Brand Visibility, a Key for Marketing

Within the world of digital marketing, brand visibility is one of the most widely used terms. This concept has a great importance that is not always understood, but... what if we told you that it is key for all those businesses that want to improve their results through online or offline marketing strategies?

It is a term that has to do with the degree of market introduction of a brand and its ability to be named first when a user is asked to say the first brand that comes to mind about something in particular. Therefore, visibility has is positive, since it is linked to an idea of prestige and appreciation.

Brand visibility definition

According to LinkedIn, this concept can be referred to as:
 

The process of creating an online brand or web presence that ultimately helps to create brand awareness. It can be defined as the frequency at which people see your brand in search results, on social media, email marketing and other online marketing channels. It is about engaging in active online marketing to help draw attention of your customers to your brand.
 

What is brand visibility

As you can see, this term refers to what a consumer feels about a particular brand. For example, if he or she remembers it, if its mere vision or mention produces a specific sensation, if it relates to positive memories of his own, if he or she has knowledge of its products, etc.
 

Visibility in marketing is also related to brand awareness, since it is the first dimension of brand knowledge and is formed by brand recall and recognition.
 

• Brand recall: it refers to the ability of consumers to remember a brand within a product category. That is, the consumer has to be able to mention a brand if he is told about a category of products.
   
• Brand recognition: it is related to the consumer's ability to confirm prior exposure to the brand when it is asked. In other words, the consumer has to be able to discriminate the brand among a list, confirming that he or she knows it in advance.

Brand visibility levels

According to branding expert David Aaker, there are four levels of visibility.
 

Dominant brand

In this first level, the consumer remembers only one brand within a product category. The clearest examples are Kleenex or Jell-O.
 

Top of Mind

This second level includes the first brand that the consumer thinks of when asked about a certain category of products. For example, if you were asked to say a fast food chain, a sportswear firm or a soft drink brand, you’d probably say McDonald's, Nike and Coca-Cola, right?
 

Spontaneous recall

This third level includes those marks which the consumer remembers when talking about a category of products or the needs which that category satisfies. For instance, if you were asked about travel-related brands, some of them would be Booking, TripAdvisor, Ryanair, etc.
 

Induced recall

In the last level the consumer can remember those brands after a previous exposure. An obvious example is the following: if you were asked to name mobile phone brands, you would surely mention first Apple and Samsung, but then you would remember others like Huawei, Xiaomi or BQ, among others.

3 tools to measure brand visibility

There are many ways to measure visibility within marketing. Luckily, we have selected three of the best for you.
 

How Sociable

How Sociable is a tool that gives very valuable information, since it measures the visibility of a brand in social networks, giving a score. Although it does not allow direct comparisons, it is possible to get information from competitors to compare them manually with your business.
 

Google Trends

Google Trends displays the most popular search terms from the recent past, as its graphs represent how often a search for a particular term is performed in various regions of the world and in different languages.
 

You can compare the volume of searches between two or more terms, as well as view news related to the search term, showing how events affect popularity.
 

Google Keyword Planner

Although Google's Keyword Planner was originally designed to select keywords for a SEO strategy, this tool helps to measure visibility thanks to information such as the number of local searches, suggested terms or type of match, among others.

In short, having a high brand visibility is very important, since consumers will relate our business very quickly to certain questions. It goes without saying that it is a key element of a marketing strategy.