It’s no surprise to anyone paying attention that the world of marketing has changed. Consumers are officially in the driver’s seat and are creating a new set of challenges for brands and marketers.
A majority of consumers use the web as their primary source of information, especially when it comes to products or services that they need, regardless of whether or not they make the purchase online.
What is being said about your company or brand matters because digital content is fast becoming the ONLY content some consumers read. Whether it’s web analytics or monitoring your brand in the online space, knowing what people are doing and, just as importantly, what they are saying about you, has become an integral part of successful business operations.
Customer reviews also play a significant role when it comes to influencing buying decisions. Let’s face it, who’s going to buy a product or patronize a business that has an overwhelming number of negative reviews? Or even no reviews, evidencing that they’re insignificant, at best.
Today’s eMarketer, cites a study from MiresBall and KRC Research, showing that 40% of brands realize that social media presents new challenges when it comes to maintaining brand integrity. My question: what are those 40% of brands doing to monitor and protect their brand reputation?
If you are not monitoring your brand online, it’s like driving a car without a seat belt or — em, having “relations” without a condom. You can do it but WHY would you? If you have a wreck – and those happen as much in relationships (personal or brand-related) as they do in cars – your chances of survival are much higher if you’re wearing protection. Monitoring is protection for your brand and sometimes you don’t realize how valuable monitoring can be until it’s too late.
These days, when it comes to developing marketing strategies for our clients, my team at V3 regularly includes social media monitoring and business intelligence gathering tools as part of the arsenal of tools that we employ. There is no shortage of monitoring tools and, in our opinion, you get what you pay for. We use Spiral16 (and they’re also a client) and find that they make the job of keeping track of our clients’ brands and helping them manage their brand reputation easier. What are you using and why?
Photo credit: Chris Christner, TopTechWriter.us (and thanks for making me smile).
P.S. If you don’t know who Bill Clinton is, you are clearly exponentially younger than I am.
P.S.S. This is not a political statement – it’s comedy!
Shelly Kramer is the founder and CEO of V3 Broadsuite (V3B), Senior Analyst and one of the founding partners at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked with some of the world’s largest brands to lead them into the digital space, embrace disruption and the reality of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of Digital Transformation. As a brand strategist, she has decades of experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, and driving strategy and growth for B2B brands across multiple verticals.
