Brand Monitoring: What It Is and Why It’s Important

Brand monitoring lets you know what people are saying about your brand online – on social media, in responses to articles and blog posts, on rating and recommendation sites and on just about every other public online channel. Just as importantly, it reveals whether anyone’s talking about your brand at all. A lack of chatter, particularly in response to a major promotion or publicity push, can be just as significant as unfavorable conversations.

Below, we’ll explore the importance of online brand monitoring, how to effectively conduct brand tracking and monitoring, and how to use the findings to improve your organization’s performance and reputation.

Why brand monitoring matters

Multiple studies indicate that fewer than 5% of unhappy customers actually express their displeasure to a brand. Many of those dissatisfied consumers instead vent to their friends in person and to strangers online. Brand monitoring provides access to these “hidden” complaints, enabling you to not only respond directly to those consumers – and potentially win them over – but also address the root causes of their complaints.

But uncovering and eliminating customer pain points is only one reason brand monitoring is important. Below are several other reasons to monitor your brand online.

• To better engage with the audience. This can go beyond reaching out to dissatisfied consumers to resolving their issues. Brand monitoring can reveal potential influencers to work with on social campaigns as well as loyal customers and brand advocates who can provide testimonials, case studies and user-generated content (UGC) to integrate into offline and online campaigns. On a smaller scale, brand monitoring enables your organization to thank and connect with individuals who have praised the company on a social channel. This sort of interaction helps humanize the brand and bolster relationships, not only with the customers directly involved but also with their followers.

• To gauge marketing effectiveness. If an organization is disappointed with the performance of a new marketing campaign, brand monitoring can reveal if it has generated unexpected negative sentiment. Perhaps the target audience dislikes the creative, or maybe there’s a rising backlash against one of the spokespersons associated with it. Then again, online brand monitoring might reveal nobody is talking about the campaign at all or that only people in certain locations are discussing it. The former finding could indicate that the campaign isn’t making an impact – you might need to fine-tune your creative or invest more resources in promoting it – while the latter suggests that the campaign hasn’t reached certain geographic areas and that media buys are needed in those regions.

• To get ahead of changes in brand sentiment. By investigating a subtle but steady uptick in negative comments, your brand can avert a potentially extensive reputation crisis. Conversely, brand monitoring that reveals an increase in positive sentiment could unveil a potential opportunity. If new call center guidelines have led to improved ratings on review sites, for instance, a brand could amplify the positive comments in its marketing and explore whether the guidelines could be applied to other areas of customer service. Or perhaps a particular product, such as a sneaker style targeted to baby boomers and Gen X, has suddenly become trendy among younger consumers. In that case, the brand might dig deeper to discover why the product appeals to this unexpected demographic so it can expand its presence among that audience segment with other messages or products.

• To keep an eye on the competition. In addition to tracking what consumers are saying about your brand, you should follow what’s being said about your competitors. Are there many complaints about a competitor’s product quality or loyalty program? Make sure the same can’t be said of yours and emphasize your brand’s positive aspects in your marketing. Has another competitor’s new product or social campaign caught fire online? Examine the reasons and explore ways your brand might capitalize on them. Your organization doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and neither should your online brand monitoring.

What to focus on when monitoring brand performance

The breadth and depth of the internet can make the prospect of brand monitoring seem overwhelming. But, rather than taking on the Sisyphean task of tracking all aspects of your brand and your competitors across the entire web, focus on specific elements and channels.

Of course, you’ll want to monitor mentions of your brand’s name, products, taglines, hashtags and any high-profile employees or spokespeople. And you’ll want to monitor your competitors too – their brands, products, hashtags, spokespeople, and the like. Your brand monitoring efforts should track key industry terms as well, such as your relevant product categories.

Regarding channels, start with your owned pages, such as your website and your social feeds. Beyond your own feeds, monitor social platforms, online forums, review sites, podcasts and news media for references to your brand and your competitors. Include search results in your online brand monitoring as well. Tracking the volume of searches for your brand, your competitors and industry keywords can call out early shifts in market share and industry trends.

Brand monitoring tools and beyond

You’ll need the right brand monitoring tools to effectively track online references to your brand and competitors, as well as gauge the consumer sentiment – positive, negative or neutral –that’s informing the references. The breadth and depth of what these tools track varies, as do their personalization and analytical capabilities.

The data and analytics provided by brand monitoring tools can definitely help organizations identify reputational threats before they become crises, gauge marketing effectiveness and spot market gaps and competitive weaknesses. Using these tools in conjunction with other solutions amplifies their power to improve business outcomes. For instance, mapping brand monitoring data points to your brand’s performance metrics can determine which online channels and campaigns are most influential. Similarly, examining brand monitoring insights through a customer segmentation lens can reveal overlooked audiences and suggest more-effective ways to allocate marketing spend.

How Material can help with your brand monitoring

At Material we have years of experience integrating brand monitoring tools with qualitative research, advanced behavioral science acumen and analytic techniques. We’ve also helped organizations structure their brand monitoring programs to ensure that they collect, store and analyze only the data relevant to their business. Contact us today to learn how we can create an efficient, effective brand tracking program for you.

FAQs

What channels should you monitor as part of your brand tracking efforts?

In addition to tracking mentions in the news media and pickups of any press releases, your brand monitoring should encompass social media – both your brand’s feeds and the platforms overall – along with review and rating sites, forums, podcasts, videos and search results. And don’t forget to monitor your owned media, like your brand websites and blogs.

How often should brand monitoring be done?

Online brand monitoring should be done continuously. Your tools should always be on, though you might want to limit alerts to daily or weekly. You should review the volume and sentiment of brand mentions regularly – no less than once a week generally, and as often as daily during peak seasons – to ensure you detect changes and trends as early as possible. In addition, brands should conduct a deeper dive with more-intensive analytics at least quarterly, or even monthly in the case of a volatile market sector or significant internal changes.

What are common brand monitoring metrics?

The number of brand mentions is a basic metric. How often a brand is cited in a given week is less important, however, than how that number has changed over time and in response to campaigns. Share of voice is also important – meaning how many mentions your brand receives compared to competitors. Beyond the volume of brand mentions, you need to track the sentiment behind them, both in the moment and over time.