As a business owner, one of the things you need to know about brand monitoring is that it requires you to focus on factors that matter the most, which include core metrics like customer sentiment and brand mentions. You must keep an eye out for these elements across key channels, such as review sites, social media, and news outlets.
Monitoring such metrics is integral to your overall brand reputation management, as it allows you to determine how your target market perceives your brand or if they even know and trust it at all. If they're not familiar with it, chances are, they'd ignore your products or services.
Indeed, 81% of consumers say they first need to trust a brand before buying anything from it, according to trend discovery platform Exploding Topics.
What Is Brand Monitoring?
When you conduct brand monitoring, it means that you track as many mentions of your brand and everything it offers as possible. You need to perform both offline and online brand tracking on all channels where consumers may be talking about your products or services, including:
- Social media
- News outlets
- Forums
- Review sites
Once you find mentions of your brand, you must then proceed to brand perception analysis. The more you understand how the public perceives you, particularly your target market, the better strategies you can adapt to enhance brand awareness and customer loyalty.
What Is the Main Goal of Monitoring?
Brand monitoring allows you to track your progress toward achieving your specific marketing goals.
The insights you gain from a competitive brand analysis can help guide your future products or services. They can also give you more opportunities and ideas on how to strengthen your brand's competitive advantage.
By better understanding your customers' sentiment toward your brand, you can address their pain points while also improving your offerings. It's key to fostering loyalty among consumers, something you'd want to instill in your market.
The more loyal they are to your brand, the more likely they'll come back for more. Indeed, compared to new clients, returning customers spend 67% more, as Business.com points out.
Monitoring your brand's competitors can also give you an edge over the competition, as you can find opportunities and market gaps.
What Type of Content Should a Brand Monitor?
Your brand should monitor various types of content related to your brand (and common misspellings of your brand name, if applicable). Some of the most crucial content types to track include:
- Mentions of your brand, product names, service terms, and key leaders (e.g., owners, executives, spokespersons, etc.)
- Mentions of your competitors, including their brand names, products, services, and strategies
- Industry buzzwords and trends
- Customer sentiment, reviews, and complaints regarding your brand
- Content related to your marketing campaigns, including keywords and keyphrases
How Do You Perform Brand Monitoring?
Implementing brand monitoring for your business is a multi-step plan that starts with setting clear objectives, followed by identifying key metrics to track. Once you've established these, you can then choose the appropriate brand monitoring tools to use that can help you better analyze and understand the data you collect.
Setting Clear Objectives
The first step to accurate brand monitoring is defining what you want to achieve with this strategy. Examples to help you get started are:
- Improving customer service
- Tracking competition
- Enhancing product or service offerings
With clear goals, you can have a basic guideline to steer your efforts in the right direction.
Establishing Key Metrics to Track
After identifying your objectives, establish which metrics you should track to achieve these goals. Some examples are:
- Mentions on social media
- Online reviews and ratings
- Sentiment scores
- Website traffic influenced or driven by brand-related search terms
Choosing the Right Brand Monitoring Tools
You don't have to manually perform each step of the brand monitoring process, as there are specific brand monitoring tools you can use. Start by using programs like Google Alerts and Search Party AI Visibility Platform. You can then combine these later on with paid versions for more comprehensive monitoring.
Setting Up Notifications and Alerts
Brand monitoring tools allow you to configure them in a way that they'll notify you whenever you have brand mentions. Set these alerts up so you can respond quickly to both positive and negative reviews, feedback, and mentions.
Regularly Assessing Data
Regular data assessments help you better analyze and understand trends and patterns with your brand mentions. You can then use the information you gather to optimize your marketing efforts and enhance your client engagement strategies.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Are Some Best Practices for Brand Monitoring?
It's always better to be proactive than reactive when it comes to your brand monitoring strategies. Don't wait for a crisis to occur before you track brand mentions and customer sentiment. With active monitoring, you can spot potential problems early on and address them before they worsen.
Just as crucial is to measure and evaluate your brand listening efforts regularly, such as by using tools to measure their impact on business performance and customer satisfaction.
If you identify pain points, focus on resolving these. Then, let your market know you've made enhancements, such as through press releases and "improved" product launches.
What Should You Do When You've Tracked Negative Brand Feedback?
Whether you receive negative or positive feedback, the first step is always responding immediately. Acknowledge what the customer has said and express appreciation. Then, determine whether the problem warrants making changes.
Suppose a customer has left a negative Google review about your brand due to delayed shipping and delivery. Review other feedback and see if there's a trend or if it's a one-time occurrence.
If it's happened multiple times, it may be time to rethink your courier. If not, apologize to the customer and consider offering them a discount on their next purchase.
Use Brand Monitoring to Your Advantage
From customer sentiment to brand mentions, these are some of the key metrics that brand monitoring allows you to track and respond to. The more efficient your response system, the more positive your customers' experiences can be, and the more likely they'll become loyal to your brand.
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