THE CHALLENGE
Measure the Success of Brand Awareness Campaigns
Brand awareness campaigns are critical to enrollment marketing—establishing a foundation for subsequent advertising. But they can be difficult to benchmark and measure. Some agencies will even say that it’s impossible to measure brand.
We know you actually can, with the right benchmarks in place.
5 Horizons partners with D’Amore McKim School of Business at Northeastern University to execute consistent brand campaigns and measure their effectiveness.
THE STRATEGY
Consistent, Recognizable Creative
The foremost goal for brand awareness campaigns is to reach key audiences with a voice, tone, and design that resonates with them and is memorable.
Strategic Placements
To break through a crowded, highly competitive Boston business school market, our integrated mass media campaign included animated ads at key transit stations, printed and digital signs at key business locations, audio ads on radio stations and podcasts, and animated ads in feeds, reels, and stories on social media.
These are hot spots for target audiences based on demographics and activity.
Because of our relationships with media companies, we were able to negotiate Space Available Bonus ad impressions, a major benefit of negotiating major media buys for our clients.
62M+
Estimated impressions from transit ads
2024-2025 fall and spring campaigns
2.1M
Reported impressions from signs at key business locations
2024 fall campaign
Measure Correlative Data
Unlike a lead generation digital marketing campaign, we know that brand awareness campaigns will not provide causal data. We won’t be able to draw a straight line from an ad impression to a user’s action like completing a form.
Instead, we look at correlative data: Did more prospects engage with DMSB during the time of our campaign compared with the same period during the previous year? This suggests that users saw or heard the brand campaign and later took action by searching for DMSB, visiting their website, or visiting their social media.
Because we have a long relationship with DMSB, we can measure effectiveness over time. Over the past three years, we’ve seen a direct increase in branded search website traffic and lead generation from our efforts.
THE RESULTS
17%
increase in web traffic 2021 to 2023
120%
increase in organic leads 2021 to 2023
126%
increase in direct leads 2021 to 2023
Brand campaigns are the foundation that should boost the results for all other campaigns. When you focus on consistent, recognizable design and messaging, your brand becomes familiar and well-known to your target audience. Some consumer brands are so well-known that they can run advertisements without even including their name and users will recognize it.
Higher education can be so cyclical that it’s easy to focus only on targeted, short-run campaigns focused on specific results. However, the benefits of investing in strong brand campaigns are evident. For D’Amore-McKim School of Business, spending on brand campaigns established them as a trustworthy institution and increased both organic and direct leads.
WORK WITH US
Want some help establishing benchmarks and measuring your brand?