In the world of today, the very idea of starting a business without establishing a presence on various social media platforms is almost unimaginable. In addition to positioning as a brand on social networks, it’s essential to take advantage of the tools they offer, such as brand monitoring.
Brand monitoring has become indispensable, as it analyzes the target audience’s preferences and the brand’s impact on consumers over a specific period. Due to its importance, hiring a PR agency in Latin America offering brand monitoring services can be essential in ensuring a positive outcome.
What is Brand Monitoring?
Also known as social listening, brand monitoring is the practice of tracking a brand’s presence and positioning on social networks and other online environments. Seen as a digital marketing strategy, the idea is literally to monitor and analyze how the brand positions itself and, more importantly, how the public perceives the company and its products or services.
The tool is also used to assess the brand’s positioning against competitors, in addition to analyzing whether the company is generating engagement through discussions among consumers or influencers.
It further indicates the amount of times the company has been mentioned. To keep up with the brand’s positioning in the virtual world, it’s common for companies to hire communication agencies that use monitoring software and tools to track and interpret users’ perceptions, such as Google Analytics.
The Importance of Brand Monitoring
Among the numerous digital marketing strategy tools, this is one of the simplest, yet most important ones when it comes to analyzing the brand’s presence on social media, online discussion forums and news articles.
That’s because brand monitoring can dictate other marketing strategies to improve or boost the company’s positioning in the virtual environment. It also makes it possible to identify trends and patterns of behavior of the brand’s target audience.
A survey conducted by Sebrae showed that 7 out of every 10 small Brazilian businesses have profiles on social networks, and the most popular platform among entrepreneurs is Instagram, with it offering the user a free brand monitoring dashboard.
Through data collected by Instagram, it’s possible to evaluate which contents and publications generated the most engagement among the brand’s followers and the level of presence it has among its users and other accounts that do not yet follow its profile.
Furthermore, this tool is important for anticipating market demands and needs but, more importantly, those of their audience. This strategy is crucial to understanding consumer preferences.
Tools that analyze the brand’s presence are also essential for evaluating the outcome of a campaign. Reactions, comments and shares are some of the criteria that can be analyzed. From there, the company assesses whether it achieved the needed numbers and if it’s necessary to devise a new strategy.
The customer is the key!
In times when technology is the protagonist of marketing strategies, it’s only natural to forget that the most significant innovation is the one which remains constant: meeting the customer’s needs. More than this, it’s about addressing then resolving the customer’s pain points. This is how the concept of customer-centric innovation emerged.
Customer-centric innovation is nothing more than listening, understanding and solving the target audience’s pain points. After all, when consumers look for a brand, they are usually trying to solve a problem.
It’s worth noting that customer-centric innovation is not aimed at generating more revenue, but rather at winning customers and establishing itself as the brand that meets their needs. By turning to your customer, ideas for innovation will arise more frequently and naturally, as there will always be new needs to be met.
For this reason, brand monitoring becomes indispensable when dealing with customer-centric innovation.
Brand Monitoring and Customer-Centric Innovation
As we mentioned above, this tool collects indicators of customer behavior regarding the product or company value. Through analyzing the profile and perception of the customer, the brand can set up strategies to create solutions based on their needs and desires.
Therefore, it’s important for the strategy team to follow daily mentions, reactions and comments about the company and/or its product on digital channels. However, it’s worth mentioning that analyzing the brand’s presence on platforms where it is most active is more intriguing. After all, that’s where the customers concentrate.
Brand monitoring will also help the company understand if the product or service offered is meeting its audience’s expectations. In this case, it’s worth classifying the customer sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral to devise new strategies.
As a brand expands, the desire to innovate is natural, but it’s crucial to always be attentive to your customer’s needs. Innovating is pointless if the product doesn’t meet the consumer’s requirements.
Brand monitoring requires a dedicated team of professionals and daily attention to understand the customer profile. That’s why many companies hire digital marketing agencies to ensure good results and effective branding monitoring.
Public relations and digital marketing agencies in Brazil, such as Sherlock Comms, have extensive sector knowledge, experience and insights, and always stay up-to-date on the best ways to conduct customer-centric brand monitoring.
