"One of the ultimate excuses for not measuring [the impact of marketing efforts] is: 'Oh, that's just a branding campaign,'" says Avinash Kaushik in a post at the Occam's Razor blog. "Admit it, you've heard it. I suspect you've even used it liberally!"

But is it true? Not entirely, according to Kaushik, who argues that you can identify the desired outcomes of a campaign and use online tools to measure its success. "I ... believe that a massively under-appreciated opportunity exists to truly measure impact of branding campaigns online," he says.

Here are a few examples of outcomes a branding campaign might achieve:

• Attracting prospects and new customers. A successful branding campaign will likely drive traffic to your website and increase conversions. According to Kaushik, analyzing success is as simple as comparing the numbers of post-campaign visits with those from the previous month. "Ideally you'll measure the number prior to your branding campaign, say Feb 2009, and then you'll measure it again during your campaign, March 2009," he says. "See if you were able to get more traffic to arrive at your site, and if they were Existing Visitors or New Visitors."
• Destroying your competition. Perhaps you want to improve your image by criticizing a rival, á la Apple's sniffy ads about PC incompetence. "The first thing you want to measure," he notes, "is how much 'share of voice' you have 'stolen' from your competitor." If search engine queries on your company have gone up—particular if at the expense of your competition's ranking—you have some solid evidence that a branding campaign has been effective.

The Po!nt: Don't assume you cannot measure the success of a branding campaign—you just have to find the right way to do it.

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