With trends changing overnight and new brands popping up everywhere, competition isn’t just about price, product features, or service anymore. It’s about perception. What people think about your brand decides whether they’ll buy, recommend, or scroll right past you. That’s why brand health tracking has gone from a nice-to-have to an absolute must-have for marketers.
What Is Brand Health Tracking?
Brand health tracking means keeping a pulse on how your brand lives in people’s minds. It’s not about sales figures or vanity metrics like social media likes. It’s about whether people know you, consider you, prefer you, stay loyal to you, and how those perceptions shift over time.
Think of it like a health check-up for your brand. Are people aware of you? Do they trust you? Would they buy again? The answers change constantly, which is why ongoing tracking matters more than a once-a-year survey..
These aren’t just marketing numbers; they’re business-critical signals. In 2025, with consumer behavior shifting faster than ever, tracking brand health regularly gives you a read not only on today’s performance but also where your brand is headed tomorrow.
Why It Matters Now More Than Ever
As consumer sentiment shifts fast, one product misstep, a tone-deaf ad, or even a competitor’s smart move can reshape your brand’s perception overnight. The brands that thrive are the ones that listen continuously, not scrambling after the damage is done.
Here’s why brand health tracking matters in 2025 and beyond:
- Quicker responsiveness: Regular insights let you spot trends early and fix issues before they become PR problems.
- Smarter decisions: It takes the guesswork out. Leadership can back strategy with real, reliable data instead of gut feel.
- Customer-driven growth: Knowing what consumers actually think helps you create experiences that meet real expectations, not assumptions.
- Stronger brand equity: Ongoing tracking highlights slow declines in trust or loyalty, giving you time to adjust before revenue takes a hit.
Metrics That Matter in Brand Health Tracking
Most companies track a familiar set of signals to understand brand health. The mix varies, but a few staples always come up:
- Awareness: Do people know your brand exists?
- Consideration: When they think about buying, are you in the mix?
- Preference: Do they actually choose you over competitors?
- Loyalty: Will they come back again and again?
- Sentiment: Do people feel positively, negatively, or neutrally when they talk about your brand?
Tracking these metrics over time, instead of in one-off surveys, is what separates gut instinct from hard data. The real value comes from spotting movement: if awareness is up but preference is flat, you know you’ve got a positioning issue. If loyalty is dipping, it’s a warning sign before churn shows up in sales.
The Risks of Not Tracking Brand Health
For many marketers, the real challenge isn’t understanding brand health tracking, it’s realizing what happens without it. Here’s what’s at stake:
- Wasted spend: Campaigns run, budgets get used, but nobody can prove whether they moved the needle on perception or loyalty.
- Blind spots: Small dips in trust or preference often go unnoticed until sales are already sliding.
- Reactive mode: By the time negative sentiment shows up in reviews or social feeds, you’re playing catch-up instead of leading.
- Lost advantage: If competitors are tracking monthly while you’re doing it once a year, they’re making faster, smarter decisions than you.
Forrester’s 2025 Total Experience study shows that many brands are already failing to deliver on their brand promise. In industries like health insurance, declining customer experience and brand experience scores reveal that perception gaps appear well before revenue takes a hit.
Brand health tracking isn’t about reporting for reporting’s sake. It’s about protecting your marketing investment and staying ahead of change.
Real-world example: Edgard & Cooper
It’s one thing to talk about the value of brand health tracking. It’s another to see how it plays out.
Take Edgard & Cooper, a fast-growing pet food brand in Europe. Competing in a crowded, high-growth category, they needed a way to punch above their weight. Their small Consumer & Market Insights (CMI) team wanted the flexibility to run everything from quick-turn ad hoc studies to a multi-country brand tracker, all without slowing down decision-making.
That’s where Dynata came in. Since 2019, Edgard & Cooper has used Dynata to scale their insights function through three key strengths:
- Flexibility: running both quick ad-hoc studies and deep quarterly trackers across seven markets.
- Reach: tapping into Dynata’s global panel network for 80,000+ survey responses to date.
- Speed: turning projects around in as little as two business days.
The result? Their team can act bigger than their size, feeding insights directly into brand strategy. That agility even helped Edgard & Cooper refine packaging, and that work that went on to win a global Pentawards Silver in 2023.
A Competitive Edge You Can’t Afford to Miss
The next few years will only make brand health tracking more critical. With third-party cookies fading, privacy laws tightening, and consumer expectations shifting faster than ever, brands need a reliable way to understand what people truly think. Investors and boards are also putting more weight on brand equity, not just quarterly sales.
Success in 2025 isn’t about running one survey and calling it a day. The brands that thrive are the ones paying attention all the time and using what they learn to adapt. That’s why continuous brand health tracking has moved from a marketing project to a business necessity.
Think about your biggest competitor. If they’re tracking brand health every month while you’re checking it once a year, they’re already ahead. They’ll spot dips in sentiment before you do. They’ll double down on what’s working while you’re still guessing.
If you’re not tracking, you’re reacting. And in 2025, reacting late can mean lost share, wasted spend, and leadership questioning your strategy.
Brand health tracking isn’t a trend, it’s the standard. It’s how modern brands stay close to their audience, adapt to change, and defend their marketing investment with confidence. In a crowded, fast-moving marketplace and economic climate, brand health tracking is your competitive edge. The question is: are you using it?
Brand Health Tracking FAQ
How do I do a brand health check?
Start with surveys that measure awareness, perception, and loyalty. Then repeat them at regular intervals (quarterly or monthly, not yearly) so you can see change over time.
What’s the difference between brand health tracking and brand lift?
Brand lift is usually tied to a specific campaign: Did this ad move the needle? Brand health tracking is ongoing: How is the brand doing overall, and how is it changing?
How often should I track brand health?
At least quarterly. But in fast-moving categories, like tech, consumer goods, or media, monthly tracking gives you a sharper edge.
How do I convince leadership it’s worth the investment?
Frame it in business terms: tracking tells you whether marketing spend is protecting and growing brand equity. Without it, you’re asking the CFO to trust “gut feel,” and that’s a tough sell.
What’s the ROI of brand health tracking?
The ROI comes from reducing wasted spend and catching issues early. Spotting a dip in loyalty six months sooner can save millions in lost revenue and give you time to fix it before competitors capitalize.