When companies want to research their brand and how consumers (the market) feel about them, there are a lot of different types of brand research to do. At the beginning of brand research, especially with market research, a brand perception survey, can be the most helpful.
Projects like brand perception studies can be utilized in many touchpoints of the customer journey to capture a full picture of how target audiences describe your organization. Surveys are especially great if you work with an expert online survey agency that can help you create a custom project or questionnare.Surveys are especially great if you work with an expert online survey agency. Let’s not get too far ahead, for now we will tell you how to conduct brand perception surveys the way the experts do it.
Let’s not get too far ahead, for now we will tell you how to conduct brand perception surveys the way the experts do it.
First and foremost, brand perception illustrates the way consumers feel about an organization and its products or services. It reflects the emotions, trust, and associations people connect with your brand, plus influences their purchase decisions.
Therefore, brand perception surveys are a type of market research that gathers feedback from customers and non-customers to measure the overall sentiment of your brand. It’s usually done with carefully designed brand perception survey questions that companies can use to evaluate similar things to perception, like awareness, trust, sentiment, and reputation. This is also a great opportunity to measure your brand perception vs. competitors.
Brand perception surveys collect feedback from three critical stakeholders:
These three audiences should all share similar thoughts and feelings about your brand, products, or services. An online survey is the best tool to ensure they are aligned.
Brand perception isn’t created in a single day. It forms gradually through customer experiences, word-of-mouth, and interactions across different touchpoints. A single positive or negative encounter with your product or service can ripple out, shaping how entire audiences view your organization. For B2B and B2C organizations alike, perception directly impacts sales, loyalty, and long-term reputation.
That’s why a brand perception survey is so critical. It allows businesses to measure and track brand sentiment over time, uncovering both strengths to amplify and weaknesses to address. It also helps brands uncover gaps between how you want your brand to be seen and how it is actually perceived in the market.
Done regularly, a brand perception study gives leaders the data they need to improve brand perception and grow brand equity. Strong brand perception doesn’t just influence reputation, but also directly impacts sales, loyalty, and long-term profitability.
Running a brand perception survey requires a structured process that ensures the data you collect is reliable, actionable, and aligned with your business goals.
Depending on which market research methodology you want to utilize, either quantitative or qualitative, the process of conducting a brand perception study is different. The best kind is a brand perception survey (for either method!).
Below is the process our market research firm follows when conducting a brand perception survey for our clients.
When choosing a market research company for a brand perception survey, they will send a proposal that includes the project’s cost, timeline, and recommended approach.
Curious about how to write a market research RFP? Check out our free market research request-for-proposal template where we will guide you step by step on what information to include.
Once a proposal is signed a market research company, like Drive Research, will schedule a call with team members from your organization.
The goal of this kickoff meeting is to learn about your objectives for conducting a brand perception survey.
Understanding the objectives of any market research project is important because it helps frame the questions of a survey.
Without knowing what your team wants to learn from the research, a third party will have a hard time capturing insights that are more important to you.
After the kickoff meeting, our team will begin drafting the survey. Each survey is custom to our clients to assure their unique goals and objectives are met.
For instance, a brand perception survey for a hospital should not be identical to that of a restaurant.
In this stage, our market research company will send the brand perception survey draft to clients in a Word document.
Doing so allows our clients to share feedback or edits before the survey is programmed. Once both parties are satisfied with the questionnaire, Drive Research will begin programming and testing.
This is also where our data collection process starts, so we’re ensuring that the data received is high quality throughout each step.
Learn more online survey programming tips in this short video from our online survey company.
At this point, the brand perception survey is ready to launch.
First, our team sends the survey to a small sample of respondents to assure it is working as intended. It is important to Drive Research that we pay attention to detail no matter how small.
Shortly after the soft launch, the brand perception survey is moved to full fieldwork.
Our market research company recommends collecting at least 400 responses, but this can be altered depending on your project budget.
As responses start coming in, our experts begin cleaning the data. We remove duplicate responses, answers from survey bots, and those who are not offering honest responses.
It is important to clean responses as they are collected so that the goal number of responses is achieved in the given timeline.
For instance, if your team has paid for 500 survey responses, Drive Research will deliver 500 fully qualified responses.
Once fieldwork is closed, our market research company begins analyzing each survey question and drafting our findings.
Recommended Reading: Your Survey Fieldwork is Complete – Now What? Use These 9 Data Cleaning Tips
A market research report for a brand perception survey varies by client. The two popular reporting packages are a topline report and a comprehensive report.
A topline market research report shares the key findings of the study, while a comprehensive report is more thorough.
This type of reporting often includes an executive summary, a breakdown of the question by question results, an infographic, actionable recommendations for how to use the data, and more.
Learn more about the differences between a topline and a comprehensive market research report.
Lastly, Drive Research schedules a debrief meeting with our clients to discuss the results of the brand perception survey.
Oftentimes our project team reviews the market research report page by page. It is important for clients to have a full understanding of the data presented.
The design of your brand perception survey questionnaire will depend on the audience you’re studying. Each survey is designed with questions (written by us).
Below, our market research firm shares sample questions for each key group of stakeholders.
Sample Questions for Customers
Sample Questions for Target Audience
Sample Questions for Employees
Drive Research is a full-service market research company. Our team executes a variety of market research methodologies, including brand perception surveys, for organizations across the country. Contact Drive Research today.
