What brand health metrics would you track to assess whether a brand is getting stronger in the market, and why is it important to distinguish between leading and lagging indicators when making brand investment decisions?

Situation

As a brand manager for a regional coffee brand, we were facing stagnant market share despite heavy advertising. I needed to evaluate whether our brand was actually strengthening or just wasting spend.

Task

My task was to identify which brand health metrics would give a true picture of our brand's trajectory and to use those insights to reallocate our marketing budget effectively.

Action

I started by defining our key leading indicators: unprompted brand awareness, ad recall, and share of voice. I also tracked lagging indicators like market share, volume growth, and Net Promoter Score. I set up a monthly tracking dashboard with our research vendor. When I saw that our share of voice was growing but market share was flat, I dug deeper and found that our awareness was high but consideration was low. So I recommended shifting investment from broad-reach TV to targeted digital content that communicated product benefits, aiming to improve our consideration scores. I also monitored NPS to see if the shift improved loyalty.

Result

Within two quarters, our consideration score increased by 12 percentage points, and six months later, market share grew by 2 points. The dashboard now guides our quarterly planning, helping us spot early signs of brand weakness before sales drop.