Brand Monitoring/Sentiment Analysis

In order to grow your business effectively in the year 2010, it is categorically non-negotiable that you egnage in brand monitoring and sentiment analysis. Non-negotiable.

Listening to and engaging with your audience have never been more important to your business, for this reason: Consumers, empowered with the breathtaking tools of social media, are orders-of-magnitude more powerful than ever; they trust one another more than they trust you — and they are impacting your bottom line because they are influencing one another’s purchase decisions very fast and very wide.

Are you listening to what they’re saying? You’d better.

The ability to hear what everyone is saying about your brand, in every crevice of the Web, is nothing short of historic — and a dream scenario for any company. At EHSM, we use a highly-sophisticated array of brand monitoring software and “sentiment analysis” tools to listen to what people really think about our clients. And then we engage with our client’s audiences, countering and neutralizing the negative while lifting up and publicizing the positive. We cannot control what others say about our clients, but we can steer the conversation and move the needle. This service arguably does more to improve our client’s bottom-lines as anything we do. (Incidentally, this is also why we are so selective about the brands and charitable organizations with whom we work: we would rather build success on a base of vocal brand evangelists than have to put out fires.)

Here’s why brand monitoring and sentiment analysis is so important: Consumer trust in traditional advertising has flat-out flatlined. People no longer trust institutions, press releases or corporate communications. (Rightly so.) They are now looking to one another as trust filters — and they have the tools to enable seamless and speedy dialog (collectively known as: “social media”). Consider this: Wikipedia — a 9-year-old “tween” — has steamrolled Encyclopedia Britannica, a vaunted 240-year-old brand — because people trust one another even more than they trust the “experts.” The genie is out of the bottle, and it’s not going back in.

Brands fail to ‘tip’ in this new economy not from a dearth of brand evangelists, but rather from brand detractors running amok without the slightest engagement from the brand itself. It’s tragic.

When a consumer is considering a purchase, they bypass your website (PR-generated spin) and “expert reviews” (could be planted or paid) — and instead they scan Amazon customer comments, use search.twitter.com — or ask their friends on Facebook.

That is why brand monitoring and sentiment analysis have become so profoundly important for anyone doing business in the year 2010. People are taking — hundreds of millions of them. They have profound influence over one another’s purchase decisions — and they are deeply impacting your sales whether you care to believe it or not. A few bad posts on Yelp or Amazon or Facebook or a mommy blog — without your engaging in the conversation — could do jaw-dropping damage to your bottom line. People simply won’t do business with you. And, that dynamic is only accelerating; it’s only becoming more prevalent.

Investing time and money in paid advertising without listening to how that advertising is impacting your audience is like hosting a cocktail party and talking incessantly at your guests for two hours without letting them get a word in edgeways. No matter how compelling — or right — you are, you will alienate the very people with whom you are trying to connect. Brand monitoring and sentiment analysis allows you to get a crystal clear picture of how people are receiving your messaging — and what they really think about you — so that you can hone and refine your messaging to improve your bottom line.

What We Do

  • Provide a “baseline report” of Web-wide sentiment (negative, positive, neutral) and “share of conversation” relative to your competition;
  • Monitor your brand, in real-time, 24/7/365;
  • Stay in close contact with you regarding particularly negative or positive posts;
  • Interpret the results and engage in the conversation on your behalf – within hours;
  • Provide weekly reports on key areas such as “Share of Conversation,” “Sentiment Breakdown,” and “Conversation Clouds.”

For more information on our brand monitoring and sentiment analysis services, please contact Nolan Lowry.

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