Measuring Brand Awareness

Attribution is overrated. Incrementality is what actually matters Every new-age brand wants to know what’s working. Meta ROAS is looking good. CAC is steady. Revenue is growing But here’s the truth: Your Meta ad might get the conversion. But did it cause the conversion? That’s the difference between attribution and incrementality. Most dashboards, attribution tools, and agency reports stop at attribution. But if you’re a brand selling across Amazon, Flipkart, GT, MT, Q-com, and D2C—pure attribution will always lie to you Because the sale might happen on Amazon. But it might have been nudged by a Meta video or a YouTube bumper ad 4 days ago. You don’t need a full-blown Marketing Mix Model to get started. There are simpler, street-smart ways to directionally understand what’s working—and what’s not. Here are 4 that have worked for us at Atomberg: 1. Geo Split Testing Pick two similar markets. Run campaigns in one. Don’t run in the other. Then track: • Branded search volume • Sell-through on marketplaces • Secondary sales from GT counters If the test market moves faster than the control, you’re seeing true lift. That’s incrementality. 2. First-Time Buyer Growth vs Returning Buyer Growth Track whether your growth is coming from first-time buyers or repeats. If your campaigns are just bringing back old customers—you’re not creating net new demand. But if there’s a spike in new buyers across Amazon, Flipkart, D2C—your campaigns are likely working at an incremental level 3. Paid Traffic vs Organic Trend Lines If paid traffic, clicks and spends are going up—but your organic sales or branded search isn’t moving—you’re likely just harvesting demand that already existed. But if organic lifts alongside paid—your ads are creating interest. Not just closing it. Directionally, this is one of the simplest sanity checks most teams ignore. 4. Channel Crossover + Offline Signal Mapping Your Meta ad may not show up in last-click attribution. But it might have nudged the consumer to visit your store or buy on Amazon. You can detect this through: • Post-purchase surveys (Where did you first hear about us?) • Branded search + store footfall spikes in campaign-active cities • And most powerfully—offline signals passed back to Meta At Atomberg, we pass back data from installations and warranty registrations—including pincode and purchase timelines Sometimes, we’re even able to identify this at a unique customer level through their cookies for warranty registration This has helped us understand true incrementality of perf marketing campaigns even for offline sales If you’re only measuring ROAS, you might scale what’s only taking credit for sale about to happen anyway If you chase incrementality, you’ll scale what’s working. For more details, read the full post- link in first comment.

Everyone's freaking out about GEO, LLMO, and AEO. After 7 months of running tests across tons of sites… I can tell you this: It's all built on SEO fundamentals. The same principles that rank you on Google also get you cited in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. So before you buy into shiny new tactics that promise “AI visibility”…here's what actually moves the needle: 1. Trust Signals AI tools pull from review platforms to assess business credibility and expertise. Build trust signals in the right places: - Local businesses: prioritize Google Business Profile reviews and responses - SaaS companies: maintain strong G2 and Capterra profiles  - Ecommerce: focus on Trustpilot or industry-specific review platforms - Respond to reviews professionally and keep profiles updated 2. Document Structure LLMs love well-structured documents. Instead of optimizing just for human readers, structure content for AI platforms too: - Add company context throughout documents. Instead of "our latest update," write "Acme Corp's Q4 2024 update" - Use clear headings and comprehensive sections that can stand alone - Include key facts in multiple formats (inline text, bulleted lists, data tables) 3. Link Building for Relevance Quality and topical relevance matter more than quantity for AI visibility. Focus your link building efforts: - Target industry-relevant sites where your brand mention makes logical sense - Pursue guest posts and collaborations within your industry - Don't ignore nofollow links from high-authority sites in your niche - Seek brand mentions even without direct links. (the mention itself carries weight) Avoid completely unrelated sites. 4. Topical Authority Still Rules LLMs are trained on the same web content that Google indexes. The more deep, high-quality content you publish around your niche, the more AI systems recognize you as the go-to source, the more you get mentioned. Take out the trash. Delete random blog posts about topics unrelated to your business. They're actually hurting your AI visibility. 5. Be everywhere LLMs crawl Repurpose your content across Reddit, Medium, LinkedIn, and YouTube. These platforms get crawled heavily by AI, and showing up on them regularly builds brand visibility. LLMs love patterns. The more places they see you, the more they assume you’re an authority. 6. Technical setup - Use HTML-driven pages - Add schema markup - Clean site architecture (no page more than 3 clicks from homepage) - Ensure your critical content loads server-side (most AI crawlers don't render JavaScript) 7. Traditional Search Feeds AI Most AI tools use Bing or Google's index for real-time data. Better search rankings directly improve AI visibility.

Every marketing team should do this simple test. At random, ask 100 of your existing customers to describe your product in their own words. No leading the witness. Then look at how you describe your product on your site. Don’t dismiss obvious differences by telling yourself, “They basically mean the same thing we do.” Really look at the specific words. Really consider exactly what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. Compare that directly with the words you’re using, the descriptions you’re presenting, the picture you’re painting. Then stare at the Grand Canyon.

Most companies think they’re great at storytelling. That is, until they look at this… We recently created a framework called the Storytelling Maturity Scale. It rates your organization from 1 to 5 based on how well your teams can tell stories that grab attention and move people to action (from marketing and sales to internal communications). Some leaders are shocked to find out they’re a 2 out of 5… They think their teams are great at storytelling because they’ve gone through training, have an overarching brand narrative they reference, and know how important this skill is to develop. But since “storytelling” can be so hard to measure, leadership doesn’t really know how good their teams are or in what specific areas they need to improve. The Storytelling Maturity Scale changes that. In about 5 minutes, it scores your organization on one of five levels and shows you exactly what to fix: Level 1 - Non-existent: Storytelling isn’t on anyone’s radar. You’re marketing features instead of outcomes, your sales calls focus on closing rather than helping, and customers feel like numbers in a quota instead of humans with problems you can solve. Level 2 - Emerging: You know storytelling matters, but it’s inconsistent. You might have a brand narrative document somewhere, but marketing tells one version, sales tells another, and customers still can’t articulate how you actually help them. Level 3 - Integrated: Storytelling is becoming part of how your teams work. Marketing, sales, and leadership are telling a more consistent story. Product development evaluates features based on customer outcomes, and sales conversations focus on solving problems rather than pushing specs. Level 4 - Systemic: Storytelling is built into your processes and culture. You have a centralized story library, people across your organization actively hunt for customer stories they can use, and you’re tracking which narratives actually drive results. Level 5 - Transformative: Your narrative has become a competitive advantage. You’re shaping how your industry thinks, and competitors have to position against your story, not just your features. Most organizations land somewhere between a 2 and a 3. Which means there’s a lot of room to grow, and a lot of revenue is being left on the table. Take the free assessment to figure out where your organization stands when it comes to storytelling maturity (and get specific steps you can take to improve). Link in the comments. #BusinessStorytelling #BrandStrategy #SalesEnablement

Marketing has two big jobs, but we're usually judged on only one. Our job in marketing splits into two parts: Building mental availability: making sure people know who we are and remember us when they’re ready to buy. This is often called brand marketing. Activating demand: making sure that people who are ready to buy choose us. This is typically performance or demand marketing. Here’s the challenge — most of our metrics (MQLs, pipeline, revenue) are tied to demand activation. But brand and demand aren’t separate – they work together. Still, they behave differently and aren’t always easy to measure in the same way. Brand is like staying in shape. You go to the gym, eat healthy, and take care of yourself. You don’t always see instant results, but over time, your body gets stronger. → In marketing terms: We want more people to know us, remember us, and think of us when they’re ready to buy. This is a long-term game. Demand activation is like showing up on race day. You’ve trained for months, and now it’s time to perform. If you’re fit, you’ll likely do well. → In marketing terms: When someone’s ready to buy, our goal is to be easy to find and hard to ignore. Most of the time, our execs care about the race day numbers – leads, opps, deals. That’s fair, because those drive revenue. But if we don’t also take care of our brand (our fitness), performance eventually suffers. So what do we do? We need to measure both. Performance marketing already has clear metrics. But brand often feels fuzzy — hard to prove it’s working. That’s why Share of Search (SoS) is useful. It’s a quantifiable way to track how much people are searching for our brand compared to competitors. It acts like a “brand scoreboard”, so we can see how campaigns are moving the needle, even if the revenue impact comes later. So: Use performance metrics for activation (leads, opps, CAC, etc.) Use Share of Search as the north star for brand Run both in parallel, and know that each supports the other Two different motions. Two different metrics. One goal: revenue growth.

I spent most of the time on the road to Chubbies' IPO thinking “Brand” marketing was B.S. However, these 5 ideas changed that. They helped me gain confidence that: 1) Brand building is something modern consumer brands NEED to do 2) There IS a way to connect brand building to financial results 3) Doing so generates MORE PROFITS than direct response alone Cliffs notes on the 5 ideas and what you can do about it: IDEA 1: The 95/5 Rule EXPERT: John Dawes; Ehrenberg-Bass Institute CONTENT 1: The 95:5 rule is the new 60:40 rule URL: https://lnkd.in/grVu7-KS POINTS: - Only 5% of buyers are in-market to buy right now. - Effective marketing increases the probability the brand comes to mind when the buyer goes in-market. ACTION: - Focus on the 95% - Make creative that gets remembered. IDEA 2: Physical and Mental Availability EXPERT: Byron Sharp; Ehrenberg Bass CONTENT: How do you measure 'How Brands Grow'? URL: https://lnkd.in/g3Rvswmu (translate 2 English) POINTS: - Brand growth comes from growing the following two things a) Mental availability: buyers think of the brand when in the market to buy. b) Physical availability: buyers can buy the brand when and where they’re ready. - When you build mental availability, you increase the likelihood people buy from you without being prompted by a conversion ad. ACTION: - Building mental availability is priority numero uno. IDEA 3: There's an optimal split btw Brand Marketing and Activation marketing to maximize profits EXPERT: Les Binet CONTENT: The Long and the Short of It: Balancing Short and Long-Term Marketing URL: https://lnkd.in/g2fbT3JT KEY POINTS: - Objective data support a 60/40 split of brand building & conversion as the ideal mix of base sales growth and sales spikes TOGETHER. - Brand and DR creative is v different. ACTION: - Determine if ur current split is ideal IDEA 4: Connecting Brand building to financial results is possible EXPERT: Dominique Hanssens & Prof. dr. Koen Pauwels at UCLA & Les Binet CONTENT: Consumer Attitude Metrics for Guiding Marketing Mix Decisions URL: https://lnkd.in/gXGm7YKa POINTS: - Measuring the financial impact of brand marketing is a 2 step process: 1) marketing activities impact consumer attitudes 2) consumer attitude changes lead to future revenue changes ACTION: - read 5 below IDEA 5: Measuring digital behaviors is the modern method for doing idea 4 EXPERT: James Hankins & Les Binet CONTENT: Share of Search - a new way to track brands advertising URL: https://lnkd.in/gm5CAGVU POINTS: - Digital behaviors like share of search predict future sales ACTION: - Identify the digital behaviors that lead to the largest future $ impact - Focus brand building on increasing those metrics And there you have it: How to turn Brand marketing from Bull Sh*t to Holy Sh*t

40% of AI’s “facts” come from this source. No, it’s not Google. It’s Reddit. A recent Semrush study found Reddit is the #1 source cited by large language models like ChatGPT and Perplexity. Get this, Over 40% of citations come from Reddit, compared to 26% from Wikipedia and 23% from YouTube. That means when customers ask AI assistants about the best moisturizer, protein powder, or pair of running shoes, the responses are often shaped by Reddit threads. For consumer brands, this is a turning point. Optimizing for Google or running TikTok ads is not enough. If your products are not part of the conversations happening in Reddit communities, you risk disappearing from AI-powered discovery. Here is what I recommend: 1. Monitor the subreddits where your category is active. 2. Join conversations with authentic, value-first responses to customer questions. 3. Encourage loyal users to share their experiences in community threads. 4. Treat Reddit as an influence channel on par with Google, Meta, and TikTok. The buyer journey is in conversations in communities that inform AI, which in turn informs your next customer. Reddit is already training the next generation of AI search. Ignore it, and you’re letting someone else write your brand story.

AI search and LLMs are rapidly changing how brands get discovered, yet most traditional SEO and PR monitoring tools aren’t built for this shift. I’ve seen a ton of posts recently asking: ❓How do you track brand visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini & AI Overviews? ❓Which tools actually work? ❓What’s just hype? So, I’ve gone deep into the AI search ecosystem and reviewed every single brand monitoring tool I could find — 15 in all — breaking them down by features, pricing, and who they’re best for. Here’s the full list from A-Z, with insights on each one 👇 📌 AiRankDejanAI – Dan Petrovic 📌 AmionAI 📌 AthenaHQ – Andrew Yan & Alan Yao 📌 BluefishAI – Alex Sherman 📌 BrandLightAI – Imri Marcus & Uri Gafni 📌 EvertuneAI – Brian Stempeck 📌 ModelMonitorAI – 📌 OtterlyAI – Thomas Peham, Josef Trauner, Klaus-M. Schremser 📌 PeecAI – Marius Meiners, Daniel Drabo, Tobias Siwonia 📌 QunoAI – Quan Tan , Jinhong Min 📌 RankScaleAI – Mathias Ptacek 📌 ShareOfModelAI – Jellyfish 📌 TryProfound – James Cadwallader, Dylan Babbs 📌 WaikayIO – Dixon Jones ✅ - Just launched today 🚀 congrats 🎉 📌 XFunnelAI – Beeri Amiel, Neri Bluman 👉 Full breakdown & my verdict on which tools are worth trying: https://lnkd.in/eGEJp3Yp 💬 Which tools have you tried? What’s been your experience? Are there any new ones I should check out? Let’s discuss in the comments! #AIsearch #BrandMonitoring #SEO #PR #AItools #Marketing #DigitalMarketing

I tracked which brands show up in ChatGPT answers and which ones don't, and what I found should change how you think about search entirely.   Google's top ten results used to account for 76% of ChatGPT citations. That number has dropped to 38%, and 90% of the pages AI cites now rank 21 or lower on Google.   In this video, I break down the 5 patterns we found across 4,308 prompts and 1,161 citations, covering everything from site structure and content freshness to entity association and platform differences across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Meta AI.   If you're investing in SEO and assuming it carries over into AI search automatically, it does not. Here's what actually works.

The challenge of brand visibility has taken on a new shape the age of AI search. It is not enough to rank well in search results any more. Increasingly, buyers are asking tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews direct questions and trusting the answers they get, without ever clicking a link. That changes the game for marketers and communicators - when someone asks an AI tool a question in your category, does your brand show up as the answer? Our latest research with LinkedIn shows that AI platforms often do not reward the loudest brands or the most polished marketing copy. Instead, they cite content that is credible and well structured. Some of the insights that shone through in this research:  ► AI favors content that directly answers real buyer questions ► Individual expert voices account for 77% of LLM citations rather than brands  ► Structured formats like guides, comparisons, lists, and frameworks perform especially well ► Content has to stay fresh as nearly half (48%) of all citations are less than three months old The overarching lesson here is that brand discoverability is becoming less about being found in a list of links, and more about being included in the answer itself. For PR and marketing professionals charged with solving this challenge, this all means your people, your expertise, and your content need to work together to consistently answer the questions your buyers are already asking AI tools:  ► How should they choose the right vendor? ► Which features and options really matter? ► What risks and drawbacks should they watch for? ► How can they get the best value from their choice? The brands that win in AI search will be the ones that make their expertise clear and their content structured.They don’t just show up in a list of links on a search results page — they show up as the answer to an important question. We break down the full findings, including the content formats, publishing strategies, and citation patterns driving visibility across AI platforms, in our new report with LinkedIn. Download the report here: https://lnkd.in/eF2fZXu3