What can internet monitoring tools do for your startup?

Lots of things come to mind when it’s time to develop a marketing plan, from Google ads to sponsored media articles to a huge billboard by the side of the road. But when we start out in a new business every penny counts and we have to pay very careful attention to how our marketing budgets are spent. This is why it’s crucial to identify the best source of potential customers as well as where your competition is active. This is where internet monitoring comes in.

1. You can be wherever they’re talking about you

More than 50% consumers do online research prior to making many purchases and that includes discussing it on social media. This gives us a great starting point for tracking what consumers are saying about you. Monitoring lets you engage customers, guage their opinions and help supply relevant information. But this is only the beginning of what monitoring can do.

A primary function of monitoring, especially important for new companies, is identifying people and places that are talking about you or your products. This allows you to see the source of customer complaints and what they need to keep them satisfied. This kind of insight is crucial to keeping up with trends and making sure that you and customers are moving in the same online spaces. It can also give you early warning on small problems that you can correct before they grow beyond your control.

More than 50% consumers do online research prior to making many purchases Click to Tweet

One of Brand24's clients monitors all phrases related to the product category where the operate, which is something of a niche market. Their clever and quick responses to these online mentions helped to quadruple their online store conversion rate.

The value you can get out of carefully analyzing online discussions about your brand is incredible. Playstation makes a huge effort to join online discussions about Playstation4 and as a result increased their number of followers on Twitter by 60% and got almost 90% positive commentary from it!

2. You can keep an eye on the competition and learn from their mistakes

Another equally important asset of media monitoring is the ability to see what your competitors are doing. Where are they advertising, how are they operating and how are they maintaining contact with consumers? Online monitoring delivers answers to all of these questions and more. You need to know what the competition is doing and if it’s working or not so you can let their failure be a lesson to you before you go down the wrong path.

Source: Brand24 Report Panel

3. You can identify opinion leaders

Monitoring also helps you to identify groups and individuals that have a lot to say on a particular subject and become opinion leaders - sources of advice that have a great influence on online purchases. This turns on the power of recommendation marketing that resonates with consumers who look to people they know for advice on brands and products.

When you find an opinion leader through media monitoring, you have a great chance to engage them and - who knows? - try to turn them into an ambassador for your brand.

Cooperation with opinion leaders can have an amazing effect on your brand. Getting them on board can improve positive online mentions about you by 40%!

Source: Brand24

Internet monitoring tools like Brand24 gives you unlimited possibilities to inform customers about your brand and identify places to run your communication.