Media monitoring has transformed over the years from simple news clipping services to real-time business intelligence that can monitor your brand, customer experience, competition and marketing effectiveness online and offline.
In the article, The Future of Media Monitoring Is Brand Intelligence, the author illustrates the shifting landscape.
“Decades ago, media monitoring mostly consisted of a simple clippings service that delivered news clippings to clients and PR firms on a regular basis.
As the years progressed, both client needs and technologies became more sophisticated, which resulted in media monitoring companies providing analysis and AVEs of the media coverage to more accurately gauge PR efforts. Clients began wanting on-demand digital availability of their coverage, as well as live daily updates to stay constantly informed. The industry adapted.”
The future though of media monitoring is not simply providing top-level analytics but garnering intelligence from the data.
“The future of media monitoring is about extracting the right intelligence from all the media sources to provide critical insights into brand sentiment, advocacy, share of voice and the long-term trends in this regard. Going a step further, the real value will be in predictive analytics of brand intelligence. Predicting how a brand will be perceived in the media in the future will become a crucial insight for many business executives to tailor their strategies to the market.”
How did media monitoring adapt? Modern day media monitoring services not only track offline media sources but online media real-time shares, watch engagement, and monitor backlinks and competitor mentions.
In the article, 4 Alternative Metrics to Evaluate Your PR Campaign's Success, the author points out how some PR teams still are lagging behind:
“I am still surprised at the archaic nature of the PR coverage reports I see handed out by agencies and PR teams: Typically, they include just the article, publication and monthly circulation.
In the old days, too, placement and circulation were pretty much all PR pros could communicate, along with whether the journalist actually stuck to whatever messaging had been presented via an interview or press release.
Digital and social media, however, have changed all that: We now have a smorgasbord of data to help us plan campaigns and measure success in a way that is more accurate, real-time and actionable."
In the article, UBER Brand & Ad Tracking in a Taxi Cab World, the author lays out an interesting strategy:
“Recently I learned that the new VP of Consumer Insights at one of the largest global packaged goods companies is considering dropping major tracking programs in favor of social media monitoring. This clarion call for the Consumer Insights industry stridently announces that—despite social media monitoring’s limitations—traditional tracking programs have grown too slow, unwieldy and costly for the modern marketing manager.
Today, a CMO in Chicago can see social media feedback from consumers in Brussels minutes after they share their experiences; but it can take months to deliver “consumer feedback” in global brand and ad tracking programs. Data flows instantaneously in our new world, causing traditional insights to appear stale and awkward. Traditional tracking looks like a taxicab in an UBER world.
Sure, marketers need data, but more importantly, they need insights at the speed of business.”
The author suggests that brand and ad tracking is based on the following principles:
1. It must work in real time, connecting us and our clients to the voice of the customer 24/7 via nimble software, easily accessible by phone, tablet and computer.
2. It must integrate mobile and traditional survey feedback with text analytics to bring structure to the consumer voice in real time.
3. It must integrate data from digital and social sources to understand the new consumer journey.
4. Automation must reduce cost and management such that we can get much MORE data for the same cost.
5. Automation must shift labor from low value to high value tasks to enable greater insights from the data.
What should marketers and public relations professionals track?
In the article, How to Measure Brand Awareness, the author explains in a bit more detail the metrics that go into measuring brand awareness.
“Brand awareness is arguably one of the hardest things to measure. Since awareness is where the sales funnel begins, though, it is critical to gain a basic understanding of where you stand. At a minimum, try to be aware of your brand’s overall reach, your impressions, and your engagement levels. Reach defines how many individuals (either customers, prospects, or even visitors that found you online but may eventually not necessarily be interested in your services or products) actually look at your content. Impressions, on the other hand, show you how many people saw your company’s online ads (via Pay Per Click, social media ads, or re-targeting campaigns, for instance). Engagement consists of many factors, such as social media sharing, commenting on your content, participating in contests and on discussion forums, or crowdsourcing participation.”
Also in the article, 8 Ways to Tell if Your Brand Awareness Measures Up, the author lists a few more basic metrics you should be thinking about before writing out your brand awareness report, such as: Brand mentions, shares, links, traffic, new visitors, bounce rate, forwards, branded keyword search, brand recall.
SophoTree is a high tech media monitoring software that can track your story in real time, gather insights about your company, brand and competitors online coverage. Cutting-edge artificial intelligence powers the platform’s keyword and keyword phrase searches and an innovative drag and drop report writer provides you and your company an all-in-one solution for your media monitoring needs. Try a search right now for one of your recent media campaign and write up your first report in minutes.
