What is brand health, and how do you measure it?
Brand health, in one paragraph
Brand health is how well a brand is performing against its own category on the measures that predict future demand, engagement, growth, audience scale, and consistency of output. It is relative by definition: the same engagement rate is excellent for one category and poor for another, so any brand health score is only worth reading alongside the set it was scored against.
The four brand health metrics we score
Every component below is a percentile against the brand's own category, not an absolute figure. A brand needs at least three measured peers in its category to be scored at all, and any component we have not measured is dropped from the average rather than filled with a default, so a partial score is visibly partial.
Score = the weighted mean of whichever components exist, renormalised to the weights actually used. Bands: 75+ strong, 50–74 healthy, 25–49 slipping, under 25 at risk. A score marked 3/4 was built from three of the four components. It can outrank a complete score, so read the marker before reading the number.
Live brand health check
Look up a brand →Brand health FAQ
What is brand health?
Brand health is how well a brand is performing against its own category on the measures that predict future demand, awareness, engagement, growth, and consistency. It is a relative measure by definition: a 0.8% engagement rate is healthy in one category and poor in another, so a brand health score means nothing without the set it is scored against.
What are the main brand health metrics?
On social specifically: engagement rate relative to category peers, follower growth over a known window, audience scale within the category, and posting consistency. Off social, brand health measurement usually adds unaided awareness, consideration, and net promoter score, all survey instruments, which move slowly and cost money. Social metrics are the fast-moving proxy.
How do you measure brand health?
Pick a competitive set you are genuinely judged against, measure the same metrics across all of them on the same schedule, and read each brand's position in the distribution rather than its raw number. The score below does exactly that: every component is a percentile against the brand's own category, weighted, with anything unmeasured dropped rather than guessed.
What is a brand health index?
A single composite number rolled up from several underlying metrics, used to track direction over time. Its usefulness depends entirely on whether the formula is published. An index whose weighting is secret cannot be argued with, which is a weakness dressed as authority, ours is written out in full above.
How often should you run a brand health check?
Continuously, if the inputs are automated. Quarterly is the common cadence because survey work is expensive, but social measures can be re-read daily, and the point of a health score is to notice a slide before it shows up in revenue.
What is a brand health report?
A periodic summary of where a brand sits against its competitive set on each health metric, and what moved since the last one. The useful ones lead with the components that changed rather than the headline score, because the headline number rarely tells you what to do.
The short definition → · How competitive benchmarking works →