able to answer your survey questions.

3. Align with your brand strategy

There is an abundance of books and theories guiding marketers in growing strong brands. The choice of brand strategy, or ‘Brand Religion’, not only shapes how one defines brand success, it also outlines how to measure brand performance.

It’s not a ‘one size fits all’. A brand tracker should be customised according to your brand strategy.

An example is the work we have done with Miele. We designed a survey based on the output of a ‘Brand Religion’ workshop. The survey uncovered Miele’s DNA and its key brand KPIs and drivers, based on a classification of marketing streams.

We applied a modular survey with a limited number of questions that were relevant for the participants’ profile, keeping it future-proof:

• brand funnel questions at the umbrella level and one specific product category question, to get feedback regarding four different product categories
• questions on brand drivers, image and customer journey
• two locally relevant questions to involve all 25 countries

This all resulted in a dedicated brand growth model, indicating the performance of the brand in specific markets and for specific segments.

4. Make them adaptive and modular

What do you think is the average length of a brand tracker survey? 15 minutes? Think again.

More than 30 minutes is no exception today, unfortunately.

A modular approach, in which modules are switched on and off based on stakeholders’ needs, can help brands choose wisely what to include while preventing participant fatigue.

It provides the flexibility to tune your trackers to the current marketing reality. This flexibility also helps maintain the attention of executives and spur their curiosity to learn something new with each measurement and reporting wave.

5. Limit your question’s time frame

Many tracker questions rely on information recall. Depending on a question’s time frame, it can be hard for people to provide an accurate answer, resulting in imperfect and therefore unreliable input.

Trackers must avoid questions that require thinking too far back in time. As a guideline, try to use the repurchase time frame of your product or service.

6. Measure in relevant context or moments

Especially when consumers could connect with your brand via different touchpoints, make sure your survey is available throughout those touchpoints, allowing consumers to provide in-the-moment feedback.

This is exactly what SkyTeam has done in their quest to become more customer-centric.

By means of geolocation technology, customer feedback is captured across eight touchpoints for 20 airlines in over 1,000 airports worldwide. The app triggers customer feedback while people are in the actual experience.

When evaluating a touchpoint negatively or positively, open-ended questions probe for the ‘why’, and customers can even upload a picture.

For SkyTeam, the tracker shows their passengers’ reality, allowing the airline group to address shortcomings immediately.

7. Contextualise for advanced actionability

Your tracker might provide a hard-core metric, but the data often won’t explain the why behind it.

To turn those metrics into actionable insights, add context. This can be done by using complementary methods such as an insight community.

SkyTeam, for instance, complements its tracker results with the input from its Jet Setters online research community and by connecting with passengers in real life.

The key takeaways

• Track what matters: Focus your brand tracking on metrics that influence brand strength and business decisions.
• Speak like your audience: Use clear language that people can understand and answer easily.
• Connect tracking to strategy: Your measures should reflect your brand strategy, not a generic template.
• Keep it flexible: Modular surveys make it easier to adapt your tracking to changing business needs.
• Capture relevant moments: Ask people for feedback when and where their brand experience happens.
• Add context: Combine tracking data with complementary research to understand not just what is happening, but why.

A strong brand tracker should do more than sound an alarm when something goes wrong. It should act as a radar, helping executives understand where their brand stands, spot changes early and take action with confidence.

That means tracking what matters, using clear language, aligning measures with brand strategy, staying adaptive, capturing feedback in relevant moments and adding context to the data.

Done well, brand tracking becomes much more than a measurement exercise. It becomes a management tool.