Consideration is a sh*t metric, but you should still ask the question. Here’s why…

Consideration feels like it should be a useful brand metric. After all, it seems active as opposed to awareness which is more passive. It indicates demand and is therefore closer to a commercial outcome, right?

But one of the problems with consideration is that we forget that it’s an intent and confuse it with a behaviour.

Consideration is a perception, no different than other perception metrics. It’s an opinion, a projection, and makes a flimsy forecast tool (which many people make the mistake of doing). If you’re looking for an early indicator of demand, go with something mid-funnel like search or visits which will tell you what you think consideration is telling you, but is based on behavioural data.

Consideration is also almost always the byproduct of two other drivers. The first is awareness. Awareness is a fact. People have either heard of you or they haven’t. I’m aware of The Trainline. I’m aware of Tilda Swinton. I’m aware of tres leches cake. When looking at correlations between awareness and consideration, I’ve always observed the relationship to be very high. Awareness brings with it some bonus legitimacy that puts you into a consideration set regardless of any further logic.

The second driver is perception of key attributes, which also has a very high correlation with consideration. So instead of trying to shift consideration - which is a wooly and imprecise objective - stay focused on awareness and perceptions, and consideration will follow.

But that’s not to say consideration isn’t useful. It can be extremely helpful when used as a relative measurement, not an absolute.

For example, you could look at consideration of your brand relative to demand of your category. Let’s say consideration for The Trainline is growing 10% year-on-year but demand for train tickets in general remains flat over the same period. This gives you a good indicator of brand health, especially if you’re in a category that’s growing or declining and your brand has a built-in tail or headwinds.

Or you could look at consideration as a qualifier of a target audience. Let’s say you have one audience (commuters) who represent 30% of the population with 30% consideration, and another audience (weekend getaway-ers) who represent 20% of the population with 50% consideration, that latter audience is a better target.

Or you could look at consideration correlated with key perceptions. Let's say you're looking at value, flexibility and convenience. Value and flexibility both have low to moderate correlations with consideration, but there’s a much higher correlation between convenience and consideration. That would tell me where to focus my energy.

Bottom line, think of consideration as measure that’s relative to something else and it will be helpful. But ditch it as an absolute evaluator.