The marketing KPIs to measure brand love

Download the Brand Love 2022 report

How do you measure brand love?

It’s great when consumers love your brand. It means they’ll be more loyal to you, be willing to spend more money on your products, and are 3x more likely to advocate for your brand. What’s not to love about that?

The difficulty is, effectively measuring that brand love. As it’s an emotional connection, it’s hard to create tangible brand KPI metrics that you can monitor. Making it hard for brands to understand how consumers feel about their products, and difficult to see how their marketing efforts directly impact that brand love.

That’s why Talkwalker developed its Brand Love Index.

The Brand Love Index

Talkwalker’s Brand Love Index is used to create a quantitative score that brands can use to see how well loved their brand is, and how they compare against their industry.

It is based on 3 scores -

• Brand passion
• Brand trust
• CSAT (Customer satisfaction)

These were scored on a scale of -5 to 5, with the 3 scores used to create the final marketing KPI. 

How was the Brand Love Index created?

The Brand Love Index was created using Talkwalker’s Consumer Intelligence Acceleration Platform™. We used it to track brand conversations across the internet, including social media posts, reviews, blogs, and forums, and used image recognition & video analytics, to identify how people were also interacting with brands in videos and pictures.

Overall, we looked at over 1,500 brands that were mentioned in over 2.6 billion conversations. This analysis revealed what consumers thought about these brands in their day-to-day lives, and identified the brands that consumers are loving right now.

Why is brand passion a key marketing KPI?

Consumers are no longer just looking for products they can use. They want products they can be passionate about. This means they have a genuine, emotional connection to the brand.

Passion can be a great loyalty driver. Why would you buy brand B or brand C, when you’re already passionate about brand A?

There are numerous ways that consumers can become passionate about a brand.

Nostalgic connections

You can build emotional connections to the brands that your family uses, as the products could remind you of them, or of the experiences you shared with them. This is the type of passion historical brands have built around them, leading to potentially decades of brand loyalty.

Societal/peer influence

This is quite common within the tech industry, as consumers get passionate about a particular brand based on what they think is the leading product. Apple vs. Android, Xbox vs. PlayStation, even Coke vs. Pepsi. This type of brand passion can be impacted by external influencers, as consumers jump onto brands that are more ‘now.’

Social responsibility connections

Consumers are increasingly passionate about improving the issues impacting the world, whether environmental, societal, or economical. If a brand aligns with these issues, and demonstrates genuine attempts to make a difference, this passion can connect these brands to consumers.

No wonder, a majority of our 50 most loved brands were actively focused on sustainability.

How to measure brand passion

To measure brand passion, we looked at brand conversations that demonstrated significant passion related words or phrases alongside the brand name. We also considered emojis and sentiment analysis (care of our Blue Silk AI™) to detect positive feelings towards a brand.

We also looked for mentions that were negatively passionate towards a brand (or as most people define it, mentions that demonstrated brand hate).

These mentions were used to create a Passion score from -5 to 5.

I'm watching this show on Netflix called Inventing Anna about a woman who cons everyone into believing she's a millionaire and I probably shouldn't be rooting for her but I LOVE this show!

— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) February 20, 2022

An example Tweet demonstrating brand passion

Why is brand trust an important marketing KPI?

In the age of disinformation, don’t underestimate the value of trust.

In fact, it’s more critical than ever. During the pandemic, with so much misinformation, and a lack of consistent clarity from credible sources, many consumers turned to the brands they loved for help.

And that trust paid off, with 90% of consumers saying they’d recommend a brand they trust to a friend.

The best way to build brand trust is through consistent, quality products, and messaging.

Get closer to consumers

Consumers trust brands that ‘get them.’ But this consumer connection isn’t created by fluke. Trusted brands listen to their consumers, and understand exactly what makes them tick. Whether that’s knowing the latest trends, or launching products that people want.

Transparency is key

The internet is a big open source of information. If consumers have a question about your brand, they will find an answer. It’s down to whether that answer comes from you or not.

Transparency helps build trust, as consumers know they can get the answers that matter to them from you. And win win, it helps prevent brand disinformation at the same time.

Be authentic

Consumers don’t want to be sold to. Instead, they want authentic conversations. That means no technobabble or marketing buzzwords. But a genuine empathy towards them and their problems.

How to measure brand trust

To measure brand trust, we analyzed conversations that related to trust or similar phrases alongside the brand name.

Again, we also looked for mentions that were distrustful towards a brand.

These mentions were used to create a Passion score from -5 to 5.

Got me one of those @SteelSeries headsets for review and have 0 complaints after spending three weeks with it. Trust me when I tell y’all - I highly recommend the Arctis Nova Pro Wireless headset.@137pm + @ONE37gg https://t.co/dBGXFjufsw

— Elton R. Jones (@theerj) June 23, 2022

An example of a consumer showing trust in their favorite brand

Why should brands monitor CSAT as a marketing KPI?

If the customer is royalty, customer service is the entourage that keeps them in power.

With so much competition available across the web, you have to offer the highest levels of customer support to stop your consumers jumping elsewhere. 81 percent of consumers believe they’re more likely to make further purchases if they had a positive customer service experience. Treat your customers right, and they will spend more.

Creating an amazing customer experience starts with the basics.

Fix problems before they become problematic

We all know the excitement of buying a new product. Preordering, the build-up of anticipation as you await for it to arrive. All the excitement. And then it arrives, and it’s faulty.

All that potential brand love vanishes in a puff of disappointment.

But there is a way to win that back. If there is an issue that you’re aware of, through consistent consumer listening, you could be proactive with ongoing issues.

Deal with the issue before the client has to. If you can proactively promote a solution, instead of waiting for customers to complain through your social channels, you’re more likely to win that brand love, and avoid bad reviews.

Plus, you could win more custom, as 70% of unhappy customers whose issues were resolved said they would purchase from that same company again.

Find the indirect complaints

Not everyone wants to directly complain about every issue they face. But they are willing to vent on social media when things go wrong.

Using social listening to monitor brand, product, or service mentions, can help you find these indirect complaints. Then you can either attempt to fix them by contacting the consumer (Carefully, as these could come across as a bit creepy.), or use the data to find broader issues and fix them.

Talk like your customers think

You can also listen to your consumers to understand how their minds work, helping you identify their pain points, the nuances of their communications, the topics they like to talk about, etc.

This can help you shape all your communications to be more aligned with their thoughts, making your brand more relevant, and improving the overall customer experience.

How to measure customer satisfaction

To create a customer satisfaction score, we analyzed social media posts and review data, to identify brand customers. We then used sentiment analysis plus review/star ratings, to determine the level of (dis)satisfaction.

These mentions were used to create a CSAT score from -5 to 5.

@AvivaUK amazing quick and easy thanks for sorting this out for me

— BlizzyTube (@BlizzyTUBE4Real) March 12, 2022

An example tweet showing the response to excellent customer service

Talkwalker’s Brand Love Benchmarking

Talkwalker’s Brand love benchmarking provides all these scores, as well as the Brand Love Index, to enable your brand to understand just how loved you are, in real time.

By comparing this with your competitors, you’ll be armed with the insights you need to build your brand love strategy, and enable a more customer-centric approach.

The Brand Love report

To find out more about brand love, and how it can benefit your brand, the full report is below. You’ll also discover the most loved brands of 2022, and how they’re connecting with their consumers to nurture that love.