A Breakdown of Brand Sentiment: Analysis, Tools, Metrics and Best Practices for 2024

Have you ever scrolled through endless comments on a brand’s social media post, your heart sinking with every negative one? Or maybe you’ve experienced the pure joy of seeing your company praised online? That is the power of brand sentiment. It’s the emotional undercurrent of what people are saying about your brand, and it holds immense value. But what exactly is brand sentiment, and how can we leverage it for success? Buckle up, because I’m about to dive deep!

Key Takeaways

Brand sentiment is the emotional response and perceptions customers have about a brand, evident in online mentions and feedback. Positive brand sentiment enhances reputation and customer loyalty, while negative sentiment can harm a brand’s image and revenue. Understanding and leveraging brand sentiment is crucial for making informed business decisions.

Responding to brand sentiment is essential. Whether it’s positive or negative, acknowledging customer emotions shows you care. For negative sentiment, a prompt and personalized response can help mitigate the issue and potentially turn a detractor into an advocate.

Brand sentiment analysis can be used to inform marketing campaigns. By understanding what resonates with your audience, you can develop targeted campaigns and messaging that are more likely to succeed. Use A/B testing to compare the effectiveness of different approaches based on sentiment analysis insights.

Brand sentiment analysis employs tools like natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to categorize mentions as positive, negative, or neutral. Direct feedback, social media monitoring, word-of-mouth, and internal rankings are various methods to gather data for sentiment analysis, providing a comprehensive view of public opinion.

Tracking brand sentiment involves monitoring social media, review sites, blogs, and other platforms. Tools like Brand24, Mentionlytics, Brandwatch, Social Searcher, Tailwind, HubSpot Sales Hub, and Zoho CRM are essential for collecting and analyzing sentiment data. These tools help brands stay alert to potential threats and capitalize on positive feedback.

What is Brand Sentiment?

Brand sentiment refers to online mentions of your brand and the feelings that follow them. Positive publicity leads to a good brand sentiment. However, if they are caught up in a public relations nightmare, their brand sentiment will slant negatively.

A brand sentiment analysis can help you track changes in consumer sentiments toward your brand. A brand sentiment analysis collects all mentions of your brand and determines whether they are positive, negative, or neutral.

Why is Brand Sentiment Important?

Let’s be honest, numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. You might have a high volume of mentions, but are they positive or negative? Understanding brand sentiment can help you make informed decisions that enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here are a few benefits of brand sentiment:

#1. Brand health

Brand health is directly proportional to brand sentiment. A business or brand’s health can be described as a measure of how well the company or brand delivers on specific qualities of the product or service that it promises to its customers. Brand health is built and maintained by taking care of what you provide to your customers.

#2. PR crisis mitigation

Brand sentiment is extremely crucial for PR crisis mitigation since it influences how the company recovers. When dealing with an event that will ideally have no long-term negative consequences on your business, brand sentiment can be either helpful or detrimental. Still, monitoring it is always a good idea because it allows you to respond more quickly to any PR problems.

#3. Customer satisfaction

Brand sentiment can provide valuable insights into customer satisfaction. Brand sentiment can help you understand how customers see the firm, what they think of your product or service, and whether it fits their expectations. Also, brand sentiment is significant since perception is essential in today’s competitive business environment.

#4. Brand equity

Brand equity is also strongly tied to brand sentiment; a strong emotional connection with consumers leads to increased brand equity. It has repeatedly been demonstrated to be an accurate measure of customer loyalty, good or bad, so if you’re monitoring your brand’s reputation, you’re also looking after its assets (brand health), which affects its worth (brand equity).

For instance, I once worked with a tech startup that had an impressive launch. The social media buzz was off the charts. But a closer look at brand sentiment revealed mixed emotions. While many were excited about the innovative features, a significant portion expressed frustration over usability issues. This insight was a life-changer. The startup quickly addressed these concerns, leading to a surge in positive sentiment and customer loyalty.

Brand Sentiment Analysis

Brand sentiment analysis involves using natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to evaluate the tone of online conversations. It categorizes mentions as positive, negative, or neutral, helping brands understand the emotional landscape of their audience.

Think of it as having a superpower that allows you to gauge public opinion instantly. In my experience, brand sentiment analysis has been pivotal in crisis management. During a PR crisis, real-time sentiment analysis can provide invaluable insights, allowing you to respond promptly and effectively.

How to Do Brand Sentiment Analysis

There are several approaches to doing brand sentiment analysis:

#1. Direct feedback.

Direct feedback is the most reliable method of analyzing brand sentiment. This includes customer surveys, focus groups, and online feedback. Direct feedback is also an excellent approach to learning more about your customers and what they want, as you can ask them detailed questions.

#2. Word of mouth or desire to recommend.

This kind of feedback is the most difficult to quantify, although it can be obtained through e-mail marketing or in person via a focus group. Word of mouth offers potential advantages over other strategies because you are receiving feedback directly from clients who have had direct experiences with your company. You’ll learn more about how they feel and what issues they had during their purchase process as well as whether or not they would recommend your firm to others!

#3. Social Media

Social media can provide a wealth of opinions and reviews about your firm. You can go through these posts individually or use a media monitoring tool to filter out both positive and negative sentiments while also tracking metrics like shares and likes.

It’s crucial to highlight that, while social media allows customers to easily share their thoughts, it must also be properly monitored because you never know when one tweet will lead to something serious!

#4. Internal Rankings

One method of measuring sentiment internally is to include a widget on your website that allows users to rate your app.

Brand Sentiment Tracking

Tracking brand sentiment is essential for understanding the effectiveness of your PR and marketing strategies. It involves monitoring social media, review sites, blogs, and other online platforms where customers express their opinions.

From my experience, setting up a business sentiment tracking system requires a combination of the right tools and a dedicated team. Regularly reviewing the data and adjusting your strategies based on the insights can lead to significant improvements in brand perception.

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Brand Sentiment Tools

You can use various tools to gather and analyze data about your brand’s sentiment. Gathering data on consumer sentiment is nearly impossible in today’s corporate environment. These sentiment analysis tools can assist you with that.

#1. Brand24

Brand24 is a social media monitoring/sentiment analysis tool that distinguishes itself from other tools that claim to save you time and make your job easier in the digital era. Brand24 will collect brand mentions and analyze them using modern sentiment analysis algorithms. Also, Brand24 can provide you with the most accurate data, rather than simply telling if the sentiment is positive or negative.

#2. Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics is a brand monitoring application that allows you to select any keywords you want to track and then collects mentions of those keywords from social media and other sources on the web. It also includes automated sentiment analysis tools, allowing you to rapidly determine whether the mentions are positive, negative, or neutral.

#3. Brandwatch

Brandwatch also collects mentions on social media, such as posts and direct messages. It displays the sentiment of each post, as well as a summary of all of your mentions and their sentiment. It notifies you of potential brand threats to help you stay alert.

#4. Social Searcher

On Social Searcher, it is free to search for specific keywords and view business sentiment analysis, as well as other post statistics. If you upgrade to the premium edition, you will also get a stored log of your previous mentions.

#5. Tailwind

If you want to have greater control over your visual posts, Tailwind is the greatest approach to showcase your content and merchandise on Pinterest. Tailwind allows you to schedule images for any time of day, intelligently measure how many people have seen those pins using Google Analytics, find trending memes that you may not be aware of, generate suggestions for what to buy next from your storefront (based on all sales data), and see who is reviewing your items and what they may say about them-all in one calm place.

#6. HubSpot Sales Hub

All-in-one solution built on the HubSpot CRM platform to maximize sales rep efficiency. In addition, you’ll have access to the firm’s growing ecosystem of app and solution partners, all geared to provide an amazing end-to-end customer experience.

#7. Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a machine learning and AI-powered customer relationship management tool that integrates seamlessly across online and mobile platforms for increased productivity and peace of mind. Over 150,000 organizations from across the world use rich system reporting features to manage their client relationships, resulting in long-term movement in any industry. The Zoho CRM setup includes everything you need: company profile creation, integrations, and calendar support, all in a user-friendly interface.

Brand Sentiment Metrics

We discussed the importance of tracking business sentiment across various platforms. But how do we analyze this data and measure the return on investment (ROI) of our brand sentiment efforts? Here’s a breakdown of key brand sentiment metrics:

#1. Net sentiment score

This metric gets straight to the point. It calculates the overall positive, negative, or neutral sentiment of your brand mentions. Think of it as a temperature gauge for your brand’s emotional reception. Tools typically assign a sentiment score (positive, negative, or neutral) to each mention, and the net sentiment score reflects the overall balance.

#2. Volume of mentions

This metric tracks the sheer number of times your brand is mentioned online. While a high volume often indicates strong brand awareness, it’s crucial to analyze the sentiment alongside it. A surge in negative mentions can be more damaging than radio silence.

#3. Sentiment by topic

This metric helps you understand how sentiment varies across different topics related to your brand. For example, you might be receiving positive reviews about your product quality but negative feedback about customer service. Sentiment by topic allows you to identify areas where you’re excelling and areas needing improvement.

#4. Brand sentiment over time

Tracking your brand sentiment score and other metrics over time provides valuable insights into your brand’s progress. Are you building positive sentiment over time? Has a recent campaign impacted customer perception? Monitoring trends allows you to assess the effectiveness of your PR and marketing efforts.

#5. Share of voice (SOV)

This metric measures the percentage of brand mentions within a specific industry or market compared to your competitors. A high SOV coupled with positive sentiment indicates you’re a major player with a strong reputation.

#6. Engagement rate

This metric tracks the level of interaction your brand receives online, including likes, comments, shares, and replies. Analyze how engagement differs based on sentiment. Positive mentions often lead to higher engagement, indicating customer loyalty and advocacy.

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The Impact of Positive and Negative Sentiment

Positive sentiment can boost your brand’s reputation, attract new customers, and increase loyalty. It’s a testament to your brand’s success in meeting customer expectations.

Conversely, negative sentiment can harm your brand’s image, leading to a loss of customers and revenue. However, it’s also an opportunity to improve. You can transform detractors into advocates by addressing the root causes of negative sentiment.

I remember handling a campaign that initially received negative feedback due to a misunderstanding. By actively engaging with our audience and clarifying our message, we not only mitigated the negative sentiment but also turned it into a positive outcome. This experience reinforced the importance of listening and responding to customer emotions.

Best Practices for Managing Brand Sentiment

You’ve seen your brand sentiment score, and you’re not pleased with the results. So, what should you do if you want to improve it? Follow these four tips to boost your company sentiment:

#1. Ensure consistent monitoring

The digital realm is constantly changing, so you should check your company sentiment regularly to keep ahead of possible issues and mitigate them as needed. Include this duty in your marketing activities regularly, and simplify the process using an automated tool!

#2. Respond immediately

When you see negative brand mentions surface online, respond swiftly. Make sure your response is personalized and that it answers the poster’s query or addresses their problem.

#3. Adapt your strategies

If you see an increase in negative brand mentions, identify the cause of the problem and address it before it becomes a major issue.

While an increase in negative feedback is troubling it does not necessarily mean disaster. Use your brand sentiment analysis to determine what went wrong and how you can improve in the future. You can also do the opposite: if you discover a campaign or approach that correlates with a favorable increase in brand mentions, embrace it!

#4. Test new ideas

Brand sentiment analysis can also reveal new ideas for your marketing campaigns. Keep an eye out for these, and don’t be afraid to try them. To accomplish this efficiently, conduct an A/B or multivariate test on your new campaign idea, whether it’s a new messaging tactic, post format, or strategy.

Is brand sentiment a KPI?

Yes, Brand sentiment can be a KPI (Key Performance Indicator). Brand sentiment is a valuable KPI that provides insights into your brand’s emotional reception. While it may not directly measure revenue, it offers crucial information for building a strong brand and achieving long-term success.

How do you build brand sentiment?

Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to build strong company sentiment:

Understand your audience
Deliver consistent quality
Engage with your audience
Provide exceptional customer service
Create valuable content
Foster a strong brand identity
Listen and adapt
Build trust through transparency
Engage in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
Leverage User-Generated Content (UGC)
Influencer and partnership marketing

What companies use brand sentiment analysis?

Brand sentiment analysis has become a vital tool for businesses across a wide range of industries. Here are some examples:

Tech companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft
Retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target
Consumer goods companies like P&G, Unilever, and Nestle
Travel and hospitality companies like Airbnb, Booking Holdings, and Marriott International
Healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies are increasingly using sentiment analysis
Entertainment companies like Netflix, Disney, and Spotify

Conclusion

Brand sentiment is more than just a buzzword, it’s a powerful tool that provides deep insights into how your customers feel about your brand. By understanding and managing company sentiment, you can enhance customer satisfaction, build loyalty, and drive business success.

I’ve seen firsthand how proactive sentiment analysis can turn potential crises into opportunities for growth. Whether you’re launching a new product or managing customer feedback, brand sentiment analysis should be a core part of your strategy.

Now, I’d love to hear from you. Have you used brand sentiment analysis in your business? What challenges have you faced, and how did you overcome them? Share your stories below!