Pre and Post Campaign Research
If you plan to go out with a media campaign, advertisement, or participate in any other action which you hope to increase knowledge of your brand/ product, then it makes sense to have some kind of benchmarking in place so that you can see the level of effectiveness you’ve had. This is where pre and post campaign research comes in.
Samples for this type of research are typically either nationally representative (if you have a very wide audience), or can be users of specific products e.g. those who purchase make-up, home technology, or gardening products to name but a few examples. The demographic should remain the same across both the pre- and post-test, but the respondents should usually be independent groups (if there is overlap this should be clear in the results and differentiated).
The “pre-test” happens just before your campaign takes place, to get a gauge on current awareness of and sentiment for your brand/ product. Some useful question topic to ask respondents are:
- Brand awareness – how many people have heard of your brand? It can also be useful to test awareness alongside other leading brands in your sector, to see how you match up against the competition
- Brand perception – which associations people have with your brand (for example this could be quality, value, trustworthiness, if they align ethically)
- Brand uptake – have respondents used your brand already, and if so how much do they use it?
- Net Promotor Score (NPS) – NPS measures ask how likely users are to recommend your product or service to others
The “post-test” would then take place after your campaign has run, repeating whichever questions were asked in the pre-test to see how things have changed. As well as the original questions, it may be relevant to ask things like:
- Ad recall – if you ran an advertisement, it’s of course useful to see how many people saw it and where they saw it (TV vs. social media for example)
- Campaign awareness – if you ran a media campaign rather than an advert, how many people saw this or heard about it, and where did they hear?
By using pre and post campaign research, you can then see among those who did see your advert/ media campaign, if the awareness of and perceptions of your brand have changed, to track the impact of your efforts.
Similar methods can be employed in the longer term to look at brand tracking over time. Explore one of OnePoll’s brand tracking studies Brand Tracker – British Transport Police – OnePoll Market Research
Examples of pre/ post testing OnePoll has done are Advertising Campaign Research – Food Retail – OnePoll