Our Panels team is helping many customers run Brand Awareness Studies to enable marketing teams to understand where they stand today and how their advertising and marketing efforts are moving the needle. After a year like 2020, this makes a lot of sense. People’s buying and consuming habits changed dramatically during the lockdown, and now people are changing their habits again.
Longitudinal Reporting for Brand Awareness
The key to doing brand awareness surveys is to create a standard report that you can run repeatedly and then compare the results over time. The results are shown in what is called Longitudinal (over time) Reporting. For this kind of study, you will need a Professional or Full Access account.
For brand awareness studies, you will want to reach a random sample of people in your target markets in order to get truly useful information. Many companies turn to the Alchemer Panels Team to help them find the right groups of targeted respondents.
The Advantages of Longitudinal Studies
Brand awareness studies are best conducted with a standard survey that you run repeatedly and measure over time. By regularly asking the same questions – every month or quarter – you can see the effects of your marketing campaigns over time. Your Longitudinal Reports will show you how your audiences’ perceptions of your brand change and allow you to compare the results to programs and events.
This approach allows you to understand and explain the impact of marketing programs, news reports, and other events that can raise or lower your scores.
Types of Questions
You can create a longitudinal report with a number of standard questions. The key is to restrict answers to a specific pre-determined set to directly compare March with October, for example.
The types of questions that can be used in longitudinal reporting include:
- Radio Buttons
- Dropdown Menu
- Checkboxes
- Net Promoter Score
- Likert Scale Rating
- Image Select (single and multiple)
- Cascading Drop Down Menu
You can set the intervals for reporting to Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Annual. Then you can choose from one of eight different report styles.
Metrics You Can Chart
The metrics you can measure include:
- Option Count (this is the default) which plots a data point for each answer option
- NPS® Score, which plots the score calculated
- Sum, which is calculated by multiplying the number of responses for each option by its numeric value
- Average, which calculates the Sum divided by the Total Responses (great for Likert scales)
- Min, which plots the minimum value across all responses
- Max, which shows the maximum value across all responses
- Standard Deviation, which plots the extent of deviation for the group
- Variance, which plots how far a set of numbers are spread out from the mean
- Total, which plots the total responses to a question
- Hidden, which indicates the total responses that did not answer the question because it was hidden
- Skipped, which shows the total responses that did not answer the question despite seeing it
Other Applications of Longitudinal Studies
In addition to brand awareness studies, longitudinal reports are great for:
- Market trends
- Product feedback
- Customer satisfaction (including NPS)
- Employee engagement
- Customer usage
- Medical studies
- Population trends
To learn more about Longitudinal studies, visit read this blog, “What is a Longitudinal Study?” Or you can jump straight to our documentation on Longitudinal Reporting.