Top Tools to For Measuring Brand Awareness
Measuring brand awareness is a notoriously difficult task. Here are our favorite tools to help you refine your efforts.
Highlights:
- Tools for measuring brand awareness fall into two categories: social analytics tools and social mention tools.
- Our top 3 social analytics tools: Qualtrics, Ahrefs, and Brandwatch.
- Our top 3 social mentions tools: Netvibes, Mention, and Buffer Reply.
We often hear from our clients that measuring brand awareness is one of the slipperiest tasks when it comes to digital marketing. It’s a notoriously difficult marketing element to track, and not having an accurate picture can also make it difficult to evaluate the success of your overall digital marketing efforts, as well as to calculate ROI.
Luckily, there are tools that can help. Broadly, these tools for measuring brand awareness fall into two categories: social analytics tools and social mention tools.
- Social analytics tools are designed to help you determine the times your actions get the most engagement, as well as more detailed user demographics and interactions with your brand.
- Social mention tools track overall mentions for your brand, letting you see everywhere your brand has been mentioned and helping you determine which platforms are performing best for your content.
Here are our top three favorite tools in each category for measuring brand awareness.
Top 3 social analytics tools for measuring brand awareness
1) Qualtrics
Qualtrics boasts that it is “software to help turn customers into fanatics, products into obsessions, employees into ambassadors, and brands into religions.” While supply chain companies will likely raise an eyebrow at such lofty claims, this tool really has the potential to perform for B2B customers. Ideal for complex supply chain business, Qualtrics offers a variety of tools that measure buyer experience, brand experience, product experience, and employee experience.
2) Ahrefs
Ahrefs isn’t exactly a new kid on the block when it comes to measuring brand awareness. The company started in 2011, and has continued to update and add new features regularly, keeping it on the cutting edge of SEO tools. It’s one of the best backlink analysis tools available. Perfect for just about any business, the platform notably helps you analyze why your competitors are ranking in particular areas and what you can do to outrank them.
3) Brandwatch
Some of the most successful brands in the world have been empowered by Brandwatch, which is arguably the leader in social intelligence. The robust analytics features include insights within millions of online conversations, as well as optimized target influencer and other paid social campaigns. It also boasts its Vizia platform, which shares insights with decision-makers throughout your organization, promoting aligned efforts.
Top 3 social mention tools for measuring brand awareness
1) Netvibes
Netvibes lets you easily monitor all your digital assets, as well as customize them based on the insights it provides. Not only can you follow your social networks for brand mentions, you can create alerts for breaking news or publications on key topics. Additionally, you can gain valuable insights by filtering your mentions by author, date, location, language, company, and even more.
2) Mention
Mention lets you monitor your campaigns anywhere online, and “scour the web, social media, and more for powerful market insights.” The platform offers real-time monitoring, letting you get live updates as you launch a campaign, for example. You can create custom insights, involving everything from social media, forums, blogs, and virtually every bit of the web.
3) Buffer Reply
We’re including Buffer Reply because it’s unusual in its focus. While other tools give you access to all your mentions on the web, Buffer Reply lets you hone in on a specific target client or demographic. The platform shows you everything you need to know about the client you’re talking to, each time they’ve mentioned or interacted with your brand. We recommend using it in conjunction with a broader tool like Google Alerts.
Related posts:
- 4 Metrics to Measure the Impact of Content Marketing on Brand Awareness
- Can You Measure Brand Awareness? Yes!
- Infographic: 4 Ways to Measure Brand Awareness
5 Tips to Improve Your Visual Content
As the purchasing landscape increasingly skews younger, you need to think about how to improve your visual content to satisfy buyers’ preferences.
Highlights:
- Audiences increasingly prefer visual content.
- Optimize visual content for search engines by including text.
- Use graphics to make data pop.
Digital natives, who make up the majority of today’s B2B purchasing landscape, are highly steeped in online content. And, it may come as no surprise, they overwhelmingly prefer visual presentation, whether in video, infographic, animation, or gif format. What does this mean? Supply chain marketers need to adapt or be left behind.
[bctt tweet=”Good content marketing is all about presenting information in a story format. Great content marketing also packs emotional resonance. ” username=”Fronetics”]
While this doesn’t mean that text-based marketing is a thing of the past, it does mean that all your branded content — from blog posts to infographics to case studies to video — needs to be design-minded and visually appealing. These five suggestions will help improve your visual content game.
5 ways to improve your visual content
1) Optimize for search engines.
The biggest downside to visual content such as videos and infographics is that they aren’t searchable in the way that text-based content is. But this doesn’t mean that you need to lose out on the SEO benefits when publishing this type of content.
First off, it pays to post a text transcript with video or accompanying explanatory text with infographics and images. It’s also important for you to categorize and organize your visual content, which means labeling visual assets like logos and images with relevant keywords. When publishing them, be sure to tag images with keywords.
2) Make data interesting.
Common sense tells us that reading a bunch of numbers is far less compelling than seeing numerical data presented graphically. B2B marketers are in a prime position to make use of attractive data presentation, such as charts, graphs, animated images, or other formats to display your numerical data.
3) Create reusable graphics.
If you’re investing in visual content creation, it pays to consider how it can be reused. For example, when creating an infographic, consider how you can break it up into multiple graphics, each containing a set of statistics or other information. This way, you can add these smaller graphics to other pieces of text content, boosting engagement and adding visual appeal.
Additionally, keep in mind that visual snippets are ideal for posting on social media, as teasers, or even self-contained Instagram or Facebook Stories.
4) Keep your branding consistent.
A key point with visual content creation is consistent branding. Your brand’s visual presentation includes fonts, colors, font sizes, image styles, and anything else that is a visual indicator of your identity.
The first step to consistent branding is to document visual guidelines clearly and to distribute them to all content creators, along with samples for their use. Each time you publish visual content, make checking against the guidelines part of your editorial process.
5) Use visual content to tell a story.
Good content marketing is all about presenting information in a story format. Great content marketing also packs emotional resonance. When creating visual content, start with the idea of telling a story. Ideally, you’re presenting data in a way that communicates a feeling and elicits an emotional response from the viewer. If your data is impactful, your viewers will forge an emotional connection with your brand.
How are you trying to improve your visual content?
Related posts:
- 5 Secrets to Creating Infographics that Will Wow Supply Chain Buyers
- Infographic: How Digital Natives are Changing B2B Purchasing
- 6 Content Marketing Trends for the Supply Chain in 2019
Video: For More Creative Content, Break These 4 Rules
The best way to come up with creative and engaging content is to think outside the box and sometimes, take risks. Here are 4 rules to break to produce truly creative content.
Highlights:
- Throw out the template approach to content and start thinking about what makes you stand out.
- Don’t be afraid to showcase what you do best through different avenues, like customer or vendor testimonials.
- When you’re committed to curiosity, you naturally become a learning organization and this learning leads to more creative content.
Video transcript:
I’m Elizabeth Hines, and I’m the Creative Director at Fronetics, and today we’re talking about for more creative content, you have to break these four rules.
With over 4 million blog posts published every day, you have to be really creative with your content in order to drive traffic and win over prospects and leads.
So in order to do so, you’re going to have to break these four rules.
1. Mirror competitors
If you’re in this certain industry, then you have to cover these certain topics. You might think because your competitors are covering this certain topic or that certain topic, you should be covering it as well. Not so. You should be covering the topics that are unique to your business, that your company offers expertise in and the ways you stand out from your competitors.
2. Marketing mindset
While your marketing team has a great idea of what is going on in your, some of the best stories and the best blog content comes from your other teams. Maybe your sales team, sometimes your customers or your vendors have a really good prospective or a really good story to tell. And some of the most creative content comes from those unique prospectives.
3. Keep it obvious
It can be really tempting to do a quick brainstorm, come up with a couple good ideas, things that are obvious and things that stand out about your company. But you’re going to get much more creative content if you dig a little deeper. For example, if your first instinct is to talk about self-driving vehicles, a very popular topic right now, can you offer a new perspective on that topic? Can you talk specifically about the sensors that are involved in that technology? Can you talk about government regulations of that technology? What new perspective can you offer to that often talked about conversation?
4. Repeat success
Now this is a little bit controversial because I do encourage you to look at what’s been successful in the past and try to build on that and try to repeat that. But you should also be taking some risks when you’re developing your content calendar. Build in a healthy mix of what’s worked for you in the past, what resonates with your target audience. Then something new, something different, something totally out of left field, because you need to keep experimenting. You need to keep trying new things because your audience is going to evolve and your content should evolve creatively as well.
For more information, visit our website at fronetics.com.
Related posts:
- 3 Questions to Ensure your Content Marketing Strategy Is Sales-Focused
- Video: Six Digital Marketing Trends for the Supply Chain 2019
- 5 Tips to Boost SEO for Supply Chain Marketers: Video Short
Fronetics’ Top 10 Picks for Must-Read Supply Chain and Logistics Blogs
Follow these supply chain and logistics blogs to keep up with the latest industry news and happenings.
Highlights:
- These industry blogs are rich with the latest news, insights, and trends.
- Blogs cover a variety of topics, including research and strategy, and feature insights from some of the top thought leaders in the industry.
One of the best ways to keep pace with the latest happenings in the supply chain industry is to follow the right blogs. There’s some great information available out there, and we’ve put together this list of our 10 favorite sources.
These blogs are rich with industry news, insights, and trends. They cover a variety of topics, including research and strategy, and feature insights from some of the top thought leaders in the industry.
10 must-follow supply chain and logistics blogs (in no particular order)
1) Supply Chain 24/7
The Supply Chain 24/7 blog is a top business resource for Transportation, Distribution, Logistics and Supply Chain professionals. Read this blog.
2) Women In Trucking
These two blogs focus on various issues facing women in the trucking industry. WIT President Ellen Voie writes about topics in employment, achievement, and driving change in the industry. The Women In Trucking blog features posts by truckers, mostly industry veteran Sandy Long, about everyday concerns and experiences facing female drivers and their families. Read this blog.
3) Hollingsworth
Using best-in-class warehouse management technology, Hollingsworth offers complete, real-time visibility of the supply chain. The blog focuses on topics ranging from complex order fulfillment strategies to best practices for optimizing supply chain management. Industry tips, new technologies, and the latest strategies are just some of the topics covered in the posts. Read this blog.
4) Supply Chain Brain
This portal for supply chain executives features original and aggregated content touching on multiple industries. Read this blog.
5) Supply Chain Shaman
Lora Cecere’s blog focuses on “the use of enterprise applications to drive supply chain excellence.” Read this blog.
6) Supply Chain Matters
The blog of Bob Ferrari offers his expertise on all aspects of supply chain business processes and supporting information technology. Read this blog.
7) Supply Chain Management Review
This vast website includes trending articles on supply chain and logistics strategies developments, many written by university-level professors. Read this blog.
8) Supply Chain Digital
Supply Chain Digital is a forward-thinking digital community aimed at providing procurement & supply chain professionals with industry-leading news, analysis, features, and reports about the world’s biggest supply chains. Read this blog.
9) Logistics Viewpoint
This blog features think pieces from three leading supply chain and logistics analysts with the mission to provide clear and concise analyses of logistics trends, technologies, and services. Read this blog.
10) EBN Online
This blog features top industry leaders publishing on topics including electronics manufacturing, global supply chain, and management logistics. Read this blog. (P.S. Read our CEO Frank Cavallaro’s blog here.)
What supply chain and logistics blogs are you following lately?
Related posts:
- Top 3 Logistics and Supply Chain Blogs of 2019
- 3 Quick SEO Tips to Improve Your Blog Right Now
- Generate Leads Faster with Your Blog: Two Tips for the Supply Chain
