3 Marketing Metrics for Measuring Market Awareness for IT Service Companies

To grow your IT services company, you need to look beyond lead generation to promote brand awareness. Search Engine Journal calls brand awareness the 5th Pillar of search engine optimization (SEO). Promoting brand awareness extends your company’s reach and helps you achieve longevity.  

Just as you track your pipeline and lead conversions, your IT services company needs to track market awareness through key performance indicators (KPIs). These metrics help you measure market awareness so you can continuously improve your performance. 

Here’s an overview of 3 key metrics you can use to track your IT service firm’s market awareness. 

1) Web Traffic 

Your IT service company’s website is a source for many key metrics related to market awareness. You can use analytics to examine organic, direct, and referral traffic to your website. Each type of traffic reflects a different level of knowledge of your brand. 

Tracking direct traffic to your website gives you a good indication of a high level of brand awareness. Direct traffic results from a prospect traveling to your website without conducting a Google search first, indicating that the visitor has previous knowledge of your company. Upward trends in direct traffic metrics show how your company’s brand awareness is growing. 

While tracking website traffic metrics, pay attention to the quality of the website visits as well as the quantity. For example, if you are looking at numbers of sessions, also notice how long visitors are spending on the site and whether they are interacting with the content. 

2) Branded Search 

Branded search metrics show how many people are searching for your company by name. High incidents of branded search mean prospects have prior knowledge of your company’s services and probably intend to buy them. Search Engine Journal notes that branded search reflects a higher intent to purchase and is more likely to result in a conversion. 

Instead of typing a keyword or long-tailed keyword into a search engine, these people are entering your company name directly into search, bypassing any competitor to reach your website directly. The search may include variations of your brand name as well as your brand name combined with other terms, such as services that you provide. 

Your company can track the volume of traffic that reaches your website over a certain span of time through branded searches that use various search engines. Trends in this metric can be used to understand the spread of brand awareness. 

3) Social Engagement 

Social media platforms are great places to reach target audience members while encouraging the spread of brand awareness. Your IT services firm can track engagement on social media by collecting metrics related to likes, comments, and shares. Social media engagement metrics include: 

• Reach 
• Impressions 
• Amplification Rate
• Click-Through Rate (CTR) 

By posting on social media, your company can encourage prospects to visit your website, read your thought-leadership pieces, and even convert into a lead. Keep track of attributions to learn how social media is contributing to the spread of brand awareness. 

Social media encourages market awareness by creating an environment where loyal customers become brand ambassadors, referring your company’s services to their followers. These referrals not only spread brand awareness but could also generate new customers.  

Focusing on Market Awareness 

Brand awareness and perception may seem like intangible qualities, but they can be made visible by tracking the right metrics. HubSpot states that, while brand awareness is difficult to measure, it can be measured quantitatively and qualitatively.  

When your IT services company uses quantitative market awareness metrics, you can set measurable and attainable goals for improvement. Qualitative metrics measure brand equity, in other words, the value of your brand. 

At TSL Marketing, we understand how important it is for your company to be recognized, known, and trusted. We specialize in helping managed service providers build awareness by developing agile and winning marketing strategies using the right mix of tactics, including website development, social media advertising, and SEO. Our MSP Growth experts will work with your company to track and analyze key metrics related to the spread of your brand awareness.

Find out more about how your IT services firm can use metrics to measure and track brand awareness. Schedule a meeting with one of TSL’s MSP Growth experts.