Brand salience is a branding performance indicator that highlights the mental presence of a brand within the mind of the target audience in the buying decision.

By occupying pride of place in the audience’s mind, you make sure your brand is top-of-mind when the consumer comes to make a purchasing decision.

In this article, I’ll explain exactly what brand salience is, how it relates to other concepts such as brand awareness, brand recognition, and brand recall, and explore some ways for you to measure and grow brand salience.

What Is Brand Salience?

Brand salience is the extent to which your brand is in the mix when the customer is in the moment of making a purchasing decision.

It’s the focus on the purchasing decision that differentiates brand salience from brand recognition, brand awareness, and brand recall.

Brand Awareness:
The consumers’ familiarity with a particular brand name and its products or services.

Brand Recognition:
The consumers’ ability to recognize an identifying characteristic of one brand over its competitors.

Brand Recall:
The likelihood of someone remembering, or recalling, your brand, its products and its services, either independently or with a nudge in the right direction.

Brand salience relates to these terms but with the focus on the bottom of the sales funnel.

It answers the question:

“How likely is a consumer to remember or notice the brand at the point of the buying decision?”

High brand salience results from a strong brand with high brand memorability and/or visibility.

It means your brand is more likely to be noticed or remembered in the buying situation.

Google and Kleenex are examples of highly salient brands since the brand names have become a verb people use in relation to the product category.

We don’t suggest people “search it” anymore, we suggest they “Google it”.

Low brand salience is the result of limited or ineffective promotion or messaging of the brand.

In other words, either the brand is not telling prospects about what they do or they’re not doing it in a way that leads to them remembering in the buying decision.

With low brand salience, the customer may not be aware your brand exists.

Ultimately, to be in with a chance of purchase, your brand needs salience in the buying decision.

Developing a well considered brand strategy with unique positioning and communication, then mobilising the brand message with effective marketing tactics, is the tried and tested path to high brand salience.

Why Is Brand Salience Important?

I don’t need to overcomplicate this.

If the customer doesn’t remember or think of your brand when they consider a purchase, it’s very difficult for your brand to grow and make an impact.

The importance of that mental presence can’t be overstated.

Either your brand is recalled from memory or is made visible and available to discount the need for memory.

Getting your brand into the consciousness of your audience’s mind during the buying decision (or not) is often the difference between them choosing you, or some other brand that made itself mentally or physically present.

If you’re not in the audience’s mind at all during that critical moment, you need to think about why that’s the case and how to take up some of that space.