There are a few factors that can affect the longevity of a brand’s media monitoring activities. For some, cost-effectiveness might be one of them. We’ve touched upon this topic in our blog on the monthly vs. annual subscriptions dilemma.
? Read Media Monitoring: The Ultimate Guide
In short, an annual subscription should be the go-to choice for any brand that thinks long-term. But, not solely for the financial benefits. Truth is, the benefits of continuous media monitoring outweigh even the increased value for money you get with an annual subscription.
If getting 12 months’ worth of monitoring and media intelligence for the price of 10 doesn’t sound appealing enough, let us elaborate on the 7 ways you can capitalize on continuous media monitoring.
What you get with continuous media monitoring:
1. Extensive historical data
The first benefit is the most obvious one. Naturally, by monitoring your brand (or any other topic, for that matter) over a longer period, you create what is virtually a historical record of online conversations and media coverage of that specific query.
Thus, historical data is what allows you to effectively predict trends and patterns. This is in contrast to real-time data that helps identify already emerging ones. So, it’s the case of being proactive vs. reactive.
Ideally, you would use historical and real-time data in conjunction. That way, you obtain the most precise data that guides informed decisions and effective strategies.
Having prolonged historical data also means that at any given moment in the future you can go back to a certain event or post and link it to current events. It’s inevitable that some topics that arise over time will carry greater importance at one time rather than another. In those cases, extensive historical data makes it easy for you to analyze how such topics developed over time.
2. Effective benchmarking
In business, benchmarking is and always will be extremely important. This quote by Kreischer Miller’s CPA Robert Olszewski is as relevant today as it was in 2010 when it originated:
”As we move through these volatile times, companies should be benchmarking against their industry group and performing a critical assessment of the historical trends of their own business. Historical trends tell the story of where you have been, where you currently are and assists in forecasting where you would like to be.”
The reason why every business should regularly conduct historical trend analysis and industry benchmarking is that they can help:
- monitor performance,
- develop optimal strategies,
- adapt to changing circumstances,
- identify both potential business opportunities and threats.
In that context, media intelligence obtained during a long period of time will allow for an effective Competitive analysis. That way, based on ample historical data, a business can do internal and external benchmarking.
For example, brand reputation can be measured quarterly. Then, you can analyze the reports at the end of the year to evaluate the progress made.
Or, you can look at a business’s performance as a whole. A brand that does continuous tracking can compare how it stands against competitors. Then, it can benchmark yearly performance to measure the impact of key business decisions or important events on all parties.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure and, if we may add, you can’t optimize what you don’t benchmark.
3. More precise consumer insights
Tracking a query over a long period of time also means that you get deeper insights into your consumers’ online behavior. More specifically, their changing needs and preferences.
So, as you monitor a certain topic, the tool will collect raw, uninfluenced consumer feedback and transform it into actionable business insights.
To start off, each mention in Determ also contains information about:
- The author,
- Location,
- Time of publishing,
- Sentiment,
- Metrics about the reach, interactions, engagement rate, and influence.
Moreover, based on results from crawling 100+ million online sources in real-time, the tool also creates ample data analytics.
For instance, you could learn which channels your audience already uses the most to discuss a certain topic, so you can amplify your marketing efforts there. Or, you could detect that your audience’s receptiveness changes over time depending on which type of content you post, so you know how to adjust your strategy accordingly.
Armed with this knowledge, you can easily identify trends and patterns in consumer behavior over time. Subsequently, providing such a proactive, insights-based approach is guaranteed to yield better results as it is tailored exactly to your target audience.
4. Increased customer success
As we established, continuous monitoring can help you get to know your audience better. But, that’s not the only relationship that gets improved long-term.
In Determ, all paid plans include a dedicated Account Manager and Customer Success Manager. Those are the people that do their best to better understand your own needs and preferences in order to help you make the most of your media monitoring service.
A long-term partnership, as we like to view it, enables our team’s complete commitment to your account and its success. So, how does this work in practice, you might ask?
In your first 6 weeks with Determ, our Customer Success team will teach you how to optimize and integrate our tool into your business for maximum results from the get-go. Our goal is to ensure that all your media monitoring needs are being met and that you’re getting the most out of all the features available in your plan.
During this time, our customers get a full-service program accompanied by week over week check-up calls and additional paid services free of charge, regardless of the size of their paid plan.
After the onboarding process is complete, you’ll always have our Customer support team at your disposal via chat for any immediate questions you may have or technical guidance you might need. Moreover, our team will hold quarterly business meetings with you in order to revise the results of the past three months and make sure that your tool setup is in place for effective future communication activities.
5. Greater number of brand opportunities
Implementing social listening into your long-term media monitoring activities should be a no-brainer. Social listening enables you to identify potential growth opportunities and then react accordingly. It is based on insights obtained through media monitoring.
Rather than tracking what already happened or is happening at the moment, it allows you to focus on what might happen in the future. Wendy’s is a great example of how it works. Back in 2010, this fast-food restaurant company debuted their new fries marketed as containing sea salt, rather than standard salt, and had massive success.
They came up with this idea based on tracking online discussions about the raising concerns of high sodium intake. What they learned was that consumers perceived ‘sea salt’ much more positively than ‘salt’ or ‘sodium’.
The predominant positive sentiment of ‘sea salt’ encouraged them to create a campaign focused on much more positive health associations with their new fries. As a result, customers were delighted and the sales of their french fries improved.
Hence, social listening growth opportunities are not necessarily limited to tracking the company name directly. Rather, they also include relevant topics and keywords that can enable social selling.
6. Future features at today’s price
We’ve established that thinking long-term gets you more value for money. But, it also means you get new features at no additional cost.
As you probably know, software products such as media monitoring tools have a defined roadmap. This allows you to anticipate what is yet to come in terms of the software’s development.
Take expanding the list and number of sources available for tracking for example. It is a continuous goal for a media monitoring tool. It is also one that causes additional costs for the software company itself. What’s more, these upgrades will likely ramp up the price of the product for new customers.
But, the great thing is that if you’re already a customer, these changes do not affect you. Paying for the product at today’s price also means getting future features that will be included in your plan, but without the added cost.
7. Bonus: continuous monitoring equals crises averted
The only thing you miss out on with continuous media monitoring is crises. No FOMO here, right?
In this day and age, social media crises happen on a daily basis. For some brands, they come out of nowhere. For others that monitor their online presence, social media crisis management is just a matter of tackling the issue professionally anytime it occurs.
Tracking your brand or any other relevant topic that might affect it is crucial to eliminating the guess-work out of the equation.
And, rather than assuming, you’d have all the information you need: who, what, where, when, in what context, with what impact, and, maybe the most important, why. Based on that, you can put your crisis communications plan into action and mitigate any potential damage.
Be it a random social media post or a competitor’s latest move, not much can surprise you with long-term media monitoring.
To sum up how beneficial media monitoring is long-term
In this blog, we demonstrated seven different ways you can capitalize on continuous media monitoring. Be it extensive historical data and meticulous benchmarking or a deeper understanding of consumers’ online behavior and increased growth opportunities. There is no doubt that long-term monitoring is extremely lucrative.
It results in unique insights that allow you to gain a deeper understanding of your audience’s ever-changing wants, needs, and preferences. Staying on top of them also means you can base your decisions on relevant data and respond to actual challenges your audience is facing, all while providing a targeted, personalized approach.
Above all, data obtained with media monitoring will aid in striving to constantly achieve better results and set the bar higher. In the end, you can only do so effectively when you have relevant information at your disposal – and that’s where you can rely on us.
If you’re not already a Determ customer, book a demo and our experts will show you how to use the platform and reap the benefits.
