Understanding what makes your brand tick is all about knowing what consumers think about it. Here’s how today’s brand intelligence tools enable game-changing insight into the ins and outs of your brand’s reputation.
In the modern business landscape, brand intelligence occupies a critical place among companies looking to discover what their customers (and the general public) really think about their products and services. This article delves deep into the world of brand intelligence, exploring its importance, tools, and strategies to effectively harness its power to drive brand success.
Brand intelligence is the term used to describe data collection around all the signals and signs that reveal the consumer perception of a specific brand. It involves the monitoring of all discussions about the brand, seeking to develop a greater familiarity with the customers and prospects to gain a better understanding of their needs and desires, but also to discover any defects, problems, or shortcomings to be corrected as soon as possible.
Brand intelligence is a process that’s made possible via brand tracking software, which can bring everything from survey feedback to social share of voice information into one place and unify the data – turning all those informational points into insights and actions. Those actions, fueled by real data rather than hunches, are how brands can make a positive change in how they’re perceived publicly.
Brand intelligence helps businesses understand and improve several core tenets and metrics that make up a brand’s overall presence and reputation. These include:
Brand intelligence is all about discovery and action. With the right brand intelligence software solutions in place, you’ll be able to discover what’s working with your branding efforts and take action on areas that need improvement.
In many markets, brands are more important than products. In fact, 77% of consumers make their purchasing decisions based on brand rather than the product itself. This favoritism results from an emotional connection which, once formed, is an incredibly powerful asset to any company. A significant 94% of consumers recommend brands they feel emotionally connected with.
Brand intelligence platforms are how you’ll achieve that bond. These tools are vital for shaping your brand online, in ways that go beyond just colors and visual consistency. With the right tools, you can also work on building the core characteristics of your brand identity, which are the facets of your business today’s customers resonate with deeply.
For example, 86% of consumers want authenticity from the brands they buy from, 94% want transparency, and 65% want to buy from genuine brands. To compete effectively, you need to know exactly what your public perception is across all these characteristics and metrics if you want to improve them.
Generally speaking, improving all the above will result in a more unified, consistent brand, which – according to Lucidpress – can increase revenue by up to 20%.
Branding is an umbrella term for a multi-faceted practice. When you’re brand building, you’re looking to build a competitive advantage by unifying, codifying, and consistently promoting your business as a memorable, positive entity.
Imagine that incredible brand value as a house you want to build; the work you put in would be the bricks and raw materials, but brand intelligence software is the blueprint and the tools.
Here's what you would get this kind of tech to do for you.
Brand awareness is a massive driver for product sales – people trust brands they already know about, so building your profile is key to success. With the help of surveys and share of voice tracking, brand intelligence software can tell you how many people know about your brand and what you can do to bolster that with your marketing efforts.
Knowing about your brand is one thing, but can people remember it, totally unprompted? And can they tell your logo apart from others? Brand intelligence software can dig into the numbers to help you learn how to better unify your visual identity.
It’s not enough to have great products. Today’s customers want their brands to be trustworthy and known for their positive qualities. If you can understand how people feel about you, you’ll know what needs to be done to create more affirmative connotations.
Share of voice on social media platforms plays a huge role in creating brand awareness and recognition. Software that can understand your presence on social media channels in relation to your competitors can help inform the direction of content marketing campaigns so that they’re more impactful at building awareness over time.
CSAT and NPS are industry-standard metrics denoting the likelihood to recommend as well as overall satisfaction, but where brand intelligence software goes above and beyond is in its ability to understand exactly what’s driving those recommendations – and how they stack up against your rivals. You might have the edge in terms of value, for example, but a lower recommendation likelihood in conversations around reliability.
Are you known for your environmentalism? Your openness? Your great build quality, or your low prices? Brand intelligence is more than just numbers; it’s about learning what kind of characteristics people think your brand has, and then working to further cement the ones you want while moving away from the ones you don’t.
Online reviews are a powerful indicator of brand health, so you’ll want brand intelligence tools that can scour the web and wrap valuable extra information into the overall context of brand performance. It’s these opinions, good and bad, that can help shape your brand strategy going forwards.
True brand intelligence relies on software that can sweep through an enormous amount of data, across digital touchpoints, and surface insight. That simply can’t be done manually – there are just too many factors that define overall brand health and all the associated signals are digital ones that aren’t immediately interoperable.
Now here's what these tools need to be able to do.
Brand data is messy. Whether it’s customer data built around opinions and surveys, or share of voice information that compares you against your competitors, any software in this space has to be able to collect both structured and unstructured data and turn it into context-rich information.
Consumers are talking to and about your brand all over the web – across social channels, in online reviews, and to your customer support teams. Understanding brand health relies on being able to listen to all these consumer data points as they happen and attach meaning to them.
Great brand intelligence software can help brand owners make the right decisions, and do so at the speed of modern markets. In many ways, that means that real-time brand intelligence is more important than intelligence itself.
Obtaining complete, accurate, and timely brand intelligence requires enterprises to monitor the entire public attack surface in real time for indicators of brand abuse and impersonation attacks, including fake social profiles, fraudulent logos, and spoofed domains.
AI can play a role - here's how:
AI-driven software solutions support brand intelligence efforts by continuously monitoring the vast public attack surface, intelligently analyzing text, images, and video content at scale to discover and alert on brand abuse and impersonation attacks.
Early detection of brand abuse gives enterprises the opportunity to deploy countermeasures against cyber criminals and safeguard their brand, employees, and customers against digital threats.
Brand intelligence offers several valuable benefits to companies that utilize it effectively, including:
In an increasingly competitive market, understanding and leveraging brand intelligence is crucial for any company looking to maintain and grow its market position. Brand intelligence provides the insights necessary to refine marketing strategies, enhance customer experiences, and build a stronger, more resilient brand.
By embracing the latest tools and techniques in brand intelligence, businesses can not only keep pace with their competitors but also create deeper, more meaningful connections with their customers.
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