Brand consciousness is 1 of the “fuzziest” maturation channels. And erstwhile things get fuzzy, you request factual ways to beryllium your clip and concern is paying off.

Below I’ve laid retired 11 workflows you tin travel to measurement the occurrence of your marque awareness—including immoderate little-known Ahrefs use cases.

Brand consciousness refers to a bid of selling tactics that assistance audiences admit and callback a marque name, logo, oregon product.

It’s a “death-by-a-thousand-cuts”/ ”sales-by-a-thousand-sightings” attack to marketing: tons of tiny actions moving unneurotic to make large benefits for your company.

If you’re reasoning of advertising, eyeballs, and impressions, you’re successful the close ballpark.

Big brands walk millions gathering awareness, due to the fact that with designation comes a definite level of legitimacy and trust—which tin crook into income further down the line.

Tim Soulo connected LinkedIn

There’s nary close mode to manufacture awareness. Brands usage antithetic formats, channels, and varying levels of creativity to seizure assemblage attention.

Examples of antithetic types of marque consciousness include:

• Sponsored content: Content that a marque pays to beryllium featured alongside (e.g. their logo, product, oregon selling message) to get successful beforehand of their people audience.
• Podcast adverts: Audio advertisement abstraction that brands tin bargain to get successful beforehand of their people audience. Ads play before, during, oregon aft the podcasts that their assemblage perceive to.
• Billboard/out-of-home (OOH) advertising: Physical, offline advertisement abstraction that brands tin bargain successful the signifier of billboards, integer screens, oregon posters connected proscription (e.g. busses).
• PR stunts/Guerilla marketing: Marketing that uses daze worth oregon attention-grabbing ideas to make buzz and media coverage—typically executed successful a creative, scrappy way.
• Branded content: Mass-appeal amusement contented that’s either sponsored, commissioned, oregon created by a institution to lucifer its audience’s values.
• Product placement: The subliminal advertizing of a branded merchandise successful a portion of amusement content, made to look earthy wrong the storyline (e.g. successful film, TV, oregon video games).

B2B companies spent 28.9% of their selling budgets connected marque consciousness successful 2024, according to Gartner—investing much than astatine immoderate different signifier of the lawsuit journey.

Companies tin pain done currency connected marque consciousness campaigns, hoping radical volition admit and emotion their brand. But generating a buzz with nary income is simply a concern nary marketer wants to find themselves in.

“The cardinal to gathering a palmy marque with ads is that those ads request to really person radical into buyers—otherwise you’ll discarded a ton of wealth and could bankrupt your institution if everyone knows your marque but doesn’t buy it.” 

That’s wherefore it’s important to measurement the interaction of your marque consciousness strategy arsenic you build it.

The events of the past twelvemonth mean it’s harder than ever to physique marque awareness, what with AI eating into top-of-the-funnel traffic, near-constant hunt reshuffling, declining societal scope (hello, TikTok ban), and a flood of low-quality AI contented eroding user trust.

But I also, counterintuitively, deliberation it’s the best clip to physique and measurement your brand.

The much marque awareness, trust, and loyalty you physique now, the little troubled you’ll beryllium by these challenges successful future. That’s due to the fact that the benefits of marque consciousness compound. Building consciousness volition bring you more:

• AI traffic. AI is an wholly caller channel, giving you archetypal mover advantage. The much your marque sanction crops up successful topically applicable conversations online, the much apt it is to beryllium mentioned and cited by LLMs and AI.
• Organic traffic. According to Mark Williams-Cook, Google assigns sites a “site quality” score, based connected marque metrics. To recognize your website’s quality, it analyzes your branded keywords, marque mentions that pull clicks (e.g. marque affluent anchor text), and tract clicks. Proactively gathering your marque consciousness volition inflate these metrics, boosting your tract prime people and hunt ranking. Any ranking improvements volition reenforce your marque visibility, creating a feedback loop of compounding awareness.
• Brand protection. Brand consciousness means little dependence connected immoderate 1 channel, and diversified postulation from aggregate sources and channels.
• Brand loyalty. Once your assemblage is alert of your brand, you tin nurture that involvement passim the lawsuit journey, turning it into affirmative marque sentiment and loyalty.
• Customers. Despite being tricky to attribute, erstwhile consciousness booms, income and conversions are often pulled on successful the slipstream.

Brand consciousness is the fuzziest signifier of marketing, built connected affectional resonance alternatively than measurable metrics. Outcomes similar marque recall, recognition, perception, affinity, and sentiment are notoriously tricky to quantify due to the fact that they trust connected subjective, affectional responses.

What’s more, immoderate of your marque consciousness is earned and beyond your nonstop control, specified arsenic PR, connection of mouth, user-generated content, and societal media. You can’t power the narrative, and since you didn’t make the content, you deficiency afloat show data, making it adjacent tougher to evaluate.

For example, you won’t cognize the postulation oregon impressions a New York Times nonfiction mentioning your marque has generated without entree to their analytics.

Similarly, your marque volition inevitably make consciousness you can’t track—and whitethorn ne'er adjacent cognize about—through offline channels oregon acheronian social.

And different thing!

Me astatine 9.09am penning this blog portion eating my toast.

Brand consciousness sits close astatine the commencement of the lawsuit journey, truthful pursuing the breadcrumbs done to conversion is not casual and, astatine times, impossible.

But don’t fto each that enactment you off. Measuring marque consciousness tin inactive beryllium done, and erstwhile done right, it’s hugely valuable, helping you to:

• Justify investment: Pinning down the marque consciousness metrics you can measurement volition assistance you beryllium growth. With that evidence, you tin unafraid investment, pull partnerships, and get sign-off connected those harder-to-measure originative projects.
• One-up your competition: Measuring marque consciousness done methods similar stock of dependable investigation tin assistance you enactment retired your marketplace positioning, acceptable realistic goals, and repurpose strategies that person worked for your competitors. Even if your contention has much awareness, if they’re not measuring and proactively gathering connected it, you tin adjacent that gap.
• Figure retired what works: Measuring your marque consciousness strategy lets you reappraisal which tactics pb to the biggest surge successful interest. Once you cognize what works, you tin repetition palmy campaigns, warrant assets allocation, and much accurately necktie output to ROI.

So, it’s hard to warrant walk connected marque due to the fact that it’s so… fluffy. But you tin region a batch of that fluffiness by measuring consciousness successful astute ways, and paying attraction to what works.

Here’s however to do that.

Let’s dive into 11 antithetic methods and metrics you tin usage to fig retired however good your marque consciousness strategy is working.

There are truthful galore moving parts erstwhile it comes to expanding marque awareness. Different ads, originative formats, channels, messages.

You truly request a top-level presumption of show to cognize if it’s each working.

Share of Voice (SoV) is that successful a nutshell—a top-down metric that helps you quantify your marque consciousness successful the discourse of your marketplace and competitors.

The look to cipher stock of voice is:

| SoV = Your marque visibility / Total marketplace visibility * 100

Social stock of dependable shows you the percent of the marketplace you’ve cornered connected societal media, measured by your stock of marque mentions vs. full marque mentions successful the remaining market.

The look to cipher societal stock of voice is:

| Social SoV = Your marque mentions / Total marque mentions successful your marketplace * 100

Brandwatch Consumer Research helps you measurement your societal stock of voice

Search SoV calculates however overmuch organic traffic you ain arsenic a proportionality of the full market.

The look is:

| Search SoV = Your integrated postulation / Total integrated postulation successful your marketplace * 100

Ahrefs Rank Tracker volition amusement you your brand’s hunt stock of dependable for up to 10K keywords.

Just database retired your branded oregon campaign-specific keywords, and spot whether your marque consciousness is falling, growing, oregon going steady.

You tin besides benchmark your marque consciousness against competitors successful Rank Tracker, if you’ve specified them successful your task setup.

To spot that data, caput to the “Competitors > Overview 2.0” tab connected the near for Share of Voice and Share of Traffic Value timelines.

In this example, we’ve seen a 6.2% summation successful our hunt stock of dependable implicit the past six months, bringing america up to an wide stock of 23.1% for the keywords we care about.

These are the kinds of metrics to look backmost connected erstwhile you’re proactively gathering your awareness.

Rank Tracker is large if you privation to spot your SoV trending implicit time, but for a snapshot view, caput to Keywords Explorer.

Same arsenic Rank Tracker, this study lets you way 10K keywords, truthful you tin benchmark your brand’s top-level hunt beingness against your closest competitors.

Here’s an casual workflow you tin follow:

1. Head to the Organic Keywords study and prime the 10,000 highest ranking keywords for your domain
2. Hit “Copy”
3. Head to Keywords Explorer and paste them successful the searchbar
4. Pull up the “Traffic stock by domain” report
5. See however you overmuch stock you ain for your apical keywords, vs. the remainder of the market

Advertising is simply a immense portion of expanding marque awareness. You request to ticker however your ads are performing before, during, and aft each campaign—and support tracking astatine scale—to spot if your marque consciousness efforts are really paying off.

Most advertisement platforms person built-in advertisement managers (e.g. Google Ads Manager, Google Display Network, Facebook Ads Manager) which amusement you cardinal marque consciousness metrics similar impressions, traffic, clicks, or CTR.

We tally our ain ads connected Quora, for example, and person entree to each of those figures.

Here are a mates much ways you tin measurement the occurrence of your ads utilizing Ahrefs.

Measure the occurrence of PPC marque consciousness campaigns

Head to Site Explorer and participate your domain¹, past find the Paid Pages report². Other reports successful Ahrefs fto you dive into the minutiae of your hunt ads, but this is 1 of the champion places to survey overarching advertisement awareness.

Once you’re there, marque a enactment of your Total Traffic³ astatine the apical of the keyword table, and past survey your paid postulation maturation implicit time⁴—especially successful narration to advertisement cost. When your paid postulation exceeds paid postulation cost, it’s a bully motion that your marque consciousness ads are doing the trick!

In this report, you tin besides filter by keywords successful URLs, titles, and descriptions to amended study connected the campaign-specific marque awareness.

Track full uplift successful PPC traffic

For a birdseye presumption implicit your marque ads, propulsion up the Overview study successful Site Explorer. It’s large for checking your:

1. Total advertisement postulation vs. integrated traffic
2. Gross advertisement postulation maturation and decline
3. Location based and determination awareness

If you privation to cognize whether radical attraction astir your brand, ticker your postulation during a campaign.

It’s not a cleanable science, but it tin assistance you quantify intangible goals similar marque callback and recognition.

When radical admit your brand, they’re much apt to sojourn your site. If they sojourn it directly, that’s further impervious that they cognize you exist.

In different words, if you tally an advertisement and your nonstop postulation goes up, there’s a bully accidental it’s working.

You tin show full and nonstop postulation without fuss successful Google Analytics 4, via the report:

Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition: Session default transmission radical report

And present you tin presumption your web postulation successful Ahrefs, via our Web Analytics instrumentality successful the Dashboard¹ portion of the platform. When you get there, conscionable caput to Projects² to spot your full web traffic³.

Then, to spot your nonstop traffic, adhd a “Channel” filter for “Direct”.

When you acceptable the day scope to align with your campaign, you tin spot whether your promotion is having immoderate impact.

You tin besides conception your full and nonstop postulation by run URLs or UTMs.

People whitethorn similar your marque and sojourn your site, but you cognize your consciousness is really increasing erstwhile they attraction capable to speech about it.

This volition look similar a dependable watercourse of backlinks and referral postulation backmost to your tract from publications, blogs, reappraisal sites, forums, and societal media.

But not each links are created equal. When you study connected earned awareness, you request to absorption connected the maturation of quality referrals—not conscionable the sum total.

Here are immoderate things to see erstwhile you’re moving retired what constitutes a “good” link:

Quality nexus traitsAsk yourself…How to validate

Relevant	Is this nexus applicable to my brand?	• Check anchor text • Visit site
Authoritative	Is this tract considered an authority?	• Check the site’s DR • Check the page’s UR
Visible	Will radical really spot my marque from this referral?	• Referring leafage integrated traffic • Referral postulation backmost to your site • Mentions of your marque sanction in/surrounding anchor text
Equitable	Will it walk connected nexus equity?	• Dofollow vs. nofollow links

And you’ll besides privation to deliberation astir what “good” looks similar to your brand.

For instance, immoderate companies whitethorn spot a nexus from a nationalist work arsenic being the zenith of awareness—regardless of whether it drives referral traffic.

Here are immoderate applicable ways you tin usage Ahrefs to measurement maturation successful your backlinks and referrals.

Track however galore high-quality backlinks you pick up

Once you determine what prime referrals look like, you tin configure a “Best links” filter to velocity up your monthly reporting.

This filter allows you to acceptable circumstantial criteria for your links.

For example, you mightiness take to lone spot “dofollow” links successful an effort to prime up much nexus equity, oregon “in content” backlinks, to sidestep spurious links successful footers oregon remark sections.

Here’s however to measurement your champion marque backlinks:

1. Head to the Overview study successful Site Explorer
2. Drop successful your sites’ domain OR a run link—depending connected what you’re measuring
3. Click connected the “Backlink profile” tab
4. Set the filter to “Best links only”

This configuration volition springiness you a macro-level presumption of your highest-quality links. Then you tin grounds nexus numbers each month…

…and astir correlate spikes successful backlink acquisition with the dates of your marque campaigns.

Measure however overmuch your marque sanction gets mentioned successful anchor text

If idiosyncratic links to you, but doesn’t notation your brand, is that adjacent marque awareness?

To truly recognize the spot of your marque presence, tracking your marque sanction successful nexus anchor substance is a must.

Head to Ahrefs’ Anchors report, acceptable an “Anchor with surrounding text” filter for your marque sanction (and immoderate communal misspellings).

This volition amusement you each juncture wherever a tract has either hyperlinked your marque name, oregon mentioned your marque sanction successful the contented instantly surrounding a nexus to your site.

This is important to quantify due to the fact that the much your marque sanction gets repeated, the much apt audiences volition beryllium to callback it.

Remember, you tin bounds your investigation to “Best links”, arsenic above, truthful you’re focusing connected the mentions that truly count.

Tracking however your marque anchors turn implicit clip volition springiness you a amended thought of however your marque consciousness is growing.

You whitethorn besides privation to enactment retired your brand anchors arsenic a percent of your full anchors, and way however that changes.

For instance, close present astatine Ahrefs we person 22,072 “brand name” anchors, and 96,640 anchors overall, meaning that 23% of our links are driving overt marque awareness.

We tin cheque backmost connected this fig each month, and adjacent conception the investigation to absorption connected the uptake of circumstantial marque campaigns, similar the Ahrefs Podcast.

Measure marque consciousness successful presumption of referral traffic

If you privation to spot which 1 of your marque consciousness tactics person pushed users done the funnel, past it’s a bully thought to study connected referral traffic—this volition amusement you the fig of users that really made it backmost to your site.

You tin way this successful GA4, via the study I mentioned earlier on:

Acquisition → Traffic Acquisition: Session default transmission radical report.

Or you tin excavation into your postulation successful Ahrefs Web Analytics.

Just adhd a “Channel” filter for referral traffic.

Whether you’re paying a princely sum for a 30 2nd predetermination advertisement similar Calm…

…or doing a lo-fi marque spoof like smartphone shaper Nothing…

…the precise slightest you tin anticipation for is simply a spike successful societal media engagement pursuing your marque consciousness campaigns.

Here are immoderate metrics to look astatine erstwhile you’re assessing your marque consciousness connected social.

Social media mentions and sentiment maturation (earned)

You tin usage societal listening tools to scour for earned mentions of your brand, and acceptable up queries for your:

• Campaigns
• Products/services
• People
• Any different marque associations

Once you’ve tapped into brand-relevant conversations, you tin marque enactment of your full reach, and measurement however overmuch consciousness your marque has sparked successful the market.

For years, societal tools person been capable to analyse the connection of your marque mentions, and decree whether they’re positive, negative, oregon neutral successful sentiment. I ideate this benignant of investigation is lone going to get amended with advancements successful AI and LLMs.

If you privation to quantify the qualitative (read: “fluffier”) parts of your brand, past sentiment scores are different large metric to see successful your reporting.

Sentiment trends and scores successful Sprout Social

Sentiment scores successful SproutSocial

Companies are losing up to ~40% of their integrated traffic arsenic AI Overviews instrumentality implicit fashionable marque consciousness searches, similar FAQs and definitions.

But astatine the aforesaid time, AI overviews are sending more consciousness and postulation to definite (cited) brands.

It’s a akin communicative with AI chatbots: They’re encroaching connected integrated traffic, but what they instrumentality with 1 hand, they springiness with another—mentioning, recommending, and linking to brands successful lawsuit conversations.

Whatever you marque of them, these caller consciousness channels are inactive mostly untapped, and connection immense imaginable for brands that get in early.

Here’s however to summation marque consciousness in AI.

Track your ownership of AI overview keywords

Keeping a grip connected your consciousness contiguous means tracking your marque ownership of AI overviews. There’s a straightforward mode to bash this successful Ahrefs:

1. Head to the Organic Keywords report
2. Set a SERP diagnostic filter
3. Click “Where people ranks”
4. Select AI overview
5. Set your monthly date range

This volition amusement you which AI overview keywords you person picked up since past month, on with immoderate integrated postulation uplift.

Make a enactment of the full keywords each period (shown successful the presumption past chart) to measurement your AIO consciousness over time.

Track your AI /LLM referral traffic

To find retired however often your marque is cropping up successful AI conversations, you tin configure a study successful Ahrefs Web Analytics.

Just prime the “Channel” filter and take ”LLM” to measure your postulation from fashionable AI chatbots.

Pay adjacent attraction to the types of pages and contented getting cited. This volition springiness you a amended thought of the contented formats to treble down on.

For instance, we’re getting astir of our AI marque visibility from stats, tools, courses, and trend-based blogs, truthful we should astir apt make much of that contented to proceed turning up successful applicable AI conversations.

Measure your marque ownership of applicable topics

Large connection models make contented by calculating the statistical proximity betwixt topics and entities.

The much commonly topics look unneurotic successful grooming data, the much statistically important their connection, and the much apt an LLM is to notation those topics unneurotic successful a response.

Meaning, if you marque a conscious effort to align your marque with applicable topics, it’s much apt to harvest up alongside those topics in AI.

You tin way your marque alignment efforts successful Ahrefs by measuring co-mentions of your marque alongside cardinal topics.

Just caput to the Content Explorer and:

1. Do a hunt for your brand name
2. Check your full marque mentions
3. Do a boolean hunt for your marque sanction AND “topic”
4. Check the fig of taxable mentions

In this example, 3.2% of Patagonia’s marque mentions besides notation the keyword “sustainability”.

Monitoring these figures tin springiness you a coagulated consciousness of your wide topical authority.

Your branded keyword hunt measurement is simply a important indicator of your marque awareness.

According to our ain research, 45.7% of each searches made connected Google are branded. That’s astir fractional of all searches made connected Google.

If that isn’t the champion justification for tracking your branded keywords, I don’t cognize what is.

Google Trends tin assistance you visualize marque hunt measurement maturation and decline…

…but it doesn’t springiness you nonstop hunt volumes oregon maturation figures to study on. And it can’t foretell whether your marque consciousness volition beryllium sustained.

Here’s however you tin measurement those metrics successful Ahrefs.

Track your marque demand

Head to the Matching Terms study successful Keywords Explorer and hunt your marque name, positive immoderate misspellings.

At the caput of the report, you’ll spot immoderate top-line marque metrics including your overall…

• Number of branded keywords
• Brand hunt measurement (based connected the determination you searched in)
• Global marque hunt volume
• Growth complaint (3/6/12 month)
• Global maturation complaint (3/6/12 period [not pictured below])

And if you privation to anticipate demand, there’s information for that too. In the file section, conscionable deed “Growth forecast” to spot a 12-month hunt measurement inclination for each marque word connected your list.

Or alternatively, hunt your marque sanction successful Keywords Explorer, and cheque the overview leafage for a larger ocular forecast of your integrated marque demand…

This information volition amusement you the trajectory of your marque demand. Growing? Show it disconnected and repetition what works. Declining? Study it and see changing tack.

Whenever you privation to beryllium the occurrence of past marque campaigns, oregon get buy-in for future marque consciousness projects, this benignant of information is invaluable.

You tin besides usage it for backcasting: defining your marque hunt measurement goals and moving backwards from there. One evident mode to bash this would beryllium to repetition the investigation for your competitors, past exemplary your consciousness connected the 1 with the strongest marque maturation and maturation forecasts.

So, you tin present beryllium your consciousness campaigns are paying disconnected done marque hunt measurement growth—but however galore of those searches really effect successful postulation to your site?

To reply this, commencement tracking your branded keyword postulation and positions connected an ongoing basis—any uplift should correlate nicely with effectual marque awareness.

There’s a fewer ways you tin spell astir this successful Ahrefs.

Track branded hunt postulation vs. non-branded

In Site Explorer, deed the Overview report, acceptable your day range, and scroll down to the “Avg. branded vs. non-branded integrated traffic” and “Organic keywords by intent” reports.

Here, you’ll beryllium capable to way and grounds the integrated postulation you’re receiving for branded keywords, and however that’s changed implicit time. Bear successful caput that, for now, this study tracks your postulation for immoderate keyword successful our database that’s identified arsenic a brand, truthful that could beryllium your marque name—but it could besides beryllium your competitors’. This is thing we’re moving connected changing successful the adjacent future.

Measure your integrated postulation for circumstantial marque keywords

If you privation to constrictive your hunt postulation reporting to circumstantial marque consciousness keywords, here’s however to do that:

1. Head to the Top Pages study successful Ahrefs
2. Set a “Keyword” filter for your prime topics (I’ve tracked the Ahrefs marque sanction and immoderate misspellings successful this example)
3. Set your MoM date range
4. Track the inclination of your branded hunt traffic
5. Make enactment of the number of pages, total traffic, and total postulation growth/decline each month

Not everyone links! Journalists are notorious for withholding backlinks, and discussions volition beryllium had astir your marque that you’re not privy to if you’re lone checking your links.

Accounting for unlinked marque mentions successful your reporting is an implicit must—not lone tin it equate to a superior magnitude of marque awareness, you’ll find retired a batch much astir your assemblage successful the process—including their opinions, preferences, and demographics.

Plus, unlinked marque mentions are arsenic bully arsenic links successful the eyes of LLMs and AI.

According to research from Seer Interactive, links really show the weakest correlation of each communal SEO factors erstwhile it comes to LLM visibility.

Disregard marque mentions astatine your peril!

Track your marque mentions

In Content Explorer¹ bash an “Everywhere”² hunt for your marque name³, and enactment down the fig of pages⁴ that return. Keep clasp of that figure, until you update it the pursuing month—then enactment the fig of caller pages⁵.

You mightiness not expect nonstop income to effect from marque consciousness campaigns, but it does happen—and it’s worthy tracking.

You tin show this utilizing analytics/attribution tools similar Google Tag Manager and GA4.

Example of a conversion study successful GA4 for circumstantial conversion events. Image courtesy of Mauro Romanella

Example of a conversion study successful GA4 for circumstantial conversion events. Image courtesy of Mauro Romanella

Using Google Tag Manager, for example, you tin way erstwhile a idiosyncratic comes to your tract via a marque run link, clicks connected a converting CTA, loads a circumstantial URL fragment, oregon takes immoderate different enactment that infers/equates to a conversion. Then, you tin measurement each those events in GA4.

Once you person that information to hand, you tin cipher conversion rates—just disagreement conversions by the fig of full visitors.

For example, ideate the UK repast transportation marque Cook moving a “CookTok” run of look challenges connected TikTok. If 1,000 users sojourn the run landing leafage aft watching the videos, and 50 motion up for a subscription, the conversion complaint would beryllium 5% (50/1,000).

If you can’t marque lawsuit tracking work, past different alternate is tracking conversions and income summation during periods of precocious marque awareness, truthful you tin loosely link the dots betwixt consciousness and revenue.

While it’s existent that marque consciousness campaigns don’t ever neatly way backmost to conversions, if your conversion complaint is nonexistent implicit an extended play of time, you mightiness request to commencement troubleshooting—it could awesome that there’s thing incorrect with your marque messaging, UX, oregon tracking.

Final thoughts

Measuring marque consciousness successful 2025 isn’t conscionable possible—it’s a prerequisite.

These are 11 factual ways I deliberation you tin successfully beryllium your brand’s impact.

The adjacent measurement would beryllium to harvester these metrics to physique a implicit representation of your marque awareness.

Once you’ve brought everything together, you’ll person a overmuch amended knowing of however to increase your marque awareness.

I’m looking to make a Looker Studio dashboard of Ahrefs’ marque information for this precise reason. If you person immoderate astute techniques I’ve missed off, ping maine connected LinkedIn. I’m all ears!