Whether you are an individual or managing a corporation, realizing the benefits of personal or company brand monitoring is necessary. It can help you understand if you are losing business opportunities due to a poor reputation. However, doing it manually can be a challenge. Some processes can overwhelm you if you do not know how to monitor your brand. You may not respond during the crucial time, and you will find it challenging to deal with a possible reputation crisis.
What is Brand Monitoring?
Brand monitoring is the procedure of tracking different platforms and channels to determine where your brand is receiving mentions. Understanding where the mentions are coming from and the people talking about your brand will help you better understand the public’s perception. You will also collect some valuable testimonials or feedbacks about your business. This process will help you stay alert to some potential crises. You will also address any criticism before the situation becomes out of your control.
What is the Difference Between Brand Monitoring and Social Monitoring?
Social monitoring will focus on the mentions you receive on the social media platform. On the other hand, online brand monitoring goes beyond social media channels. It covers all areas where people are talking about you or your brand. This process combines the process of social listening and social monitoring. It also tracks your reputation on non-social channels to generate precise and accurate customer insight.
Why Should You Monitor Your Brand?
It is essential for every company or individual to care about how the audience perceives you. There are cases that you will not agree with what they are saying, but this is essential to get the sentiments of your target audience. The public sentiments and your reputation can directly affect your company or professional growth. In a recent survey, 72% of the executives use social media to gather insights and data that will affect their decision-making. Here are some of the benefits of free brand monitoring.
Boost your Company’s Marketing Strategies
Nowadays, marketers need to be more targeted and relevant. To achieve this, you will have to gather customer information. Dislikes, likes, intent, demographics, and sentiments are just the basic information. The more you know about your customers, the more personalized experience you can offer them. With brand monitoring tools, you can gain these insights. Some monitoring strategies that will help you boost your marketing strategy include:
- Finding Influencers- By reaching out to the right influencers, you can quickly widen the reach of your business.
- Tracking Your Campaign- By measuring the mentions before and after your campaign, you will be able to measure the performance of your campaigns.
- Monitoring the Trends- You should stay on top of the market trends. Moreover, you should also keep in touch with your competitor’s trends.
- Be Where Your Customers Are- You can’t expect your business to be present on all platforms; this is too costly. You want to be active where your target audiences are. Moreover, you should know who your customers are to find them. Targeting is improbable if you don’t know who they are and where they are located.
- Listening to Your Customers- Your marketing strategy should be relevant to your target audience. The best way to understand what your customer wants is by listening through their conversations.
Developing a Customer-Focused Product or Service
It is impossible to keep your business afloat if you have a substandard product. Customers are no longer just accepting any product; they are now more informed than ever. Customers want a product that is designed for them. They want something they deserve and will only be satisfied with the best. More than 90% of customers read customer reviews before choosing a product. Moreover, they are more vocal about their choices and experiences with the company. The product feedback you receive from them would be a good source of information to develop customer-centric offerings. Here are some ways to use brand monitoring to improve your product.
- Monitoring Particular Demographics- If your target market spans multiple countries and languages, using the filter options will help you understand how well you localize your company.
- Monitoring Your Competitors- You can’t beat your rivals in the industry if you are not aware of what they are doing. You should also listen to the mentions of your brand.
- Tracking Your Product Launch- The entire team worked hard to ensure that your product launch would be a success. You should find out how your audiences are reacting to it to measure the performance and reach of your brand.
- Listening to Live Feedbacks- Receiving Live Feedbacks about your product is vital. Most of the time, your customers will discover problems that you overlooked during the testing process.
- Listening to Feature and Product Request- Your customers’ feature and product requests will help you in the development strategy of your product.
Enhances Your Customer’s Support and Retention
Drawing the attention of your audience is just half of the battle. You have to make sure that they remain satisfied and loyal to your brand. It includes listening, responding, and providing top-notch support; these can be achieved through online brand monitoring. Here are some ways on how you can take full advantage of that.
- Identify the Audience At-Risk- Unsatisfied customers will most likely not purchase from your company again. You will need to identify them at the earliest possible stage to provide them with the support they need and give them a decent resolution. There’s a higher chance of retaining them if you address their concern within the golden time.
- Evaluate their Satisfaction-You should have a general concept of how satisfied your customers are using sentiments analysis.
- Efficient Collaboration- Brand monitoring tools will often come with a collaboration feature. Specific mentions should be assigned to different persons to ensure an immediate response.
- Monitoring Multiple Channels- Most brands will be using different channels. It is better to manage all these accounts using a single tool.
- Tracking Social Inquiries- Many customers today will post their inquiries on social media platforms. You need to stay on top of these mentions and ensure that no audience is ignored.
Improve Your Sales
Suppose you are taking advantage of your free brand monitoring. In that case, you will create a marketing strategy that will leave a considerable impact, develop a customer-focused product, and provide the customer with exceptional support. Your product and brand will have a better reputation, and your people should be ready to harvest the rewards. Moreover, it can also be used to advance your lead generation campaign.
- Convert The Customers of Your Rivals- If you pay attention to the social mentions of your competitors, you should be able to find their unhappy customers and provide them with an alternative solution at best possible time.
- Look for Potential Resellers- Different companies will be looking for an excellent product to offer to their audience. Monitoring can help you look for resellers.
- Reach Out and Engage with Your Customers- Offering solutions and something of value to the audience can help you close sales.
- Identify Business Opportunities- Before buying a product, people may discuss it online. By listening to those discussions, you will find business opportunities.
Brand Monitoring Tools for Your Business
Arming your sales and marketing team with powerful brand monitoring tools is a great way to identify the sentiments of the people about your brand. You can also streamline the process and enjoy its benefits to your business.
HootSuite
It is perhaps one of the most straightforward brand monitoring tools you can use. Hootsuite comes with a customizable search feature that will help you monitor the mentions and discussions on different social platforms. It will help you see what is happening in real-time. You can track social profiles, trends, and topics using hashtags, keywords, users, and locations.
What Does Hootsuite Monitor?
Hootsuite will monitor all social media platforms. It is more than a social monitoring app since it also harnesses the power of social listening. The insight included in this app will give you a quick overview of millions of conversations happening on different platforms in real-time. Start by searching for a keyword or topic. You can then filter the result by location, demographics, and date. With Hootsuite, you will not only understand the sentiments of your audience about your brand, but you can also identify influencers related to your brand and receive notification if there is a sudden spike in your mentions.
Google Alert
Google alert is a free and powerful brand monitoring tool that will address the unique needs of your business. It is an excellent choice for those who are starting on their journey. Google offers this less complex monitoring tool to keep in touch with the latest news about your business. You have to enter your desired keyword, in this case, the name of your company, product, and its different variations. You will then have to add your email address, and that’s it. Once done, you will start receiving notifications from Google every time new content related to your business or product is published. The simplicity it offers can be a blessing to some, but it also presents some drawbacks. For instance, there is no analytic section that comes with it. It also does not track the mentions that you receive from the social media platform.
BrandWatch
Brandwatch offers one of the most advanced brand monitoring tools; however, it is also expensive. It comes with business intelligence and comprehensive data analytics. Brandwatch highlights a robust algorithm and historical data based on the updated machine learning. It will provide you with insightful and accurate information about your target audience. It will rearrange the data into related categories that help create a comprehensive buyer persona. Brandwatch comes with a reporting dashboard that highlights real-time display and data reporting. Social monitoring is available in all plan packages. It also comes with a social listening tool that will help you improve your digital presence and discover the critical trend in the industry. It is a tool that is ideal for large companies. You can reach out to them to request the pricing of their plans.
BuzzSumo for Brand Monitoring
Not all marketers will think of BuzzSumo as an online brand monitoring tool. Nonetheless, it also offers an excellent service to monitor your mentions on different platforms. It comes with several options to help you determine all mentions relevant to your brand. It comes with brand and keyword alerts. One unique feature of this tool is that it features a domain alert wherein you will be notified every time new content is posted on a specified website. Author Alert works the same way, wherein you will be alerted once a particular author publishes content. You can personalize your dashboard in a way that will suit your needs.
Free brand monitoring allows you to keep track of your reputation and manage it effectively. In today’s age, expect people to talk about you, your people, and your brand. It only makes sense to be present in their conversation. It is your responsibility to respond to every mentions you are receiving. Follow the best practices above and use the tools recommended here to experience the benefits of this process.