Measuring marketing is becoming more and more important as the “intangible” balance sheet entry continues to grow. The AMA New York interviewed Tracy Chong, an economist working in the field of branding and co-founder of Strata Insights about brand economics and the importance of measuring and tracking so-called “intangibles.”
Here are Tracy’s key points:
- Brand economics is the study of all things that influence a brand’s performance so that you can accurately calculate how brand is contributing to the bottom line—like money ball for your brand.
- Accurately measuring brand is so important because we are in an intangible economy. Some 80% of the S&P is attributable to intangibles and brand is a large part of that.
- If you are not measuring brand properly, how can you plan and predict how your brand will perform?
- There are 4 pillars to brand economics:
1. Interactions that influence brand—and they go far beyond just marketing
2. Perceptions of how consumers, your channel, influencers and others feel about your brand
3. Behaviors that measure what people actually do instead of what they say they do
4. Linking financial performance back to the three pillars above, including looking at historical performance, the value of a customer, conversion rates, time to convert—all to better understand how brand is building value
The importance of intangibles is driving companies to take a comprehensive look at how brand touches every aspect of the business and how it measurably contributes to the bottom line. Brand economics helps you understand your business, forecast performance, and drive growth. And that’s brilliance in marketing.