Consumer and market intelligence are two sides of the competitive intelligence coin that every brand must have in its back pocket. And continuing this analogy, media intelligence is the contactless payment option we find essential to doing business today. It does not displace the other forms of intel, but they can’t survive without it. And in our latest report, we have 5 Steps to Media Intelligence Success that expand on why this is.
Savvy, Media Saturated Audiences
Traditional ads no longer cut it with today’s consumer. They either tune them out and not notice you, or tune them in and see every flaw with the thoughtless advertisement you’ve sent their way. They have little patience for nonsense, and lots of time to focus on taking down brands they hate. So, falling into the latter group is something brands must avoid at all costs.
It may push some to avoid interacting online all together, but that’s a mistake. And also, not necessary. There are many amazing opportunities for brands to experience exceptional success online. It merely requires a good bit of informed consumer, market and media intelligence to do so.
Capturing any significant amount of the share of voice in your category requires a thoughtful approach. It must be one that accommodates consumer concerns, completely understands where they’re coming from, and acknowledges their needs and wants – all while not being overly salesy. And certainly, not coming across as anything less than sincere and helpful, particularly when brands attempt to interact with clients around hot button issues! And we touch on much of this in this report.
In fact, in the 5 Steps to Media Intelligence Success, we outline the following steps for brands and agencies to consider – and to begin implementing today:
- Measure and Determine Benchmarks
- Identify Which Topics Are Consistently Discussed in Your Market
- Discover Related Topics That Can Help Increase Your Share of Voice
- Find Out Who the Key Opinion Leaders Are for Your Audience
- Monitor results at regular intervals
We’ll offer some highlights to give you a sense of the landscape . . .
Earning Brand Mentions
Brands can’t just create ads and expect meaningful ROI. They need to understand who the voices are in a given space and what conversations are capturing their attention. Also, which conversations are capturing reporter and consumer attention – and this number is not the same. Because, although online sentiment can be closely tracked to the news cycle, the only way to truly understand which pieces are earning social traction with consumers is to see exactly that:
And who is leading these conversations and helping it earn social traction? That’s the key bit of insight a brand needs. And in the report, we share ways to identify Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) in your category to help you along. These folks are influencers in your space, and their opinions carry lots of weight with followers.
Making Conversations that Matter
Many brands do not know what to talk about it and flub this step on the regular. They share content that they think their audience wants, instead of spending time sorting out what the audience actually wants. And those two things (the preconceived ideas by the brand vs. reality of consumer needs/wants) is often pretty different. Also, how these clusters connect:
Brands that are leading in their respective categories are doing so because they’re consulted the social media analytics to see what is being said, where and by whom. This will tie back to your KOL insight as well, offering you intel around what to partner with them to share on your behalf. And we love it when a plan comes together like that – so this is covered in the report as well, under Step 2!
Knowing Where to Start
And then it’s not only about knowing where to start – what conversations to have and it isn’t even all about the KOLs. It’s all of that and a bag of benchmarks that you created as you kicked off your campaign and then compared against at the end to measure success!
Media intelligence metrics are not fuzzy indicators. They offer a very real way to track and understand how your brand is performing in a given space. And you can measure against yourself at different points in time, as well as against competitors to see how much better your next generation AI-powered analytics insight is than theirs! And it will be, we can pretty much guarantee that.
But, we know that seeing is believing – so be sure to reach out for a personalized demo after you’re read the 5 Steps to Media Intelligence Success report. And be sure to take notes as you do, so you can ask us lots of questions that we’ll be more than happy to answer for you!
