Reading the Trend Line: Diagnosing a Brand Tracking Wave
Objective: Given four quarterly waves of brand tracking data for a SaaS brand against two named competitors, diagnose which funnel stage is breaking down and decide whether it is a data blip or a real trend.
You're a brand marketing analyst at Zendesk reviewing Wave 4 of a quarterly brand health study. Awareness looks fine, but something in the funnel below it has been drifting for two quarters straight.
Read the four-wave data, isolate the stage where Zendesk is losing ground relative to the competitive set, and write a one-paragraph diagnosis for the brand lead.
Before you start
What you'll need
Free path (everything below is enough to finish)
No account friction, pivot tables and line charts are all this diagnosis needs
The process
1 step
Step 01 of 01
The lesson's Step 5 is explicit: a single wave number means nothing on its own. A consideration score only becomes actionable once you can see it move against a competitor's score over at least three waves.
Below are four quarterly waves for Zendesk vs. Freshdesk and Intercom, aided awareness through preference. Which stage is actually breaking down, and is it real or noise?
Procedure
- Import the wave data into Google Sheets with quarter, brand, and each funnel stage as columns
- Pivot so each funnel stage becomes its own line chart with quarter on the x-axis and brand as separate series
- Compare Zendesk's slope on each stage against Freshdesk and Intercom's slope over the same four quarters
- Flag the one stage where Zendesk's line diverges from the competitive set for two or more consecutive quarters
Aided Awareness (%): Zendesk 71,72,70,73 | Freshdesk 64,65,66,67 | Intercom 58,60,61,63 Consideration (%): Zendesk 44,41,37,34 | Freshdesk 38,39,41,43 | Intercom 33,35,38,40 Preference (%): Zendesk 22,21,20,19 | Freshdesk 17,18,19,21 | Intercom 14,15,17,19
Healthy
Awareness holds steady while consideration and preference move in the same direction as competitors, or Zendesk's decline is a single-quarter blip surrounded by flat quarters on both sides.
Unhealthy
Consideration falls for three consecutive quarters (44 to 34, a 10-point drop) while both named competitors rise over the identical period, awareness stays flat, meaning the problem is not visibility, it is what people think once they already know the brand.
What this means
Awareness flat plus consideration falling plus competitors rising in the same window rules out a sampling fluke. The brand is known but is losing the argument for why it should be considered, that is a positioning or product-perception problem, not an awareness problem.
So what do I do about it?
| Symptom | Action | Effort |
|---|---|---|
| Consideration drops for 2+ consecutive quarters while awareness stays flat | Brief a message-perception study before touching media spend, the funnel says the problem is not visibility | half day |
| One-quarter dip surrounded by flat quarters on both sides | Log it and wait for the next wave, one point of data is not a trend per Step 5 | 5 min |
Final deliverable
A one-paragraph written diagnosis identifying the breaking-down funnel stage, the evidence for it being a real trend and not noise, and the type of research needed next.
See a reference example
Diagnosis, Grab Holdings brand tracking Wave 6 (excerpt) Awareness is stable at 68-70% across three quarters. Consideration fell from 51% to 44% over the same window while GoJek's consideration rose from 46% to 50%. The gap is now a 6-point relative swing. Recommend a message-perception study before the Q3 media plan is finalized.
Success criteria
You're done when you can:
- Correctly identifies consideration (not awareness) as the breaking-down stage
- Cites at least two consecutive quarters of divergence from competitors as evidence it is a trend, not noise
- Recommends a next step scoped to the actual problem (perception research, not more media spend)