Brand Sentiment: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Brands

Brand sentiment is a critical aspect of evaluating the health and reputation of your business. Brand sentiment, or net brand attitude, gauges how people feel about their interactions with your firm online. Brands must carefully monitor this dynamic so that they can enhance those aspects of their business that will most positively impact customer experience!

You will learn:

• What is brand sentiment?
• Why is brand sentiment so important?
• How can brand sentiment be improved?
• What are tools that help with improving brand sentiment?

Let’s dive in!

What is brand sentiment?

Brands are more than just logos and names. Brand sentiment is a measure of how people feel about your business or product, and it can have huge impacts on sales, loyalty, and customer retention. Brand sentiment can be measured in a number of ways: social media posts from customers, the reviews they leave for you online, what your employees say about their experience working at your company – even if someone mentions a competitor’s brand in conversation with them!

Brand sentiment also measures how they feel in more formal settings such as customer feedback surveys (email marketing) or focus groups (in person). Brand sentiment can be positive, negative, and neutral – but it’s not black and white. You aren’t either loved by everyone or hated by all; rather you are accepted to varying degrees depending on which product niche you’re operating in.

Achieving positive brand sentiment is an imperative for all companies because it leads to more customer loyalty and better business results. Positive brand sentiments are hard-earned with good service, quality products, transparency and consistency over time. 

Negative branding happens when one business does something that another company doesn’t like – such as poaching their employees – which causes the two brands to “fight” against each other in the public eye. Brand sentiment can also be called net brand attitude, and it’s the sum of all positive feelings about your firm minus all negative reactions to that same company.

Why is brand sentiment analysis important?

I?m never usually one to complain, but I just boarded my first @Ryanair flight since before covid, and my seat was absolutely filthy? this is it after I brushed it all onto the floor! had obviously not been cleaned since last flight, bad form especially In covid times? pic.twitter.com/f32jmEzosF

— Chelle (@MichelleF95) August 3, 2021

Brand sentiment is a powerful thing. Brand sentiment can make or break your company, so it’s essential to monitor the sentiment and keep track of how you are perceived in the marketplace.

Brand health

Brand health is directly related to brand sentiment. A business or brand health can be defined as a measure of how well the company or brand delivers on particular features of the product or service that it promises its customers. Brand health is created and maintained by taking care of what you’re delivering to your customer. 

Brand sentiment is important because it can make or break your firm, so it’s essential to monitor the sentiment and keep track of how you are perceived in the marketplace. Brand health also ties in with brand sentiment because if the brand sentiment is high then there is most likely a good feeling shared among those who use your product, which will lead to brand health.

PR crisis mitigation

Brand sentiment is really important for PR crisis mitigation, since it affects how the firm recovers. Brand sentiment can be either a help or a hindrance when dealing with an event that will hopefully not have any lasting negative effects on your brand. Still, monitoring it is always a smart idea, as it can help you react quicker to any PR disasters.

Customer satisfaction

Brand sentiment can tell you a lot about customer satisfaction. Brand sentiment can help you to understand how customers see the company, what they think about your product or service and whether it meets their expectations. Brand sentiment is important because in a competitive business environment, perception really matters.

Brand equity

"Successful storytelling builds brand equity, and businesses with high brand equity don't need to draw as much attention to themselves and their achievements as those that are still establishing their value to the customer." ? @garyvee

— Barrack Onyango? (@barryonyango) August 10, 2021

Brand equity is directly related to brand sentiment as well – a strong emotional connection with consumers will lead to higher levels of brand equity. Brand sentiment has been shown time and again to be an accurate indicator of customer loyalty – good or bad – so if you’re monitoring your brand’s reputation then that means you are also taking care of its assets (brand health) which impacts its value (brand equity).

How do you measure brand sentiment?

There are multiple ways to measure brand sentiment:

1) Direct feedback

Direct feedback is the most reliable way to measure brand sentiment. This includes customer surveys, focus groups and online reviews. Direct feedback is also a great way to learn more about your customers and what they want, since you can ask them in-depth questions.

Some companies have a customer service team that provides this direct feedback on behalf of the firm. It’s important to note that when reading these surveys or reviews, it’s best not to read too much into any one survey. Most likely there will be both positive and negative responses from customers who are happy with their orders as well as those who are unhappy.

If there is an overwhelmingly high number of people complaining about something then you should definitely pay attention!

2) Word of mouth or willingness to recommend

Word of mouth ???? #eatlocal #supportsmallbusiness pic.twitter.com/NNEkUrnyaq

— Mr. Hyde & Mr. Seek (@mrhydemrseek) August 6, 2021

This type of feedback is the most difficult to measure, but it can be done through e-mail marketing or in person with a focus group. Word of mouth has potential benefits that other methods don’t because you are getting this feedback straight from customers who have had direct interactions with your business. You’ll get more detail 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!

There’s one caveat though: Brand sentiment needs time for any major changes to take effect before being measured appropriately by these means. For example, if there was an issue with customer service at some point last year then it won’t show up on word-of-mouth surveys until people start talking about it again.

3) Social media

Social media can be a goldmine of opinions and reviews about your company. You can either read through these posts individually, or use a media monitoring tool to weed out the positive and negative sentiments from all of them as well as track metrics such as shares and likes.

It’s important to note that while social media is an easy way for customers to express their opinions, it also needs to be monitored closely because you never know when one tweet may turn into something big!

a) Comment sentiment

Comment sentiment is all about what people are saying and how they feel about a topic. It’s also worth observing hashtag performance.

b) Comment velocity

Velocity tells you how much buzz you’re generating, as well as your social media reach.

c) Engagement metrics

Engagement metrics include the number of reactions to your post, as well as their tone. If your post has gathered more reactions than normal but they’re negative, there might be a PR crisis ahead.

4) Internal rankings

Having a widget that allows for rating your app on your website, for example, is one way to measure sentiment internally.

How can brand sentiment be improved?

The best way to improve sentiment is by providing a quality product or service. Brand loyalty has increased over the past few years, which may be due in part to how good brands have become at one thing: meeting customer expectations!

Media monitoring

Media monitoring can help you identify what needs improving and how it should be done more effectively.

In addition to that, having a customer service team on hand who are knowledgeable about the firm’s products and services will provide better feedback than any survey could because they’re interacting with customers first-hand!

Once you have this information available then all that remains is for management to make decisions based on these findings. They’ll know which aspects of their business need improvement in order to keep brand sentiment as high as possible.

Sentiment analysis (or opinion mining)

When you’ve gathered the data through media monitoring, it’s worth analysing it in regard to its sentiment. Brand sentiment analysis tools can help you understand your customers and prospects better, by looking at the content of their posts that mention a brand. Using sophisticated machine learning algorithms, tools can determine the tone of a mention.

Brand sentiment can be positive (a good thing), negative or neutral – it’s important to know what people are saying about your brand. Brand sentiment analysis is also useful for identifying key influencers in your network so that you can work with them on social media campaigns.

For example, if there was an article published online where the author stated XYZ brand product was great because they had researched all of its features before buying it, this would have a high positivity score as they were satisfied with their purchase decision. However, if someone else published an article stating “XYZ Brand Product didn’t live up my expectations” then this would have a negative score because the customer was not satisfied with their purchase.

Social sentiment analysis is helping local officials understand the views and concerns of their residents about #COVID19 vaccinations, giving them information they need to shape effective messaging strategies https://t.co/zpqSdcvsnj

— Harvard Kennedy School (@Kennedy_School) August 9, 2021

Social media sentiment analysis is necessary because it’s more than just reading reviews and blog posts. Brand sentiment analysis can show if certain customer segments have a higher propensity to mention your firm, what type of conversations are happening around it online and the level of positivity in those discussions.

It would be useful for managers to review these reports on a quarterly or monthly basis as they provide valuable information about market conditions that should be considered when planning marketing strategies and campaigns.

In order not to overwhelm management with data during this process, you could also set up alerts so that anything above an ‘average’ score is flagged – then one person can follow-up by sorting through all the individual pieces of content to make sense of them all!

Good customer service

Good customer service is a sure way to keep customers happy. This trend will likely continue because the quality of brands has soared over the past few years, meaning that they’re meeting more and more expectations when it comes to providing products or services!

Social media marketing strategy

Having a great social media strategy is also something that can certainly help with brand sentiment. For one, it’s great to have a spokesperson who can represent the brand’s values in the best light possible. Another thing is to keep things engaged by publishing content that is regularly updated, and to do so consistently. It’s been shown that people are more likely to interact with your posts if you post at least once a day!

Tools useful for maintaining positive brand sentiment

There are a number of tools you can use to help with gathering and analysing information about your brand sentiment.

Media monitoring and sentiment analysis tools

Gathering data about customer sentiment is virtually impossible in the current business environment. These sentiment analysis tools can help you with that.

Brand24

Brand24 is a social media monitoring/sentiment analysis tool that stands out from all other software that claims it will save you time and make your job easier in the digital age. Brand24 will gather brand mentions and analyse them with advanced sentiment analysis algorithms Brand24 can provide you with the most accurate data, more than just stating whether the sentiment is positive or negative. 

It was developed with user-friendliness in mind, so most of the work can be left up to Brand24’s algorithms which are trained by real humans constantly tweaking them for accuracy–not just mathematical formulae being set in stone but evolving as society evolves too!

Mentionlytics

Mentionlytics tracks a keyword for mentions or posts to every website possible. Whether it’s blogs, forums, twitter feeds, or news sites monitoring Mentionlytics can help with that. On top of that, it records them in one convenient view. It comes with social sentiment analysis as well.

Social media management platforms

With social media having an all-encompassing reach, utilising it to its fullest is imperative for a brand’s success. Doing all of that manually is a hassle nobody has time for.

Buffer

Buffer is a social media management suite that helps you publish, engage with your followers, and analyse the performance of your campaigns. Unlike on other platforms where it can be difficult to manage different social media platforms at once, Buffer lets you use multiple profiles seamlessly. Reaching your target audience is pretty effortless.

Tailwind

If you want some more control over your visual posting, Tailwind is the best way to showcase your content and merchandise on Pinterest. With Tailwind, you can schedule images for any time of the day, intelligently measure how many people have seen those pins via Google Analytics, find trending memes that you might not know about, generate suggestions for what to buy next off your storefront (via all sales data), scope out who’s reviewing your items and what they might say about them-all in one calm place.

Customer relationship management tools

As your firm grows, you’ll need something to manage all of the customer relations sooner or later.

HubSpot Sales Hub

All-in-one solution that was built on the HubSpot CRM platform to create unprecedented sales rep efficiency. Plus, access to the firm’s expanding ecosystem of app and solutions partners designed for an exceptional end-to-end customer experience.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a machine learning and AI-powered, customer relationship management platform that features tight integration across web and mobile devices for enhanced productivity and peace of mind. With rich system reporting capabilities, over 150,000 businesses from around the world manage their relationships with customers to create lasting movement in any industry. The Zoho CRM setup includes everything you need: business profile set up, integrations, calendar support – all in an easy-to-use interface.

The bottom line

Brand sentiment is an important indicator of how a brand is perceived in the market. Brand Sentiment will teach you what to do when your customers are feeling good about your company or not so much. It also provides some tools that can help gather data about customer sentiment as well as identify problems with branding efforts before they become too costly. Branding starts with understanding who your target audience is and catering to their needs; otherwise, it’s just a waste of time and money!

FAQ

What is a good brand sentiment?

A good brand sentiment refers to the overall feelings and opinions that people have towards a brand. It can be measured as either positive sentiment or negative sentiment.

Having a positive sentiment means that people generally like and have favorable opinions about the brand. They may feel happy, satisfied, and loyal towards the brand, which can result in increased customer engagement, brand advocacy, and sales.

On the other hand, a negative sentiment indicates that people have unfavorable opinions or negative experiences with the brand. This can lead to decreased customer satisfaction, poor reputation, and potential loss of customers.

What are sentiment metrics?

Sentiment metrics are measures used for measuring brand sentiment or the overall sentiment expressed by individuals towards a brand or its products/services. These metrics help organizations understand the general perception and feelings associated with their brand.

One common application of sentiment metrics is in social media sentiment analysis, where algorithms analyze social media posts and comments to determine the sentiment expressed. This brand analysis can categorize sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral, providing insights into how the brand is being perceived on social media platforms.

How do you increase brand sentiment?

To increase brand sentiment, consider the following strategies:

• Track brand sentiment: Regularly monitor and analyze the sentiment associated with your brand using sentiment analysis tools and social listening. This helps you understand how people feel about your brand and identify areas for improvement.
• Deliver exceptional experiences: Provide outstanding products, services, and customer support to create positive experiences and generate strong brand sentiment.
• Engage with your audience: Actively listen to customer feedback, respond promptly and sincerely, and engage in meaningful conversations to show that their opinions matter.
• Build a positive reputation: Uphold transparency, integrity, and ethical practices consistently. Deliver on your brand promises to build trust and foster positive brand sentiment.
• Create valuable content: Share relevant, informative, and engaging content that resonates with your target audience. Position your brand as a trusted source of valuable information.
• Cultivate brand advocates: Encourage satisfied customers to become brand advocates who actively promote and share positive experiences with others, further boosting brand sentiment.

By implementing these strategies and actively tracking brand sentiment, businesses can effectively increase brand sentiment and create a positive perception of their brand among their target audience.