Public perception of your brand plays a critical role in your business’s health and persistence. With the advent of new social media technologies, people are talking about you in more ways than was ever possible. Now, when it comes to finding out what is being said out there about you, your competitors & the industry as a whole, ‘Brand Monitoring’ plays a commanding role.
The audience on the online platforms certainly talks about your brand. They can make it viral even before you know it. But it has never been easier to track your brand mentions via brand monitoring. It assists you in having an in-depth understanding of how the people on diverse online platforms feel about your brand. This blog post will serve as your perfect guide to comprehend brand monitoring and its importance. Let us begin!
What is Brand Monitoring?
Brand monitoring refers to a business analytics process to track various channels for any mention of your brand. It is also known as social listening or web monitoring. It aids you in gaining an insight into the thoughts that people express about your brand. Boosting brand awareness for effective brand management forms the key to brand monitoring. It can also help you manage any potential brand crisis or criticism before it gets out of hand.
Brand monitoring allows brands to collect valuable feedback from their audience. It can guide them to improve customer experience and outshine their competitors. Further, leverage eye-catching PowerPoint presentation templates to showcase brand monitoring statistics. But talking about brand monitoring makes you question what exactly needs monitoring?
Here are a few channels every brand should keep an eye on for valuable brand monitoring:
- Social Media Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok
- Online Blogs and Articles
- Discussion Forums
- Offline Media Platforms like TV, Newspapers, and Magazines
- Review websites like Yelp, Google Reviews, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, etc.
- Broadcast Media
What To Track in Brand Monitoring?
Merely tracking mentions of your brand proves ineffectual for brand monitoring. Every brand which aims for long-term success ought to consider other areas as well. The audience on diverse channels will not always talk about your brand directly. There exists a possibility that general industry talks encounter a secondary effect on your business. Thus, brands must track the following points while brand monitoring:
- Name Variations– Form a list of all of the different ways people refer to your brand. It includes nicknames and blog names associated with your brand. It is also a good idea to track your product or campaign names to stay wholly in the loop.
- Industry Trends and Buzzwords– Keep track of buzzwords or trends in your niche industry. It becomes a good source of inspiration for crafting new content ideas or joining a public conversation in innovative ways.
- Brand Mentions– Ensure that you know when people talk about your company and its products as it is essential for brand monitoring. It enlightens you with lots of direct mentions and indirect ones as well—for example, influencers and celebrities.
- Competitor Check– Analyze your competitors for setting a benchmark for assessing how your brand performs to other similar brands in your industry. It helps you to stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends.
Why is Brand Monitoring Important?
Statistics show that failing to respond to customer complaints or queries can boost the churn rate by a whopping 15%. Thus, your public perception and response to feedback plays an enormous role in brand growth. It helps you discover and thereby react to the diverse sentiments about anything explicitly connected to your business.
Here are a few points exhibiting the impact of brand monitoring for effective brand management:
Create Customer-Centric Products
Brands cannot expect their customers to adapt to every product that they produce seamlessly. Instead, the customers demand you to offer the products best suited for them. They tend to comment and share their views on the brand’s products on social media. Brand monitoring helps you to track those comments and customize your products accordingly. There are a plethora of ways in which you can monitor the benefits of your brand:
- Form development strategy
- Track product requirements
- Explore new target markets
- Give value to customer needs
- Closely monitor product performance
Boosts Marketing Strategy
Today, marketers demand to be more targeted and relevant than ever. Customer information forms the key for this purpose. Effective marketing includes an analysis of demographics, sentiment, intent likes, and dislikes regarding your brand. Brand monitoring proves the perfect way to get those insights into your customers. Take note of the following points to conduct ideal brand monitoring:
- Identify your target audience
- Listen to your customers
- Monitor the channels where your customers talk about the brand
- Monitor market trends
- Track your campaigns
- Look for influencer
Reputation Building and Crisis Governance
Brand monitoring can assist you in staying on top of your reputation. It also helps you to handle customer issues before they create any negative impact on your brand. Listen to reviews and feedback provided by your customers online. Devise a strategic process to respond and handle those issues. It will instantly help you to increase the trust of your audience in your brand. It will also display that you care about what your customers feel about your brand.
Identify Shortcomings and Improve Them
Top-performing organizations understand the necessity of customer feedback. They methodically listen to their clients. Brand monitoring forms vital to get potential feedback from your customers identifying any required changes to your products and services. It not only helps you to gather informative intel but aids in measuring customer satisfaction as well. Construct an effective feedback mechanism to get timely and honest public feedback.
Customer Retention and Satisfaction
Attracting customers performs just half the work of good brand management. Keeping the customers happy and loyal contributes heavily towards revenue generation. Customer success encompasses listening, reaction, and support- which you can conduct with any brand monitoring tool. Improve your customer brand monitoring in the following ways:
- Monitor social support inquiries
- Track social media channels from one place
- Ensure to evaluate customer feedback
- Try and identify at-risk customers
- Plan ways to rectify customer complaints
Increase Brand Sales
Designing customer-centric products and possessing impactful customer service will make your brand monitoring process an instant success. Your products and brand will speak for themselves, while your sales will reap the benefits. Utilize brand monitoring to generate leads and improve sales in the following ways:
- Track and identify sales opportunities
- Engage and Connect with customers
- Try to find potential resellers
- Form impactful marketing strategies to convert competitor customers
Which Tools to Leverage for Brand Monitoring?
There exist a load of brand monitoring tools out there. Here are some of our hand-picked tools to fast track your processes:
- Google Search Console
- Google Alerts
- TweetDeck
- Mention
- Brandwatch Analytics
- Hootsuite
- LexisNexis
- BuzzSumo
Wrapping It Up
Brand monitoring has become an essential asset for a successful business. It not only offers you a better understanding of your audience but your product as well. It also determines what your brand represents and well it gets represented. You can significantly improve your marketing profits and communication strategy with effective brand monitoring. Thus, leverage brand monitoring to stay ahead of your competition and study analytics in real-time.
