Things have changed dramatically on the awareness and brand tracking front since I began marketing so many years ago. When I engage clients I always do a little background search to understand their challenges. To do that I simply measure their brand awareness against their competition. I can do the same thing for their industry or solution category. Once I’m engaged, I use the same tools to measure and trend the impact our efforts are making. Seems natural, yet so many people do not do it. What’s even more amazing, people will rarely understand the impact you’re making until they see the visuals. And these tools are completely visual. If you need competitive intelligence, or you need to understand who to influence and how to influence then you need to use these tools.
The first aspect is the ability to measure online word of mouth; essentially how many times are you getting mentions in the various online publications. And remember, for you old school veterans like myself, anything in print these days eventually makes its way online hence anything measured online is a very good representation of the truth. That said, the truth is limited by the capabilities and the reach of the tools utilized to do the measurement. How do you get around that? Use lots of different tools and aggregate the general results. It makes for a great slideshow. You can measure online impressions, blogger impressions, and Twitter impressions. You can measure trends. You can measure frequency. You can measure context. How do you do it? My friends, allow me to share with you some of my often used tools:
Alexa - http://www.alexa.com
Compete - http://www.compete.com
Google Trends - http://www.google.com/trends (I love this site because it explains the results)
Icerocket - trend.icerocket.com
Tweet Volume - http://www.tweetvolume.com
Twist - twist.flaptor.com
Twitter Spectrum - http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterSpectrum/TwitterSpectrum.html
Now those are just some of the free ones I use regularly for immediate big picture answers. If I really want to get crazy I can use paid tools like:
Hitwise - http://www.hitwise.com
Comscore - http://www.comscore.com
Now if I want to do some cool behind the scenes connect-the-dots between people and events then I use a product that creates visualizations of the connections between my comparison points. There are free trials but to use it ongoing it needs some money; that said it’s great for the marketer and sales professionals.
Intellectspace - http://www.intellectspace.com
And, the classic under-used and over-delivery vehicles that every marketer must use to connect with any person of influence:
LinkedIn - http://www.linkedin.com (I love this tool - it rocks!)
Zoominfo - http://www.zoominfo.com
If I want to understand what my competition is saying or doing, I use sites where their content is probably posted, even though they may not have put it there. Have you evaluated:
Slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net
Insight24 - http://www.insight24.com
Ironically, I haven’t even talked about the power of social marketing and using connected networks to spy or evaluate or brainstorm new approaches or tactics despite social marketing being the biggest aspect of web 2.0. Crazy, eh?!
So what am I saying? I’m saying stop executing marketing programs and actually put some strategy in place. Assess the situation with these tools. Target your spheres of influence - people, companies, sites, bloggers, journalists, investors, and publications. Use the tools to figure out how to engage through the most trusted introduction service ever invented - the referral. Then utilize these avenues and exploit them to create the second most effective marketing tool - word of mouth. Measure your results over time to validate not only your increased traction, but your increased traction at the expense of your competition.
The biggest lesson you will learn is that sometimes, size doesn’t matter. Using these simple and affordable, or free, tools you can change the game using classic guerrilla marketing techniques. The rest is all execution. Enjoy.
Now if I want to do some cool behind the scenes connect-the-dots between people and events then I use a product that creates visualizations of the connections between my comparison points.