It only takes one unfortunate news cycle to convince any company to start using Google Alerts, but implementing brand monitoring tools is worthwhile in many situations beyond online reputation management. Of course, new businesses want to stay on top of when, how often, and in what context their name is being used, but the best PR firms for startups can help your fledgling company see a compound return on your investment. Specialized software for brand monitoring allows you to listen to the conversations happening in and around your industry which, if utilized skillfully, can be leveraged for marketing, R&D, and PR strategy for startups.
What’s in a name?
An effective brand monitoring approach will use social listening solutions to detect more than mentions of a brand’s name and the name of their products. Paying attention to mentions and reviews of your company is a major component of online pr for startups, but scanning for specific, relevant keywords can be valuable in other areas of your business.
Combing through social media platforms, online publications, and digital forums (like Reddit and Quora) for terms related to your product or service can help you find the online communities where your target audiences congregate. Locating these hubs is a priceless accomplishment for the purposes of outreach, marketing, and development. For example, a wearable tech company’s marketing department might find untagged images or videos of people using their products that can potentially be reposted as user-generated content. Their social media manager would be able to respond quickly to twitter users looking for products like the ones their company manufactures. The research and development team could tune into industry-specific discourse and address users’ pain points in upgrades or new products. In all of these scenarios, a tool typically used in PR strategy for startups is repurposed to address separate business goals and optimize their outcomes.
Know your Niche
Brand monitoring tools can be used to scan for any brand, not just your own. Programming these software to monitor the conversations surrounding your competitors as well is a comprehensive way to adopt social listening solutions. By tracking their mentions, you’ll be able to compare the online sentiment of your company with that of other vendors and stay tuned into trends and best practices within your industry. It will also lend some insight into what techniques are increasing online brand awareness for competitors and draw a clearer picture of how the market share is divided.
Understanding where and when your business performs well compared to other vendors—and vice versa—can help you improve your marketing approach, expand into new territories, and discern how to differentiate yourself as a brand.
Listen and Respond
Brand monitoring has especially useful benefits beyond PR for tech startups in particular. It’s important to identify and track key performance indicators at any point in a company’s development, but documenting these metrics is crucial for a startup in its early stages. Investors want to know that the companies they’re funding have momentum and a fully-realized strategy for success. Understanding your brand’s starting point and collecting data related to your online presence will help you convey to investors where you’re positioned in the market and your approach moving forward.
Regardless of whether your business is an established enterprise or an emerging endeavor, it’s imperative to observe and assess the digital discourse surrounding your brand. Implementing cross-functional brand monitoring tools as part of a PR strategy for startups will give your company a competitive edge in numerous components of your organization.
