Have you ever wondered why obtaining a bank loan isn’t as easy as shopping online? Or why selecting a health insurance policy isn’t as quick as booking a hotel?

The modern consumer has higher expectations and is increasingly asking these questions. Brands that cater to these expectations stand to beat the competition and garner customer loyalty. 

So, if you think you know your competition, think again. 

A senior executive at IBM once captured the modern consumer’s needs: “The last best experience anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere.” 

This statement challenges most executives’ understanding of competition —that they’re limited to major players or emerging brands in their industry. However, what if the real competition extends beyond your industry? How do brands craft a winning strategy when they’re not just competing with industry peers but also with ever-evolving customer expectations shaped by their best experiences in other sectors? 

In the past,, brands gauged their competition based on rivals within their industry. A car dealership compared itself to other car dealers, a bank to other banks. This approach, while logical, is increasingly becoming outdated. In a connected world where consumers can instantly compare services and products across sectors, their expectations are no longer siloed within industry lines.

A coffee shop isn’t just competing with the café next door but also with the fast, personalized service of tech firms or the immersive experience of a luxury retailer. This broader perspective on competition compels brands to innovate continually, not just in their product or service offerings but in customer experience, convenience, and reliability.

The story of Amazon epitomizes this change. Once an online bookstore, Amazon became a colossal e-commerce platform, challenging bookstores and retailers across countless sectors. Their competitive edge? Understanding and setting new benchmarks in customer expectations.

Most recently, Dubai International Airport set new benchmarks in its sector by introducing a new biometric system that allows travelers to Dubai to travel without a passport, which makes the experience more pleasant. 

Rethinking competition means brands must now consider how they stack up against the best experience a customer has had anywhere, not just against their traditional industry competitors. It’s a move from industry-focused to customer-experience-focused competition, a transition that requires a deep understanding of customer expectations far beyond industry boundaries.

Role of Market Research in Revealing True Competitors

Market research is integral to identifying a brand’s opportunities. It helps companies understand who they compete against and their customers’ evolving expectations. For instance, a fast-food chain might find its real competition lies not only with other fast-food outlets but with the expected experience whenever or whatever they buy.

Chick-fil-A, a U.S. fast-food chain known for its chicken sandwiches, redefined its customer service by looking beyond its immediate competitors in the fast-food industry. This venture was initiated through a partnership with Horst Schulze, the COO of Ritz-Carlton at the time, as the hotel chain is synonymous with luxury and exceptional customer service.

The Challenge:

Chick-fil-A was already performing well against its direct fast-food competitors. However, Schulze’s assessment that they were the “best of a bad lot” challenged them to aim higher, to compete not just with other fast-food chains but also with sit-down and fine-dining restaurants known for their superior customer service.

Market Research and Strategy:

To bridge this gap, Chick-fil-A executives thoroughly analyzed these higher-end dining experiences. They conducted surveys and customer feedback sessions to understand the most valued service elements in these settings. The result was the creation of the “Core 4” principles of customer service, focusing on creating eye contact, sharing smiles, using an enthusiastic tone, and personalizing customer interactions.

Image Courtesy: Chick-fil-a

Further Consultation with Danny Meyer:

Chick-fil-A didn’t stop with the insights from Ritz-Carlton. They also consulted with Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group, who is renowned for his hospitality expertise. Meyer, who later founded the popular fast-casual chain Shake Shack, worked with Chick-fil-A to deepen their understanding of hospitality, emphasizing the importance of going the extra mile in service, a relatively uncommon fast food concept.

Impact and Results:

Implementing these strategies led to a significant transformation within Chick-fil-A’s service model. As a Chick-fil-A executive noted, the impact on sales, profits, and overall customer engagement was profound. The adoption of “second-mile service” became a hallmark of Chick-fil-A, noticeably differentiating them from their traditional fast-food competitors.

Competitive Analysis Across Industries

Conducting a competitive analysis beyond your immediate industry is crucial. This broader approach can uncover valuable insights and innovative practices from various sectors, offering a more comprehensive view of the competitive terrain.

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How to Conduct a Cross-Industry Competitive Analysis

Identify Key Competitors in Other Industries: Identify companies in other sectors admired for customer service, innovation, or efficiency. These could be organizations your customers frequently compare you to, even if they are outside your direct line of business.

Gather Information: Utilize public resources like company websites, press releases, case studies, and industry reports to gather information about these competitors. Pay attention to their business models, customer engagement strategies, marketing approaches, and operational efficiencies.

Analyze Customer Reviews and Feedback: Look at customer reviews and feedback for these companies. Platforms like social media, online forums, and review sites can provide insights into what customers value in their experiences with these brands.

Study Their Service Delivery and Processes: Examine how these companies deliver their services or products. What makes their process stand out? How do they handle customer service, and what are their operational efficiencies?

Benchmark Against Best Practices: Compare these findings against your practices. This benchmarking should cover customer experience, service speed, technological adoption, and innovation.

SWOT Analysis: Conduct a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis for both your company and the companies in other industries. This comparison can highlight areas for improvement and potential opportunities for your brand.

Learning from Best Practices in Different Sectors:

  • Adopting Technological Innovations: Look at how tech companies use technology to enhance customer experience and consider how you could implement similar technologies in your sector.
  • Customer Service Excellence: Study the customer service strategies of companies known for outstanding customer care, like luxury hotels or high-end retailers, and integrate applicable elements into your customer service approach.
  • Efficiency Models: Analyze the operational efficiency of companies in industries like manufacturing or logistics. Their practices could offer insights into streamlining your processes.
  • Innovative Marketing Strategies: Observe companies’ marketing tactics in creative industries or those that have successfully tapped into new customer segments.
  • Sustainability Practices: Learn from companies leading in sustainability and environmental responsibility. For instance, even if you are a beverage brand, you can learn from Patagonia, a clothing brand that is leading in sustainability. This could improve your company’s environmental impact and enhance your brand image.

Using Market Research to Adapt to Market Conditions and Customer Expectations

  • Continuous Market Monitoring: Regularly monitor market trends and consumer behavior to stay ahead of changes and adapt strategies accordingly. Through constant market research and monitoring, Nike remains innovative with new product lines. In recent years, Nike introduced athleisure wear in response to the growing fitness and casual lifestyle blending trend.
  • Feedback Loops: Establish mechanisms for continuous customer feedback to gauge the effectiveness of the implemented strategies and make adjustments as needed. For example, Xiaomi, a Chinese consumer electronics brand, utilizes a unique business model that heavily relies on customer feedback. They regularly update their smartphones and other electronic products based on consumer suggestions gathered through online forums and social media, ensuring they stay closely aligned with user needs and preferences.
  • Agility in Strategy Execution: Be prepared to quickly alter or refine strategies in response to market feedback or shifts in the competitive landscape. Faced with unprecedented challenges in the restaurant industry due to lockdowns and restrictions during the pandemic, McDonald’s swiftly adapted its approach. They expanded contactless ordering and delivery options, simplified their menu to streamline operations, introduced promotions, implemented rigorous safety measures for employees and customers, and engaged in community support efforts. This rapid response allowed McDonald’s to maintain its customer base, ensure employee safety, and serve as a dependable source of affordable food during a crisis, showcasing its ability to pivot and succeed in a changing market landscape.
  • Incorporating Technology: Leverage technology to enhance customer engagement, streamline operations, and gather data for ongoing market analysis. For example, Amazon has continuously leveraged technology to improve customer engagement and streamline operations. From its recommendation algorithms to the use of AI and robotics in its warehouses, Amazon uses technology to improve efficiency and the customer experience.
  • Sustainability and Social Responsibility: Integrate sustainable practices and social responsibility into business strategies, aligning with the increasing consumer emphasis on ethical and environmental considerations. For instance, Toyota has long been a leader in sustainability, particularly with its development of hybrid and electric vehicles like the Prius. Their commitment to reducing environmental impact through sustainable practices is a core part of their business strategy, aligning with global concerns about climate change.
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Final Thoughts —Use Customer Expectations as a Competitive Benchmark

Working with global brands across industries and geographies, we have uncovered a critical insight: many brands may not fully realize who their competitors are. As we’ve seen through various successful brand examples, your competitors may sometimes be different from the ones you’ve traditionally considered. Instead, they could be any brand or service that sets the expectations for your customers, often from entirely different industries.

Customers today are exposed to a wide range of services and products, from online retail giants to high-tech consumer electronics. The quality of service and efficiency they experience in one sector invariably shapes their expectations of others. This shift means a brand is no longer just competing within its industry but also against the best practices of sectors far removed from its own.

Market research emerges as a powerful tool in this scenario. It helps you understand what your customers expect based on industry standards and their best experiences in any sector. These expectations become your competitive benchmark. Whether it’s the seamless convenience of an app, the personalized service of a luxury hotel, or the efficiency of a tech giant, these are the standards against which your customers are measuring you.

Therefore, brands must engage in market research and competitive analysis continuously. This ongoing process will help you stay abreast of current market trends and customer expectations and allow you to anticipate future changes. Understanding and adapting to these evolving benchmarks allows your brand to remain competitive in a market reshaped by new players, technologies, and consumer behaviors.

Look beyond your industry, learn from the best in all sectors, and use these insights to refine and enhance your business strategies. This continuous market research and competitive analysis is essential for sustained success and growth in a rapidly changing market.

For more information on how to conduct a competitive analysis, contact us here.

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Imagine this: half of your advertising budget going down the drain. That’s the harsh reality many brands face, especially in today’s digital age, where navigating the complexities of advertising effectiveness has become even more challenging. The emergence of online platforms and the shift toward performance marketing has further blurred the line between brand advertising and performance-driven campaigns.

Many CEOs have voiced the struggle within organizations to balance brand-building efforts against the allure of performance-oriented spending. As complex as the issue is, we finally have an answer for this common conundrum amidst executive circles. And research shows a compelling rationale for investing in brand building. 

Drawing on WARC that analyzed over 2,000 award entrants and winning advertising campaigns from 2018-2022. The data revealed a compelling divide: approximately 60% of the analyzed campaigns, totaling 1,213 out of 2,021, did not present any evident promise to consumers. Conversely, the remaining 808 campaigns explicitly formulated a promise to their audience. This apparent dichotomy formed the foundation of WARC’s investigation into the correlation between campaign success and the presence of a defined customer promise.

These findings shed light on the pivotal link between successful brand building and a specific, tangible promise to the customer—one that a brand can demonstrably fulfill.

When campaigns are grounded in an explicit promise to the customer – a memorable, valuable, and deliverable promise – they are as much as 48% more likely to report brand health improvements than those that don’t. 

-“Making a Promise to the Customer: How to give Campaigns a competitive edge” by WARC, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, and Roger Martin.

The Power of a Promise

Let’s break down this concept of a “promise to the customer.” A brand promise is a commitment to customers, encapsulating what they can expect and rely on when engaging with that brand. It’s a pledge that goes beyond product features, encompassing the emotional, functional, or experiential value a brand assures to deliver consistently. In other words, it outlines a brand’s unique and enduring value, fostering trust, loyalty, and a distinct relationship between the brand and its customers.

Promise to the consumer (PTTC) campaigns deliver a commercial advantage – they are 60% more likely to report increased market share and 17% more likely to report increased market penetration than non-PTTC campaigns.

-“Making a Promise to the Customer: How to give Campaigns a competitive edge” by WARC, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, and Roger Martin.

Let’s look at three brands in different industries, BMW, Southwest Airlines, and Geico Insurance, and how they have connected with their target audience using a memorable, tangible, and valuable brand promise. 

BMW – Elevating Advertising Effectiveness Through “The Ultimate Driving Machine” Promise

BMW’s advertising campaigns stand out by seamlessly integrating their brand promise, “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” into their messaging. This promise isn’t just a tagline; it’s the heartbeat of their advertising efforts, making their campaigns exceptionally effective.

By centering their advertisements around this promise, BMW taps into the aspirations and desires of car enthusiasts who crave more than just a car—they seek an unparalleled driving experience. This commitment becomes the foundation upon which every ad campaign is built, infusing each message with the essence of precision, performance, and driving pleasure.

BMW’s strategy evokes emotions and passions associated with the driving experience amongst its target audience. Whether through captivating visuals, dynamic storytelling, or emphasizing technological advancements, their campaigns consistently reinforce the promise of delivering the ultimate driving experience.

This alignment between promise and campaign messaging establishes a cohesive story that resonates deeply with consumers. It creates a lasting impression, fostering a connection between the brand and enthusiasts who seek exhilaration and mastery in their driving experience. 

Geico – Amplifying Advertising Impact with a Tangible Promise

Geico’s advertising brilliance is in the explicit promise, “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance,” making their advertising memorable and effective.

Geico consistently integrates this commitment into their commercials, emphasizing tangible savings and the ease of obtaining them within a specific timeframe. By leveraging this promise as the focal point, their ads cut through the clutter of insurance jargon, resonating with consumers seeking clarity and immediate benefits.

Geico’s ad campaigns cleverly showcase scenarios where individuals save time and money by choosing Geico, reinforcing the promise’s credibility. This approach creates a direct and relatable connection with audiences, highlighting the simplicity and value of Geico’s services.

By harmonizing its promise with its advertising, Geico doesn’t just sell insurance; it sells a practical solution. This alignment enhances advertising effectiveness and cultivates a perception of Geico as a reliable, straightforward, and customer-centric insurance provider.

Southwest Airlines – Crafting Impactful Advertising through a Promise of ‘Transfarency’

Southwest Airlines distinguishes its advertising by integrating its promise of simplicity and transparency into every campaign, amplifying its effectiveness.

The airline consistently communicates “Transfarency” and straightforward, transparent fares through their ads, highlighting the absence of hidden fees and the ease of booking without complications.

Their commercials often depict stress-free travel experiences, reinforcing the promise of no change fees, no baggage fees, and straightforward pricing. This strategy resonates with travelers seeking hassle-free travel, showcasing Southwest as a brand that delivers on its promises.

By embedding its promise into its advertising strategy, Southwest Airlines sells a worry-free travel experience. This alignment enhances the effectiveness of its advertising, establishing Southwest as a brand that prioritizes transparency, simplicity, and customer satisfaction.

Unveiling the Promise’s Anatomy

Going back to WARC’s comprehensive analysis that started with a classification process devoid of performance metrics, focusing solely on determining whether the ad campaigns being studied conveyed an explicit and verifiable promise to their customers.

This methodical categorization allowed WARC to delve deeper into dissecting the effectiveness of campaigns based on the existence and nature of their promises. Subsequently, it set the stage for a comprehensive analysis to discern the impact and significance of these promises on diverse performance metrics across various industries and markets.

The study revealed that successful promises often fall into three primary categories: emotional, functional, and enjoyable to buy. 

Emotional promises, the most prevalent, focus on the emotional benefits a customer gains from using a product or service. Functional promises highlight the practical benefits, while promises centered on the enjoyable purchasing experience also proved impactful.

Emotional Promise:

Coca-Cola – “Open Happiness”

Coca-Cola’s iconic “Open Happiness” campaign embodies an emotional promise. Beyond selling a soft drink, Coca-Cola aims to evoke feelings of joy, togetherness, and positivity. The promise focuses on the emotional experience of consuming Coca-Cola, associating it with moments of happiness and connection.

Functional Promise:

Volvo – “Volvo: For Life”

Volvo’s brand promise revolves around safety, emphasizing its commitment to building vehicles that prioritize safety and durability. The Swedish automobile brand’s functional promise assures customers of reliable safety features, robust construction, and a dedication to protecting drivers and passengers, aligning with Volvo’s long-standing reputation for safety.

Enjoyable to Buy Promise:

Lush – Ethical and Enjoyable Shopping

Lush, the UK-based cosmetics brand, delivers on a promise that shopping for personal care products can be an enjoyable and ethical experience. Their promise focuses not only on the quality of their products but also on the ethical sourcing of ingredients, sustainable packaging, and creating an immersive, enjoyable shopping experience in their stores.

These brands have crafted promises aligning with specific customer needs and values. Successful execution of these promises significantly influences brand perception and customer loyalty.

Successful promises often defy expectations, cater to specific customer needs, and are demonstrably fulfilled. So, what makes these promises effective? They are memorable, valuable, and deliverable. 

Beyond Advertising: Brand Promise as Strategy

Brands craft compelling brand promises by nurturing their identity over time, ensuring a consistent brand experience, and aligning messaging with customers’ actual interactions.

This promise becomes a strategic compass for a company’s various functions. In a corporate environment rife with functional silos, a well-defined brand promise aligns various departments toward a common objective.

Brands must understand their customers to design a promise that will resonate with them, and they must ensure it’s received through relentless delivery. Brands like Nike capitalize on trust, securing enduring loyalty and market dominance.

The athletic brand’s iconic “Just Do It” campaign epitomizes the power of a compelling customer promise.

Nike’s promise revolves around empowering individuals to push their limits and achieve greatness. The campaign, launched in 1988, captured the essence of determination, resilience, and aspiration. It wasn’t just about athletic shoes; it was a rallying call for anyone striving for personal excellence.

The memorable tagline “Just Do It” encapsulated the promise—encouraging consumers to take action, overcome obstacles, and pursue their dreams. The emotional appeal of the campaign resonated across diverse demographics, establishing a profound connection with consumers far beyond athletic performance.

Nike’s promise became an inspiration to people worldwide. By consistently delivering on this promise through impactful storytelling, associating with iconic athletes, and promoting messages of empowerment, Nike solidified its position as more than a footwear brand—it became a symbol of aspiration and determination.

Elevating Brand Promises through Market Research

Market research plays a pivotal role in identifying customer preferences and shaping and enhancing the efficacy of a brand’s promise. Market research acts as a guiding force, laying a foundation for the creation, validation, and execution of a brand’s promise. By leveraging comprehensive insights from market research, brands can craft promises that deeply resonate with their audience, paving the way for enduring customer loyalty and sustained success.

Here’s how market research can fortify and elevate the impact of a brand promise:

Understanding Customer Insights

Incorporating market research helps brands delve deeper into customer behavior, preferences, and sentiments. By analyzing market trends, conducting surveys, and gathering qualitative and quantitative data, brands gain invaluable insights into what customers truly value.

For instance, through extensive research, a brand can uncover its audience’s nuanced emotional or functional needs, creating a promise that resonates profoundly. Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, rooted in understanding consumers’ aspirations for personal excellence, shows the importance of aligning a promise with customer insights.

Refining and Validating the Promise

Market research acts as a compass for validating and fine-tuning a brand promise. By testing different promise formulations or messaging through focus groups, surveys, or A/B testing, companies can assess the promise’s resonance, memorability, and perceived value among their target audience.

For example, a brand exploring various promises could use market research to gauge which promise—emotional, functional, or experiential—elicits the most positive response and resonates deeply with its audience’s needs.

Tracking and Adapting to Evolving Trends

Continuous market research allows brands to stay attuned to evolving consumer preferences, enabling them to adapt their promises in response to shifting market dynamics. By monitoring changing trends, consumer sentiments, and competitor strategies, companies can refine and evolve their promises to remain relevant and impactful.

Incorporating feedback loops and periodic research assessments enables brands to ensure their promises align with evolving customer needs and market expectations.

Strengthening Execution and Delivery

Effective market research informs the creation of a promise and guides its execution. By understanding customer expectations and preferences, brands can ensure that their products, services, and overall customer experience align with the promise.

For instance, a promise centered around exceptional customer service would require market research to identify specific service elements that matter most to customers. This insight could inform operational strategies and employee training, ensuring consistent delivery of the promise.

The Litmus Test for Brand Investment

Roger L. Martin, author and former dean of the Rotman School of Management, has a litmus test for brands before they allocate a budget for a new campaign: Does your campaign have an unequivocal customer promise? Did you use market research and customer insights to craft a promise your customers value? Is the promise genuinely memorable, and are all departments aligned to deliver on the promise consistently? 

This formula encapsulates the essence of effective brand building. A definitive customer promise is the linchpin to sustained success across all facets of a company.

Final Thoughts: Cementing Brand Success through Promise

The genuine, memorable promises will cut through the clutter, build trust, and pave the way for enduring brand success. Your brand promise is not just about catchy slogans or compelling stories; it’s about making a tangible commitment to customers that resonates, delivers value, and engenders trust.

The journey toward establishing a formidable brand promise starts with understanding the intricacies of consumer desires, preferences, and behaviors. It strikes a chord if it’s memorable, valuable, and consistently deliverable.

Market research empowers brands to unravel the depths of customer insights, refine promises, adapt to market shifts, and solidify execution strategies.

Partnering with Kadence International: Your Gateway to Informed Advertising Strategies

We offer comprehensive advertising research solutions to help brands navigate advertising effectiveness. With a proven track record in providing actionable market insights, we empower brands to make informed decisions, refine promises, and chart a course toward enduring brand success.

Explore how Kadence International’s tailored advertising market research services can elevate your advertising strategies, enrich brand promises, and propel your business toward unparalleled growth and resonance with your audience.

Contact us today to discover how Kadence International can be your strategic ally and drive meaningful connections with your customers.

Reference to the study from the whitepaper, “Making a Promise to the Customer: How to give campaigns a competitive edge” by WARC, The B2B Institute at LinkedIn, and Roger Martin.

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Emerging technological advancements are transforming market research forever. As many consumers move online, the way brands identify and understand consumer needs is being reimagined.

Many technology trends disrupt the market research industry —from data collection and new product launches to tracking brand performance. This blog post will focus on the breakthroughs in technology impacting brand tracking and product performance tracking.

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Brand and performance tracking refers to the process of continually measuring brand health over a period within the target audience. It allows brands to measure the performance of a product in relation to its competition. After a new product is launched, market research helps brands gauge performance to stay competitive. 

With consumers increasingly moving online, brands can tap into new, vast, and reliable consumer behavior data in real-time. This has also made Direct to Consumer marketing much more common. Brands like Happy Human (Singapore), Dime Beauty (U.S.A.), Joi (Malaysia), Sleepy Owl (India), Recess (Philipines), Adopt a Cow (China), and Knot (Japan) have eliminated the middleman to create, develop, sell, and distribute their products directly to the end-user. The absence of middlemen and brick-and-mortar stores allows them to maintain quality and reduce prices. But this is not all. These brands also have the added advantage of measuring performance directly without employing market research across several retail outlets. They can discover brand sentiment directly, making them more agile, nimble, and competitive. 

While there is still a place for traditional research methodologies, technologies like machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and chatbots continue to reinvent the market research industry. 

Let’s look at the primary technologies in brand tracking and competition analysis that are changing the face of market research. 

E-commerce brands utilize price monitoring software technology to track competitor pricing.

In the fiercely competitive E-commerce world, the key to outperforming the competition is tracking and monitoring the price competing brands charge for similar products and services. Brands need to keep a keen eye on their competitor’s pricing strategy and price changes over several products to stay competitive, and that’s not an easy task even for larger companies. 

This is where e-commerce price monitoring technology comes into play. 

Ecommerce price monitoring software allows brands to track their competitor’s price changes and dynamically adjust their pricing. 

By employing this type of software, brands can stay abreast with competitor pricing and adjust pricing based on demand, competition, and inventory levels. 

Many such tools are available in the market, including Minderest, Price2Spy, and Prisync, with sophisticated matching technology and high levels of accuracy. 

Market research utilizes machine learning and A.I. for brand and performance tracking to revamp advertising and messaging. 

While some grey areas are associated with A.I. in other fields, the market research industry has embraced this technology.

One of the things brands need to track constantly is how their messaging is resonating with the target audience and how the market perceives their brand. This is because a brand is not just the logo and tagline. It is a sum of all parts and is an overall feeling that tells a narrative and evokes sentiment and emotion in the audience. 

Technology helps brands better understand brand performance and perception to inform better decision-making. It allows brands to measure and bridge the gaps between their intent and how the audiences interpret and perceive their message.

The use of A.I. in brand tracking has allowed market researchers to analyze qualitative surveys at a fraction of the time taken by manual data collection methods. Furthermore, this enables them to ask more open-ended and follow-up questions, find the right panelists faster, eliminate bias, write reports quickly, and significantly improve the quality of their surveys and reports. 

In today’s dynamic digital marketplaces, A.I. is powering brand tracking to gauge the changing consumer perceptions. 

Sentiment analysis is a sub-category of A.I. and N.L.P., which automatically uncovers feelings, emotions, and sentiments behind plain blocks of text. It is extensively used in brand tracking because it is efficient, reliable, and accurate. 

Over 45 percent of the world is on social media. There are about 500 million tweets per day, and about 1.96 billion people worldwide use Facebook every day. Consumers constantly call out brands on these social media platforms and review sites. It would be overwhelming and near impossible to collect data manually. Brands can effectively gauge overall brand sentiment across platforms and channels online using automated tools. 

For instance, when the popular ride-sharing service, UBER, launched a new version of its app, it used social media monitoring and text analytics to measure user sentiment about the new version of the app. Eye-tracking technology works similarly and can track users’ engagement scores and emotions on a website. 

There are several brand tracking tools available for brands. Candymaker Mars used one such tool that combines the standard digital video metrics, like view-through rates and skip rates, with facial expression tracking of the viewers while watching the ad using an A.I. algorithm.

While the tool measures digital behaviors, it puts enormous weight on gauging emotion and sentiment. This technology is essential to track brand performance in a world plagued with minuscule attention spans. It allows brands to obtain a complete picture of consumer perception. 

Many technologies use participants’ webcams to track their facial and emotional responses while viewing ads, providing invaluable data used to inform sales forecasts. 

Chatbots are aggregating vast amounts of consumer data.

The usage of chatbots as a communication channel between brands and consumers has increased by 92 percent since 2019. 

As many consumers shop online, they engage with chatbots, making them the fastest-growing brand communication channel.  

A survey found that up to 80 percent of users answered questions, three times higher than responses from email surveys. 

Brands like IKEA are using chatbots to gather valuable consumer feedback. Companies use Whatsapp and Facebook messenger to measure consumer sentiment and feedback efficiently. 

The use of brand tracking cannot be overemphasized. It allows brands to understand how their current audience perceives the brand. It can also lead brands to uncover until now undiscovered target audiences. 

With brand tracking software, brands can see the true impact of their campaigns. Brand tracking holds the key to insights any brand needs to thrive. Using the right tools and technology, brands can obtain actionable information about the brand perception among the target audience and how it scores against the competition.

A brand is one of the most valuable assets of an organization. It is, therefore, critical to continually measure satisfaction, awareness, and perception. Incorporating brand tracking into their marketing strategy can help brands understand their target audiences and consumer needs and make more profitable marketing decisions. Technology has made it easier to uncover massive data sets to monitor a brand effectively and accurately. By combining this technology with digital metrics, brands can increase their competitive advantage.