Tracksuit vs. other brand tracking providers: How do we stack up?

If you’ve ever been in a position to commission a piece of market research, you know it’s a complex industry.

There are providers focused on a particular type of research or category niche like social listening or retail scanning data. There are all-in-one providers that offer a spectrum of insights services under one umbrella, including custom research. There are even DIY platforms to create your own surveys from scratch. And all of them seem to have their own language and way of doing things, but the right solution will vary wildly depending on your needs.

When it comes to brand tracking specifically there are lots of great options out there, each with their own pros and cons.

To be honest, we know it can be a little overwhelming, especially if you’re new to it. So we wanted to shed light on the industry and give some insight into how we’re different. Read on for the full rundown 👇

The market research landscape

Here at Tracksuit we’re obsessed with donuts, so what better way to explain the market research landscape than through our favorite sweet treat 🍩

As you can see, brand tracking is one arm of a much wider market research industry. There’s dedicated brand tracking providers (like Tracksuit), or you can often commission brand tracking through all-in-one platforms or traditional market research consultancies.

Typically the latter is pricey (upwards of $100k) and presented in a dense report (that often sits gathering dust on someone’s desk). This is the “old way” of doing things that has limited brand tracking to a handful of big-budget enterprise brands, meaning challenger brands and scale-ups are unable to gain any of the essential brand health insights to support business growth

We’re obviously a bit biased, but we think dashboard-style solutions that democratize brand tracking are the future. Unlike one-off brand dips or static reports, brand tracking dashboards like ours offer an always-on view of brand performance over time at a fraction of the cost of traditional brand tracking.

While incredibly valuable, brand tracking is just one tool in a marketer’s arsenal. It’s most powerful when used in conjunction with other market research solutions (where budget allows) to measure impact, set strategy and make informed decisions.

How to choose a brand tracking provider 🤔

As we’ve said before, the right brand tracking solution depends on your business’ unique requirements. It’s important to figure out what you’re looking for and what your non-negotiables are before embarking on your search.

Questions worth considering include:

• Metrics: How important is it that our brand tracker reports on common (and widely understood) marketing metrics like awareness and consideration, rather than proprietary metrics or scores? Do we want our CEO/CFO and other stakeholders to ‘get it’ without too much explanation of our reporting?
• Complexity: How technical is our team? Is it important that our solution removes the complexity of brand tracking as much as possible, or do we require advanced analysis and customization?
• Digestibility of data: How important is visualization and design to bring data to life? Do we want a solution that displays data in an easily absorbable way that we can lift and shift straight into presentations and reports, or does design not matter as long as we have the data?
• Price: How big is our budget for brand tracking as a proportion of our overall marketing spend? Do we want an affordable solution that gives us the answers we need when we need them without all the extras, or are we wanting to splurge on additional data?
• Frequency of reporting: How important is it that our brand tracking is always-on? Do we need a live view of brand performance that we can tap into whenever we need to, or are static reports enough to provide a point-in-time view?

How connected do we want to feel with the marketing ecosystem? Is it important that our brand tracking provider connects us with a like-minded community of brand leaders, or do we get this connection in other ways?

How does Tracksuit stack up against other brand trackers?

YouGov BrandIndex

If you work in marketing you’ve likely heard of global research provider YouGov. Well, BrandIndex is their always-on brand tracking solution that offers in-depth data, daily in a dashboard.

If you’ll allow us to continue our donut analogy for a moment: where Tracksuit is an original glazed donut that gives you just what you need to solve your sweet craving without all the extras, YouGov’s BrandIndex is a chocolate iced donut complete with sprinkles, marshmallow pieces, cookie crumble, cream filling and a higher price tag. It’s ‘the works’ which is great if you have a really sweet tooth and extra pocket money, but it can be more than you need.

If we think about the questions we posed above, how does Tracksuit compare to YouGov BrandIndex?

Attest

Attest is a self-serve survey solution where customers conduct their own qualitative and quantitative research and analyse responses within the platform. Customers often use Attest for brand tracking as well as other types of research.

Where Tracksuit is the original glazed, Attest is a DIY donut decorating kit. You get given the base to work from, but ultimately it’s up to you to build your own and decide what the end result looks like. For some, you might create a masterpiece but there’s more room for error if you’re not such a skilled donut decorator!

So, how does Tracksuit compare to Attest?

ProQuo AI

ProQuo AI is a platform that leverages AI for always-on brand tracking, asset testing, and category insights presented in a dashboard. We could liken ProQuo AI to a glazed donut with sprinkles – similar to Tracksuit in its innovative approach to traditional brand tracking, but with a few extra add-ons that make it harder to digest and share with others.

So, how does Tracksuit compare to ProQuo AI?

What sets Tracksuit apart

Beautiful

We believe there’s no value in data unless it’s usable. Tracksuit has been designed for marketers and brand leaders who want their data presented in a beautiful way that helps them make sense of key changes and trends. Tracksuit is also intuitive and easy to use which means anyone in your team can go in and extract insights.

Simple

We choose to focus on core marketing funnel metrics that make up the common language around brand health. Why? We want to help brand leaders answer make or break questions (like, how big is our category, how well known are we, do people want to buy from us, how does this compare to our competitors?) and communicate the answers to their C-suite in a way they’ll understand. We also believe that concentrating on a few key metrics provides a clearer picture of key changes in brand performance.

Affordable

What gets measured gets managed, and we think every organization should have access to reliable, comprehensive and affordable brand tracking to quantify brand performance. We’ve built Tracksuit in a way that makes it one of the most cost-effective options on the market, particularly for always-on tracking. With Tracksuit you pay for what you need (i.e access to data on your brand and key competitor set), with the option to add on a chocolate sauce or your favorite sprinkles if you really need it.

Community

Marketers are social creatures but can often feel like they’re isolated within their organizations and fighting an uphill battle. We believe in the power of community to bring people together, share ideas, and raise the collective knowledge of brand builders. That’s why we invest heavily in growing our engaged community, with exclusive events and networking opportunities, offering marketers the chance to feel heard, appreciated and celebrated.

Comfy tracksuit 🎽

Tracksuit customers get access to exclusive merch – enough said.

We’d love to have a chat if you’re interested in learning more about Tracksuit and what makes us different from other brand tracking providers. Get in touch here to book a demo ✌️