Your guide to strategic brand analytics in the digital age
Have you ever thought about breaking away from the crowd? Yes? Great! This post offers an in-depth summary of how you can raise your voice higher than most people online.
What is the key to standing out?
Digital analytics may be one of the best-kept secrets in the marketing, advertising, and public relations industries. The reason for the secrecy, well, if everyone knew the power of data and how to interpret it, there would be no need to outsource. You’re in luck! This post has broken the complicated subject of digital brand analytics and market share into three easy to digest parts.
Brand, what does that mean to you? Some people may think of Nike, MAC Cosmetics, Target, Chanel, Starbucks, etc. Those are all great corporations and brands with several things in common, one being the ability to effectively analyze content and engagement.
Of course, you are an individual and small-business that may not have the available resources like those of Nike or similar companies. To be successful, you don’t need them. Take this quote from Chuck Hemann and Ken Burbary in Making Sense of Consumer Data in a Digital World: Digital Marketing Analytics, “to stay consistently relevant, you must have your finger on the pulse of your digital brand health.”
With that said, here is the first step you should take when growing your brand:
Brand share begins with measuring what category and audience your brand reaches and occupies. The easiest way to think about brand share is to break it down into three equally important parts:
- What people say – Also known as share of voice (SOV), is easily broken down as: conversations about your brand / total conversations in your brand category. For example, take all the conversations happening about Nike, then divide those conversations specifically about Nike, by all the conversations happening in the apparel category.
- What people do – More commonly known as share of search (SOS), equals searches about your brand/total searches in your brand category. This may be self-explanatory, and just refers to how many people are searching for your brand compared to your competitors.
- Who’s your audience – Or share of audience (SOA) is equal to the total audience for your brand / total audience per competitor within a category. This part is a little more complex and should be broken down. Start with focusing on one platform like Facebook, then move onto your other platforms collecting the total sum. After you are done calculating the total of your own audience, do the same for your competitors. By plugging in your total audience with that of one of your competitors, you will then discover your SOA.
If you can remember these three parts, then you’re well on your way to understanding market share, solidifying your brand, and having a competitive advantage over your competition.
I’ll leave you with this quote from Tom Peters in Fast Company, “all of us need to understand the importance of branding. We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You.”
Janet Diane White 