How To Measure Brand Awareness in B2B: From Abstract Concept to Measurable Metrics

Brand awareness has always been the unsung hero of marketing, but with buyers scrolling through new search result experiences and AI-generated answers, zero-click behavior is turning quality impressions at scale into gold. At the same time, erosion of brand trust, shrinking initial solution consideration sets, and declining ad performance are raising the stakes — making strong brand awareness not just a nice-to-have, but a competitive advantage. If you can’t earn the click, you had better make that impression unforgettable. The tricky part? Everyone knows B2B brand awareness matters — but it still feels like trying to herd cats when it comes to measuring it.

In B2B, building trust through brand awareness and authoritative content isn’t optional — it’s the gatekeeper to deals and revenue. A recent TrustRadius study found that a whopping 78–86% of enterprise buyers only consider brands they already know before they even begin research. If you’re not building visibility intertwined with credibility, your brand won’t even get a seat at the table.

There’s a widely accepted rule of thumb that a 60/40 split – 60% of marketing spend on brand, and 40% on performance or lead generation is ideal for growth (Report: Media in Focus, Les Binet and Peter Field). Yet in practice, most companies skew heavily toward performance marketing because it’s measurable, leaving brand awareness underfunded. The result is that budgets chase conversions from a limited pool of in-market prospects, instead of investing in brand to expand that pool in the first place – this is the issue we are aiming to remedy.

The real hurdle isn’t convincing anyone that brand awareness matters; it’s moving beyond gut feelings and vague assumptions to actually measure it. Sure, every marketing activity contributes to awareness in some way, but not all impressions are created equal. A banner ad targeted too broadly while someone doomscrolls is not the same as a thoughtful brand mention in an industry publication or a B2B influencer tagging your brand on LinkedIn. Modern growth marketing requires a shift to signal-led measurement, focusing on the right creative, in front of the right decision-makers, at the right time. It’s less about spraying impressions everywhere and more about stacking up relevant impressions that build trust with the people who actually influence deals.

Of course, there’s no single magic metric for measuring brand awareness in B2B, that would be too easy. Primary research and focus groups trying to understand unaided brand recall are either too expensive or too broad to be viable for most emerging brands. Instead, what we have are a series of proxy indicators that, when viewed together, tell the story of whether your brand is truly growing in visibility and credibility. That’s why we built a system: a structured way to track these signals, translate them into insights stakeholders can rally around, and show exactly where your awareness-building dollars are working hardest. 

Read ahead, and we’ll walk through exactly how to measure brand awareness in B2B, so you can move past marketing fluff and start proving how awareness is driving real growth.

The Firebrand Method for Measuring Brand Awareness in B2B

We’ve built a custom dashboard of 8 live charts designed to reveal whether your brand is actually growing in awareness. This system uses a set of proxy signals that, in aggregate, paint a picture of brand growth and highlight where more attention may be needed. These indicators align closely with the channels and tactics modern B2B brands are already investing in, making them both practical and actionable for guiding strategy to increase brand awareness. 

What makes this group of indicators different from other KPIs?

• Zeroes in on impressions, not clicks – engagement is measured as the next phase beyond awareness. Here, we measure the raw visibility that makes awareness possible in the first place.
• Puts organic first, with one paid check-in – because true brand growth shows up where audiences naturally discover and recall you, not just where you’ve paid to appear.
• Builds in competitor benchmarks – giving you context, baselines, and a view of how loud your voice is compared to both scrappy upstarts and industry giants.
• Adds sentiment analysis – because being seen is only half the battle; being positively perceived is what earns trust and credibility.
• Takes the long view (6–12 months) – awareness is a slow burn. Trends and trajectories tell the story far better than short-term spikes.

The Two Categories of Brand Awareness Measurement

Visibility

These metrics answer the basic but crucial question: How often is your brand showing up where your prospects spend their time? It’s the quantifiable reach of your brand in the digital market.

Social & Sentiment

This layer looks past simple visibility into how people are actually talking about you. It gauges the frequency, context, and emotional tone of mentions and conversations to show whether awareness is translating into trust, credibility, and recall.

Together, these pillars form a system that measures not just whether your brand is visible, but whether it’s respected and trusted enough to make the shortlist when decisions are on the line.

Now let’s get down to business!

In Practice: How to Measure Brand Awareness in B2B

Visibility

Direct Sessions

The first metric that serves as a proxy for demonstrating growth in brand awareness is Direct Sessions. This represents the total number of unique visits to your website from the “direct” channel in GA4 within a given timeframe. These occur when someone types your URL directly into their browser, clicks a bookmark, or lands on your site from an untracked source such as an email, text message, or internal link.

A steady increase in direct sessions is a strong indicator of brand recognition and recall as it shows people already know who you are and are making the deliberate choice to visit your site. This metric also captures the downstream effects of broader marketing efforts like SEO, PR, advertising, and social campaigns that may not get “last-click” credit but still drive users to seek you out by name.

Organic Branded Search Impressions

Organic Branded Search Impressions refers to the number of times users search specifically for your company, product, or brand name in traditional search engines like Google or Bing.

It acts as a clear proxy for brand recall and awareness, showing how many people are actively seeking you out by name rather than stumbling upon you through paid ads or broad, non-branded search terms. A rising trend here signals stronger top-of-mind presence in the market and validates that other awareness-building efforts (such as PR, advertising, or social campaigns) are working to make your brand memorable.

Paid Branded Search Impressions

Paid Branded Search Impressions is the number of times your search ads appear in paid search results when users enter branded queries (e.g., your company or product name).

While clicks matter for conversions, impressions alone are meaningful here as they show how often potential customers are seeing your brand in search, even if they don’t take action. However, it’s important to note the tradeoff: running branded search ads can sometimes cannibalize organic branded search impressions (above), since your paid listing (along with competitor ads) may push your organic result further down the page and even below the fold.

Tracking this metric alongside organic branded search impressions gives a fuller picture of how your brand is surfacing in search, and helps balance the investment between paid visibility and organic dominance.

Total Unique Articles (Media Coverage)

A very helpful PR metric that we use is Total Unique Articles (Media Coverage), which quantifies the amount of media publications a brand appears in as a great indicator of brand awareness in B2B. This includes any news article that mentions the company (excluding press releases and press release syndications).

It measures brand awareness by highlighting the earned visibility of the brand in the media — essentially, the opportunities for readers to encounter your brand name within the context of a trusted publication. Because this excludes paid press release placements, it reflects how much genuine traction your brand is achieving through PR efforts and editorial coverage.

Note – this is a quantitative metric that is easy to track consistently; it’s not intended as PR measurement. Here’s our ungated guide about best practices for PR measurement.

AI Search Sessions

AI Search Sessions measures the volume of website sessions originating from major AI search platforms (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, blackbox.ai, claude.ai, felo.ai, and deepseek.com).

Growth in these sessions serves as a proxy for increased B2B brand awareness and citations across AI-driven search ecosystems. As these platforms increasingly influence how users discover and validate information, more sessions imply that your brand is being surfaced and recognized in AI-generated answers more frequently.

Note: We currently use website sessions to infer the volume of prompt responses within these LLMs until direct impression-level data becomes available directly from these platforms or in more reliable third-party tools. This is a metric that all brands can track with zero cost.

Looking ahead, as AI search becomes a primary gateway for information discovery, securing visibility in these results (GEO) and measuring sessions from AI sources will be just as critical — if not more so — than ranking in traditional search engines. Brands that earn consistent citations and inclusion in AI responses will be at a distinct advantage in shaping early buyer perceptions and brand awareness.

Social & Sentiment

Total Posts & Mentions

Total Posts & Mentions refers to the total number of posts, articles, or mentions that your brand generates across the social sphere within a given timeframe.

This metric provides a snapshot of the volume of conversation or coverage about your brand, helping us understand both its popularity and visibility over the selected period in the social sphere.

Note: This is not a measure of engagement or reach. Instead, it’s a simple count of how many relevant items — such as social media posts, news mentions, or other content — have been found that reference your brand.

Share of Voice

The percentage of total brand mentions, conversations, or engagement in your industry compared to competitors is what creates Share of Voice (SoV). SoV acts as a proxy for measuring B2B brand awareness, showing how much of the overall market conversation your brand represents. It also adds critical context to metrics like Total Posts & Mentions by putting your volume of visibility in direct comparison with competitors.

A rising Share of Voice signals stronger brand visibility, awareness, and influence, while also revealing how your brand stacks up against both larger and smaller competitors in terms of social presence.

Brand Social Sentiment

Utilizing AI and natural language processing to assess the emotional tone of social media content, classifying mentions as positive, negative, or neutral gives us Brand Social Sentiment. This powerful lens lets you move beyond surface-level visibility to uncover how your brand is truly being perceived online.

Understanding sentiment is essential for brand awareness marketing strategy. It helps us gauge public perception, fine-tune messaging, inform product direction, and respond proactively to emerging issues. As Qualtrics puts it:

“Brand sentiment is important because it measures intangible and often hard-to-quantify feelings surrounding a brand… Positive sentiment is a great indicator of consumer loyalty… Similarly, negative sentiment can be a strong indicator of high consumer churn or negative brand image.”

Sentiment reveals whether the awareness you’re building is rooted in admiration, indifference, or concern, and that makes all the difference when it comes to fostering meaningful brand connection.

Start Measuring B2B Brand Awareness with Clarity

B2B brand awareness will never boil down to a single metric, but with the right system, you can finally move beyond gut feeling and prove to executives that brand marketing is moving the needle. By tracking proxy indicators like direct sessions, branded search impressions, AI search sessions, PR coverage, share of voice, and sentiment, you create a clear, data-backed picture of whether your brand is actually growing in visibility and trust. Together, these signals reveal not just how often people are seeing your brand, but how it stacks up against competitors and how it’s being remembered.

In an era defined by AI-driven discovery, zero-click behavior, and shrinking vendor shortlists, brands can’t afford to fly blind. You need a framework that executives and boards can rally behind — one that proves awareness is growing and guides smarter decisions about where to focus your marketing.

At Firebrand, we’ve built a custom dashboard of 8 live charts designed specifically for B2B companies that want to quantify brand awareness, uncover what’s really working, and shape strategy that grows awareness where it matters most. And if you’re ready to not only measure awareness but actively expand it, our PR, content, and growth marketing services are built to do just that.

👉 Let’s build your brand’s awareness system together so you can stop guessing, start proving, and ensure your brand makes a lasting impression with the most influential prospects.

Measuring Brand Awareness FAQs