• Table of Contents

  • How to Track Brand Growth Without a Billboard Budget
  • Let’s Get One Thing Straight: Brand ≠ Buzz
  • The Billboard Budget Myth
  • Start With the Right Questions
  • Framework: The Brand Growth Stack
  • 1. Brand Awareness (But the Right Kind)
  • 2. Brand Sentiment
  • 3. Share of Search
  • 4. Brand Engagement
  • 5. Brand Advocacy
  • Case Study: The Challenger Brand That Outsmarted the Giants
  • Truth Bomb
  • Stop Measuring What Doesn’t Matter

How to Track Brand Growth Without a Billboard Budget

You don’t need a Times Square billboard to measure brand growth. In fact, if you’re still chasing vanity metrics and praying for a viral moment, you’re doing it wrong. Here’s how to track real brand momentum—without burning your budget on big, shiny distractions.

Let’s Get One Thing Straight: Brand ≠ Buzz

Somewhere along the way, marketers started confusing brand growth with noise. A trending hashtag, a flashy campaign, or a celebrity endorsement might get you a spike in attention—but that’s not brand growth. That’s brand sugar. It spikes, crashes, and leaves you wondering what just happened.

Real brand growth is sustainable. It’s measurable. And it doesn’t require a Super Bowl ad or a six-figure influencer deal. It requires strategy, consistency, and a willingness to measure what actually matters.

The Billboard Budget Myth

Let’s kill the myth that you need a massive budget to build a brand. You don’t. What you need is clarity, creativity, and the right metrics. The truth is, most brands with billboard budgets are still flying blind when it comes to tracking brand growth. They’re measuring impressions, not impact.

So how do you track brand growth without a billboard budget? You start by asking better questions.

Start With the Right Questions

• Is our brand being remembered or just seen?
• Are we building trust or just awareness?
• Are we creating advocates or just followers?

These questions shift your focus from surface-level metrics to meaningful indicators of brand health. And that’s where the magic happens.

Framework: The Brand Growth Stack

Here’s a framework we use at MarkCMO to track brand growth without burning cash on billboards:

1. Brand Awareness (But the Right Kind)

Forget reach. Focus on recall. Can people remember your brand unprompted? That’s aided vs. unaided awareness—and it’s a game-changer.

• Use brand lift studies to measure unaided recall
• Track branded search volume over time
• Monitor direct traffic growth in Google Analytics

2. Brand Sentiment

Are people talking about your brand—and are they saying the right things? Sentiment analysis tools like Brandwatch or Talkwalker can help you track this at scale.

• Monitor social mentions and tone
• Track NPS (Net Promoter Score) over time
• Use surveys to gauge emotional connection

3. Share of Search

This is the secret weapon of modern brand tracking. Coined by Les Binet, share of search is a proxy for market share—and it’s free to track.

• Use Google Trends to compare your brand vs. competitors
• Track branded keyword growth in SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush
• Correlate search volume with sales over time

4. Brand Engagement

Engagement isn’t just likes and shares. It’s time spent, content consumed, and actions taken.

• Track average session duration on your site
• Monitor email open and click-through rates
• Measure content completion rates (videos, articles, etc.)

5. Brand Advocacy

Are people recommending your brand? That’s the holy grail of brand growth.

• Track referral traffic and word-of-mouth mentions
• Use tools like G2 or Capterra to monitor reviews
• Measure user-generated content and community engagement

Case Study: The Challenger Brand That Outsmarted the Giants

One of our clients, a B2B SaaS startup, had a marketing budget smaller than most enterprise coffee tabs. But they grew their brand awareness by 300% in 12 months—without a single paid ad.

How? They focused on:

• Publishing high-value content that ranked for key industry terms
• Building a referral program that turned customers into evangelists
• Tracking share of search to outmaneuver bigger competitors

The result? They became the most searched brand in their category—without ever buying a billboard.

Truth Bomb

If you can’t measure it, you didn’t build it. You just rented attention.

Stop Measuring What Doesn’t Matter

Impressions are not impact. Followers are not fans. And reach is not recall. If your brand tracking dashboard looks like a social media manager’s dream board, it’s time to upgrade your metrics.

Here’s what to stop tracking:

• Vanity metrics like follower count and post likes
• One-off campaign spikes with no long-term lift
• “Brand awareness” that doesn’t translate to action