Measuring Brand Protection ROI: 3 Ways to Justify Your Investment

‍

Investing in brand protection acts like an umbrella shielding your business from the storm of counterfeits and brand abuse. By proactively protecting your brand’s reputation and revenue streams, you prevent costly damage before it happens.

‍

B2B decision-makers often face pressure to justify the budget for brand protection. Security measures can seem like a sunk cost until you demonstrate a clear return on investment (ROI). The reality is that brand protection delivers measurable benefits to your bottom line. The global scope of the threat is enormous. Counterfeit and pirated goods are expected to reach $4.2 trillion in value by 2025, and companies collectively lose around $500 billion every year due to fake products. These staggering losses underscore why investing in brand protection is essential. But how can you quantify what you gain from this investment? In this guide, we outline three analytical, data-driven ways to measure brand protection ROI and communicate its value in concrete terms. By using these methods, from tallying recovered revenue to quantifying preserved customer trust, you can confidently justify your brand protection initiatives to any stakeholder.

‍

1. Quantify Revenue Recovered from Anti-Counterfeiting Efforts

One of the most direct ways to measure brand protection ROI is by calculating the revenue you recover or retain by removing counterfeit goods and other infringing products from the market. Counterfeit sales directly siphon money that should belong to the legitimate brand. By taking down fake listings and enforcing your intellectual property, you can redirect those sales back to your company. To quantify this impact, consider the following approach:

‍

• Calculate the Sales Value of Counterfeits Removed: Start by estimating the total sales that counterfeiters generated from fake versions of your products. For example, suppose your enforcement actions in a given period took down fake listings that had been selling your product. Add up the estimated revenue of those counterfeit sales (e.g. shutting down unauthorized sellers who had sold $200,000 worth of knock-offs). Many brand protection platforms provide reports on the “value” of counterfeits removed, often based on the counterfeit’s price and volume sold. This figure represents the potential revenue that was going to illegitimate sources.
  
  
• Estimate Your Lost Sale Rate: Not every counterfeit sale translates 1:1 to a lost sale of a genuine product, some buyers of cheap fakes might never have purchased at full price. To be realistic (and conservative), estimate the percentage of those counterfeit sales that would have converted to real sales if the counterfeit had not been available. This percentage is often called the lost sale rate. It depends on factors like price difference and customer behavior. If the fake product was much cheaper than yours, the lost sale rate will be lower (many of those customers might not have paid full price); if the fake’s price was similar to your authentic product, the lost sale rate could approach 100%. In other words, the closer the counterfeit’s price is to the real thing, the more likely each fake sale represents a lost customer who thought they were buying your brand.
  
  
• Convert to Recovered Revenue: Multiply the counterfeit sales value by the lost sale rate to estimate how much genuine revenue was recovered (or preserved) by eliminating those fakes. This figure represents the direct ROI in terms of sales that your brand protection efforts secured. For example, brand protection experts illustrate a case where a company enforced against $178,000 worth of counterfeit goods. Assuming a calculated lost sale rate of about 45.7% (based on the counterfeit being significantly cheaper than the real product), this translated to approximately $81,364 in revenue returned to the legitimate brand. In practical terms, that $81K is revenue that your company regained thanks to brand protection. If the cost of your brand protection program is less than this amount, the ROI is clearly positive.
  
  

By following this method, you create a concrete dollar figure for ROI. It essentially answers: “How much more money did we make (or how much did we save from being lost) because we removed these infringements?” You can further refine this by using different scenarios. For instance, you might calculate a conservative ROI (using a lower lost-sale rate to err on the safe side) versus an optimistic scenario.  recommends using a conservative approach as a minimum return on revenue – the lower the assumed conversion rate of counterfeit buyers to real buyers, the higher your real ROI will be when you prove even that baseline value exceeds your costs. This conservative estimate helps withstand scrutiny from finance teams. On the other hand, a more “realistic” scenario can incorporate additional factors (pricing, stock availability, number of incidents) for a nuanced estimate. No matter the method, tying counterfeit takedowns to recovered sales provides a tangible metric that speaks directly to financial stakeholders.

‍

2. Measure the Impact on Brand Trust and Customer Retention

Not all ROI is immediately reflected in a sales ledger. Brand protection’s biggest payoff may be in safeguarding your brand’s reputation, customer trust, and loyalty – which in turn protects future revenue. In a B2B context, preserving customer trust and brand equity is paramount for long-term success, even if it’s trickier to quantify. However, there are ways to measure and justify these “soft” ROI factors with data and clear reasoning.

Start by recognizing the cost of not protecting your brand: if counterfeit or pirated products flood the market, customers can be deceived and disappointed, which erodes their trust in your company. Studies have shown that this trust erosion is dramatic. In one survey, two-thirds (66%) of consumers who were tricked by a counterfeit product said they lost trust in the affected brand. In other words, a single bad experience with a fake can alienate a loyal customer. Moreover, 76% of shoppers say they would be less likely to buy from a brand if it’s known to be regularly associated with counterfeit goods. This means that brand abuse directly drives customers away – a hit not just to reputation but to future sales. The ROI of brand protection here is about the revenue you preserve by keeping those customers’ confidence intact.

‍

To quantify this, consider tracking metrics that reflect customer trust and retention, and tie them back to brand protection efforts:

‍

• Customer Complaints or Support Tickets Related to Fakes: Monitor how many customer service issues arise from people unwittingly buying counterfeits or encountering brand impersonation scams. If your brand protection program is working, these incidents should decrease. A decline in counterfeit-related complaints suggests that fewer customers are being disappointed by fakes – meaning fewer lost customers. You can quantify the value by estimating the lifetime value of those customers you retained because they didn’t have a bad counterfeit experience.
  
  
• Brand Sentiment and Trust Scores: Many companies track Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer satisfaction, or brand sentiment via surveys. If counterfeits and scams are rampant, you might see dips in these scores or negative feedback about “quality” and “authenticity.” By combating infringements, you protect your brand’s good name, which should reflect in stable or improving sentiment metrics. For instance, if your NPS improves after implementing brand protection, that’s an indicator of ROI. Even if it’s not solely due to anti-counterfeit actions, you can correlate major enforcement sweeps or anti-fraud campaigns with any positive shifts.
  
  
• Repeat Purchase Rate and Customer Retention: Customers who trust your brand’s security are more likely to stick around. If brand protection stops counterfeiters from undercutting you or harming customers, you’ll retain more business. Track metrics like customer retention rate or churn rate in markets where you’ve had counterfeit problems. A higher retention rate after crackdowns on fakes can be translated into dollars (e.g. X% improvement in retention might equal Y million dollars in additional annual revenue from returning customers). Protecting brand integrity means customers “continue to purchase from that business again and again with confidence” – which is effectively revenue saved by avoiding attrition.
  
  

While putting an exact dollar value on brand trust can be challenging, you can illustrate ROI through scenario analysis. For example: “If 10% of our customer base would defect or buy less due to encountering fakes, that could cost us $Z in lost sales. By preventing that scenario through brand protection, we avoid that loss – a significant ROI.” Likewise, consider the value of your brand as an intangible asset. If your brand’s equity (often measured in brand valuation studies) would diminish from widespread counterfeiting, that’s effectively a hit to your company’s market value. Brand protection helps maintain your brand’s equity, which is an investment that preserves shareholder value.

Finally, you can support your argument with real data from market research: for instance, industries hit by counterfeiting (luxury goods, electronics, pharmaceuticals, etc.) report billions in lost sales and damaged loyalty due to fakes. By referencing such data, you reinforce that investing to prevent those losses yields a high ROI. Preserving customer trust isn’t just a feel-good goal – it has direct financial implications. Happier, confident customers mean repeat business and sustained revenue, which more than justifies the cost of a robust brand protection program.

‍

3. Calculate Operational Savings and Risk Mitigation

The third angle to measure brand protection ROI is through the cost savings and risk avoidance that a good brand protection strategy provides. Effective brand protection doesn’t just recapture revenue; it also makes your operations more efficient and prevents costly incidents down the line. B2B organizations should look at how their investment in brand security is paying off in reduced expenses, improved efficiency, and avoided losses.

Here’s how to break it down:

‍

• Time and Labor Saved: Consider the manpower required to manually detect and combat infringements across the web (marketplaces, social media, websites). A strong brand protection solution (or dedicated team) automates and streamlines enforcement. Measure how many person-hours are saved by using anti-counterfeiting software or specialists. For example, if your legal or compliance team used to spend 100 hours per month chasing down infringements and now, with a software platform, they spend 20 hours, that’s 80 hours saved. You can translate that into monetary terms by assigning an average hourly rate – essentially, operational cost avoided. Those saved hours can then be redirected to other valuable tasks, increasing overall productivity.
  
  
• Reduction in Legal and Enforcement Costs: Proactively removing counterfeit listings and addressing IP issues early can dramatically cut down on expensive legal actions. Every lawsuit or cease-and-desist battle you avoid is money saved. A comprehensive brand protection program prevents legal issues from arising in the first place, sparing your company the burden of costly litigation and takedown efforts. For instance, using a software platform to issue rapid takedowns globally might cost a fraction of what engaging lawyers and investigators for a single major counterfeit case would.  notes that deploying brand protection software “minimizes legal costs associated with civil or commercial litigation” by resolving many infringements swiftly out of court. These savings contribute directly to ROI – they are expenses you didn’t have to incur thanks to your investment in brand protection.
  
  
• Faster Incident Resolution and Less Damage: Speed is money in brand protection. The quicker you can detect and stop a counterfeit seller or a brand impersonator, the less damage they can do to your sales and customer trust. By measuring the average time to detect and enforce on threats (and observing that it has gone down after investing in better tools/processes), you can infer how much loss has been avoided. For example, if previously it took 30 days to shut down a fake product listing and now it takes 5 days, that’s 25 days of additional fake sales prevented. Those prevented fake sales are essentially losses averted, which you can add to your ROI calculation. Furthermore, quicker action means fewer customers buy the fake in the first place, tying back to the trust and revenue metrics above.
  
  
• Value of Safeguarded Intellectual Property: Your trademarks, patents, and brand assets are valuable – losing control of them has long-term financial repercussions. Brand protection efforts that prevent IP infringement (such as stopping someone from hijacking your brand name on a rogue website or registering a similar domain) preserve the exclusive value of your IP. While harder to quantify, you can cite the replacement cost or potential licensing value of those IP assets. For example, if counterfeiters are kept at bay, you won’t need to invest in re-branding or defensive trademarks. In effect, money spent on brand protection is returned in the form of maintaining your IP’s full value.
  
  

Industry experts recommend tying these results to key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter to your business. For instance, The CMO Council suggests measuring brand protection ROI by tracking reductions in brand abuse incidents and revenue loss, time saved by your team, and the value of intellectual property safeguarded (thecmo). Regular reports can highlight cost savings, enforcement success rates, and improvements in customer trust, linking them to outcomes like increased sales or a stronger brand reputation (thecmo).

Essentially, you want to show that for every dollar invested in brand protection, you saved or gained X dollars through these combined benefits.

Risk mitigation is another critical part of ROI that often goes underappreciated until a crisis happens. By investing in brand protection, you are avoiding potentially catastrophic costs that come with unchecked brand abuse – such as a massive recall due to fake products, regulatory fines, or a PR crisis if counterfeit goods harm customers. It’s fair to include in your ROI argument that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” For example, if your brand protection program prevents a major counterfeiting operation that would have forced a recall (costing say $5 million), that $5M is value gained. Even though it’s an event that never happened, the financial logic is that your investment averted that risk. You can bolster this point with examples: luxury brands losing tens of millions to fakes, or pharma companies facing lawsuits over counterfeit drugs – and note that your brand protection measures help avoid those worst-case scenarios.

‍

In summary, add up the various operational efficiencies: labor savings, legal cost avoidance, faster time-to-response, and circumvented risks. These all contribute to a higher ROI. A good brand protection solution should provide analytics to help here – for instance, reporting how many infringements were removed (and the estimated cost if they hadn’t been) and giving an **“enforcement success rate” that you can compare against the program cost. If the platform took down 500 incidents that would have taken your team months to handle, you can calculate the money saved by not stretching your internal resources. By demonstrating that “we spent $X on brand protection, and saved $Y in costs and avoided losses”, you present a compelling business case.

‍

Conclusion: Proving the Value of Brand Protection

Brand protection is often viewed as a cost center, but by measuring ROI in the right ways, you can flip that narrative. Through the three approaches above, you’ve identified how protecting your brand translates into real financial gains: reclaimed revenue from counterfeit takedowns, sustained income thanks to preserved customer trust, and significant savings from operational efficiencies and risk prevention. When you present these metrics, use concrete numbers and examples – for instance, cite the thousands of dollars recovered from a major enforcement action, or the percentage increase in customer retention after anti-counterfeiting measures were implemented. By outlining these benefits, you tap into a common pain point for B2B decision-makers who need to defend their budgets.

‍

In practice, effective brand protection does more than stop “bad guys” – it directly contributes to your company’s revenue and growth. Revenues that would have gone to fraudsters stay with the legitimate business, and customer loyalty strengthens because people trust your brand’s quality and safety. Meanwhile, your company spends less time and money fighting fires, as many issues are prevented upfront. All of these outcomes have monetary value. The key is to track them, calculate the impact, and communicate it. As the data shows, failing to invest in brand protection can lead to continuous loss of revenue and a damaged reputation, whereas investing in it yields a positive return by safeguarding your brand’s future. By using the methods detailed above, you can confidently justify your brand protection investment, not as a mere cost, but as a smart strategy that pays for itself and then some.

‍