In addition to reviewing the brand’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) after the end of a campaign, it is recommended to analyse whether the marketing actions have had an impact on the conversation about brand perception (SOV and sentiment) on digital platforms or whether it has gone unnoticed.

How do you know if marketing actions are having an impact on brand perception?

More and more brands want to measure the results of their campaigns and know if they have had a real impact on the audience or if the action has gone unnoticed as a result. Previously, brands used to measure the impact of campaigns thanks to word of mouth, and many now digitised even measure the impact based on the results collected by their social networks, but how do they ensure that marketing actions have had a real impact on the audience, how can they measure if the audience is talking about the campaign, how do they find out if the sentiment generated has been positive or negative, how do they identify if the opinions can be positive or negative, and how do they identify if the opinions can have a positive or negative impact on the campaign?

It is at this point that Social Intelligence becomes important to justify why we should measure the impact of campaigns beyond the results that are stipulated in internal KPIs. 

The aim of this article is to explain why it is important to measure the impact of campaigns beyond the internal review of KPIs, i.e. to find out if the campaign has had an impact on user perception using two measurement metrics: conversation volume (SOV) and generated sentiment (positive, neutral or negative).

What is brand perception and why measure it?

A user’s impression, opinion or registration of a brand, product or organisation is defined as brand perception. A consumer’s perception can be influenced by previous experiences (beliefs, habits, word of mouth, or tastes) which can sometimes help to favour or disfavour brands, and it is for this very reason that it is recommended to measure the impact that a campaign may have had once the action has ended in order to then measure whether or not the consumer’s perception has changed.

How can we measure brand perception?

When measuring consumer perception we are going to take into account two metrics, firstly, the volume of conversation (SOV) because we want to know if users are talking about the brand and to what extent and, secondly, the sentiment of the conversation because we want to know the organic opinion of the consumer (positive, neutral or negative). This data will help us to know the perception that users have of the brand by comparing these results in two different time periods: pre- and post-campaign. In this way, knowing the situation of the brand before and after the action, it is possible to corroborate whether the marketing actions have had any impact or repercussion on the conversation. 

What does the Social Listening process consist of and how can it help to understand brand perception? 

The Social Listening approach begins with the configuration of the tool, this is known as the set-up, which consists of writing a query composed of all the essential keywords for our brand or topic to investigate, as a good data result will depend exclusively on how well the search is written. After writing the query and downloading the data, the review and cleaning process begins, sometimes chaotic, to ensure that the results match the parameters that have been set for the search. This step sometimes requires several revisions to ensure a good degree of quality in the data sample. The last step in the listening process is to analyse the data in order to extract insights and learnings that help us understand the user’s current perception of a brand or topic, and what are the key learnings to improve and modify their communication.

What are the findings useful for? 

The insights and learnings extracted from the different digital conversations are intended to provide answers to business questions and to support decision-making (strategy, business, communication, etc.). Moreover, they can be an additional and complementary source of data to traditional research. Therefore, the information gathered through analysis allows brands to know and understand where their brand reputation stands according to consumer perception and what other elements found can serve as a guide in future marketing campaigns.  

Do you measure brand perception? Start now

Monica del Dedo – Senior Research & Insights Analyst