Brand-led growth is emerging as the key competitive advantage in the 2020s, replacing the product-led focus of the past decade. While most marketing dashboards prioritize immediate purchases, they often overlook the larger potential audience not yet ready to buy.
Marketers widely recognize brand awareness as crucial to marketing success, with studies showing consistent branding can boost revenue by nearly 30%. However, measuring brand impact remains a challenge, leading to uncertainty about which marketing efforts truly drive brand loyalty.
New startups like Tracksuit are addressing this gap. Tracksuit recently raised $25 million in a Series B round to develop clearer, data-driven brand measurement tools. Co-founder Matt Herbert explained their aim to create “a common language” for marketers, boards, and agencies to understand how brand initiatives contribute to business growth.
This funding signals a broader shift toward treating brand as a measurable asset, much like how HR evolved through analytics. Venture capital firms, including VMG Partners, see brand performance management platforms becoming essential for consumer-facing companies. Sam Shapiro of VMG described brand as “a company’s most important asset” that must be quantified.
Tracksuit claims over 1,000 customers and 240% year-over-year U.S. growth, serving notable clients such as Steve Madden and Opendoor. This surge reflects growing demand among brands for deeper insights into their market position and growth drivers.
Experts emphasize that strong brands are vital as product features become easier to replicate and consumer attention spans shorten. Matthew Kerbel of Turo and Caleb Pearson of McDonald’s highlight the importance of connecting brand efforts to business results via clear, data-driven metrics.
Brand measurement is undergoing a transformation similar to the shift from intuition to data in HR—moving from subjective judgment to daily polling and real-time dashboards. This new era of brand analytics will uncover patterns in consumer affinity, pricing power, and campaign effectiveness, enabling more predictable brand performance.
For companies adopting this mindset, the first steps include conducting comprehensive brand audits, setting measurable brand goals, and integrating brand metrics into executive decision-making. Herbert stresses that measuring ongoing brand health is critical to understanding how marketing activities contribute to long-term growth.
In a landscape where features can be copied and attention is fleeting, brand remains the decisive factor—and the ability to measure it effectively will define future winners.