According to a Marketing Week survey, over 78% of participants consider brand engagement an important Return on Investment (ROI) metric, yet almost a third also say that brand engagement isn’t taken seriously by management at a company. This disconnect is likely because of the confusion surrounding what “engagement” really means and the many questions over its measurability.

Let’s look at what brand engagement is and then some ways that you can tangibly measure your engagement efforts.

What is Brand Engagement?

In the simplest of terms, brand engagement is the connection you form with your clients and prospects and how they interact with your brand. It involves building a brand, considering how that brand is perceived, and the communication between your brand and outside parties (to read all about brand engagement, check out our blog post here!). Some common descriptions of brand engagement include:

  • “A way to better understand how consumers view the brand and to understand their needs, pain points and emotions.”
  • “The process of building affinity and strengthening the relationship between customer and brand.”
  • “A consumer or potential consumer interacting with the brand with the potential to return and become a customer or brand advocate.”
  • “A mutually beneficial relationship between brand and consumer built on trust and perceived value.”

Depending on the marketing strategy, there are various ways to measure engagement. Let’s look at two major ways engagement can be measured, through analytics and through providing value.

Measurable Brand Engagement Analytics

We know that as financial advisors, you are likely a number-driven marketer and want tangible proof that your strategies are working. Although data isn’t everything, below are some ways you can objectively measure the ROI of brand engagement:

  • When sending out emails, you can look at your click-through and open rates and gauge your contacts’ engagement with your emails.
  • Through our Campaign system, you can also click on an individual contact and see what emails they have or haven’t opened. With this data, you can see what resonates with different lists or types of clients.
  • Social media offers Retweets, Favorites, Followers, and Likes to gauge the popularity of posts. The Big Three social media platforms – Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook – also offer analytics for your business page to further analyze what pieces have the highest engagement rates.
  • If you have integrated Google Analytics into your website, you can see how long people spend on your site, what pages are the most popular, and other valuable information (did you catch our whitepaper all about Google Analytics for financial advisors?). These numbers translate into engagement because you can see what happens when clients interact with your branded website.

While it might be tempting to only look at these numbers, there is another important way to measure engagement: providing value.

Proving Your Value With Brand Engagement

Depending on who you ask, the end goal of brand engagement differs. For some marketers, if it doesn’t result in money in the bank it’s not worth investing in. But for most, content marketing and branding is about building value and having others see you as a credible source, even if they don’t purchase right away.

Take Rafi Rodriguez, one of our clients, for example. Rafi enjoys learning about new marketing strategies and is always building up his arsenal of tools. One of those tools is blogging, which he receives a good level of engagement from. When he posts a new blog on social media or his website, he notices increased Likes and website traffic.

But, at the end of the day, this influx of engagement doesn’t necessarily impact Rafi’s bottom line, and that’s okay! As he says, “it’s important to get my name out there and I understand that when people are looking to invest, they will think of me.” This is the essence of content marketing and brand engagement. Provide value on an ongoing basis to remind clients of your skills and how you can help them.

Brand engagement is an evolving term in the marketing industry and the role it plays in your content strategy will change, as well. But understanding what the term means and two very different ways to measure it will enhance your marketing knowledge.