Brand Perception: What It Is and How To Improve It

Learn how to improve your brand perception in order to increase customer loyalty.

Regardless of how secure you think your company's brand is, there can be a gap between how you perceive your organization and your customer's perception of your brand. 

Brand perception is hard to manage because it can be difficult to control what your target audience reads, watches, and experiences in connection with your company and products. But it's a crucial thing to monitor—40% of consumers stop buying from brands because they don't trust the company that owns the brand.^[1]

On the other hand, when a business succeeds in improving its brand perception, it earns the respect and trust of customers. As a result, they're more likely to reward your brand with loyalty, promotion amongst their friends, family, and social media followers, and repeat business. 

If you're a small to midsize business (SMB) leader looking for ways to improve your overall brand perception, this guide will help you hone in on how you want to craft your brand perception and improve it to earn and retain more customers.

What is brand perception?

Brand perception is how consumers and the public see your brand. People form these opinions based on interactions they have with your brand personally, as well as how they perceive what you do and how you do it.

Brand perception is also affected by the ethical choices your business makes because people would often prefer to do business with a company that prioritizes the health and well-being of others. For example, when news broke about Nike using sweatshops to make some of its products, people around the world decided to boycott the athletic wear giant.^[2]

This underscores the fact that brand perception often has little to do with the quality or reliability of the product a company produces.

Brand perception initiatives can take many forms. You can leverage storytelling and brand messaging, foster positive customer experiences, boost the quality of products or services, or engage in social media brand management—all of which can improve brand perception.

Social media brand management is a priority for many business leaders. At the same time, a Capterra survey found that 38% of marketers feel their company isn't doing well when it comes to identifying and responding to misleading brand information on social media. 

Brand image vs. brand perception

Even though brand perception and brand image both depend on the subjective thoughts of customers, they're very different. Brand image is derived more from the visual and audio elements of a company's marketing strategy, such as the fonts, colors, logos, music, and jingles. 

For example, the amusement park chain Six Flags features a simple yet playful font and roller-coaster in its logo. It connotes a brand image of meandering freedom and fun.

At the same time, Six Flags' brand perception may not be as carefree and comforting, especially back in 2021 when four attractions had to be shut down due to safety concerns.^[3] During the six weeks when the New Jersey park experienced safety incidents, the company's stock dropped over 13%, slipping from $45.93 per share to $39.74.^[4]

While the company's brand image hadn't changed, its brand perception did, and this may have caused many investors to offload their shares.

Why is brand perception important?

The Six Flags incident underscores the importance of brand perception: It can directly influence your company's bottom line and share value.

A positive brand perception can work to your advantage. As a result of a well-engineered brand experience, many companies enjoy:

• Greater credibility amongst customers and investors

• The freedom to charge a premium for services

For example, by honing in on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues, you can set yourself apart from the big corporations that often get accusatory fingers pointed their way.

What influences brand perception?

Brand perception results from a stew of factors that, when mixed just right, can leave a great taste in your target market's mouths. They include:

• The quality and speed of customer service

• Reputational factors, such as how you manage ethical issues and ESG concerns

• The quality of your products or services

• The authenticity of your brand and its executives

• Whether your marketing aligns with customer experiences

These factors reveal a few common threads: trust, dependability, and genuine concern for customers and others. By focusing on these elements, you can turn your brand perception into one of your most effective assets.

4 ways to measure brand perception

How do you measure brand perception? According to Pink Lily's Chris Gerbig, "It's a combination of all the different areas of business that speak to customers or interact with customers and getting that vibe."^[5]

"If we treat customers well, and we ship fast, and we give good quality service and low prices and customers stay engaged on social media—all the different metrics that we track—as long as they're improving or progressing, we know that the brand health is OK."

Chris Gerbig

co-founder and president, Pink Lily

Of course, the metrics you use will depend on your business. And while measuring brand perception may not be as straightforward as gauging revenue or accounts receivable, using the following four measures, you can generate an accurate accounting of your brand perception.

1. Talk to customers

By touching base with customers in multiple channels, you can gain an accurate view of your brand;s perception:

• Social media outlets

• In-store conversations

• Customer focus groups conducted by professional marketing firms

• AI-powered language learning models (LLMs) to analyze transcripts of interactions with customer service representatives

Even brief conversations can reveal trends regarding how customers perceive your company, its offering, and its support systems.

2. Conduct brand perception surveys

Brand perception surveys are effective because the data can be automatically analyzed post-collection. Within moments of receiving customer responses, you have quantified results you can use to design brand perception metrics to make more effective goals. Here are some options for conducting brand perception surveys:

• Surveys administered and collected on your website

• Surveys incorporated in the check-out process or elsewhere within your eCommerce flow

• Surveys administered at conferences or company-sponsored dinners

Many companies also reward customers for their brand perception insights, giving them discounts on products or access to gated material. Using these motivational tactics, you also demonstrate how seriously you take customer feedback, which can support a positive brand perception as well.

3. Leverage brand audits

Brand audits involve a systematic assessment of the health of your brand. They typically include interviewing stakeholders and performing competitive analysis—putting your brand head-to-head against your competition.

The data from brand audits can produce a broad picture of how your brand stacks up against others in your sector, as well as whether you're putting out the kind of messaging you need to.

4. Monitor social media

Monitoring social media can provide essential data when assessing your brand perception. This can be a crucial element in protecting your brand, especially because 49% of marketers have encountered fraudulent brand or company information on social media.

Social media monitoring software can make monitoring social media relatively straightforward by helping with

• Social sentiment analysis, which involves tools that monitor your mentions, conversations, and comments, using them to derive how people feel about your brand.

• Mention analysis, which focuses on the number of times your company gets mentioned over periods of time.

• Social engagement metrics, which show the extent to which people interact with your posts, forwarding, replying, and reposting them.

How to use insights from measurement to improve brand perception

Looking for ways to improve brand perception? The following steps can turn your brand perception measurements into action plans:

Analyze your social media data

Analyzing your social media quickly reveals action steps you can prioritize in the short term. For example, suppose your company chooses to react to what it views as an injustice using a short series of Twitter posts.

If customers and others start forwarding, liking, and commenting favorably on your posts, that may speak well of your brand perception.

Take note of customer feedback

Listening to customer feedback may involve making drastic changes. For example, let’s say you issue brand perception survey questions to customers, and they say they feel your products are of high quality but your customer service is lacking. To address this feedback, you can provide extra training for your service reps, which may include showing them the feedback received from customers.

By allowing customer feedback to power your action steps, this also underscores the value you put in customer sentiment with your service team.

Train and educate your staff

Training and educating your staff imbues a sense of shared responsibility in your company culture when it comes to brand perception. With this goal in mind, it's best to:

• Give your staff action steps complete with metrics they can use to self-assess their progress.

• Support staff who decide to educate themselves regarding ESG-related issues, perhaps by paying for courses and acknowledging those who've completed coursework or training.

Look for future opportunities

No matter the state of your brand perception at the moment, there's time to change. 

Future opportunities could involve:

• Making improvements to products and services in line with customer feedback.

• Openly engaging in social responsibility campaigns.

• Leveraging influencers that can support and advocate for your brand.

• Systematically improving customer experiences by planning more surveys and social media audits.

While it may take some time to turn around your brand perception, if your company uses the above tactics, you can put time on your side. A slow, gradual improvement in brand perception can kindle a long-lasting relationship with your customer base.

Take control of your company's brand perception

The tips above provide you with a methodical approach to improving brand perception. Instead of swinging blindly at the problem, you can use audits, social media, customer feedback, and surveys to gather data and then act on it.