What's Your Brand's Buzz?

A brand is owned in the minds of its customers. So, what is your brand in their minds? Do you know?  If not, do you know where to go to find out? You can always use marketing research, but today, the Internet provides an unfiltered ongoing look into your customer's minds. And it is as simple as monitoring what is said about your brand on several different websites. Some websites even let you respond to your customers comments and address their concerns. 

So, where should you look online? Start here:

• Your brand's Facebook page
• Twitter search
• Amazon.com customer reviews
• Yelp reviews
• Yellow Pages reviews
• BirdEye reviews
• Citysearch reviews
• Google Reviews (Google My Business)
• Foursquare
• HomeAdvisor reviews
• Angie's list reviews
• TripAdvisor reviews
• Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline or Travelocity guest ratings
• Zamato reviews
• Open Table reviews
• PlanetRate
• Manta (small businesses)
• G2Crowd (software/tech)
• Better Business Bureau
• Glassdoor (employee point of view)

You might want to set up a brand or company intelligence gathering function that regularly checks these sources for customer feedback and reports it to the brand's or company's managers.

Know though that only a small percentage of your customers will provide feedback, usually those who encountered a problem and those who just love your brand. But for everyone who provides a rating or review, there are perhaps dozens, hundreds or even thousands of others who feel the same way about the brand. So carefully listen to what they have to say. 

When The Buzz is Gone

How can you tell when a brand is vital and on the rise? Conversely, how can you tell when a brand and its equity are fading? Buzz. That's right, buzz.

Remember when Amazon.com was first launched? Remember all of the buzz around Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com? And Jeff Bezos still receives a huge amount of buzz. Fortune magazine featured him as Lord Vishnu on its January 2016 cover. Or how about Elon Musk and Tesla Motors? And then there is Donald Trump. Commentators frequently talk about how he sucks all of the oxygen out of any room in which he speaks. And news networks have been blamed for focusing the vast majority of their political news on him. Wegmans gets endless free publicity as towns and municipalities beg to have one of its stores located in their burgs and especially when one does arrive in their communities. Dove received endless free publicity with its "real beauty" campaign. Google continues to receive a lot of buzz, as does YouTube. Apple is still up there as is Samsung and Android.

On the flip side, have you heard anything about these brands lately? OfficeMax. Dress Barn. BlackBerry. Nokia. Volvo. SAAB. LivingSocial. MySpace. Sony. Sears. Radio Shack. A&P. Quiznos. Old Milwaukee. Michelob Light. Quicksilver.

I didn't think so.

Do you want a quick read on the strength of a specific brand? Think about its buzz. Does it have any? Is everyone talking about the brand or have you not heard anyone talk about the brand in years? Perform a Google search on the brand's name. How many entries does it have? Are they recent? Have major publications written substantial stories about the brand? Has it been featured on their covers? Are news networks talking about the brand? Have you talked about the brand today or in the past week?

Buzz is a simple indicator of brand strength.

Did You Know?

Psychologist Erich Dichter found that consumers are more apt to relax and accept advertiser recommendations when the tone is that of a friend or an unbiased authority.

(Source: Emanuel Rosen, The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing. New York:

Doubleday, 2000, p. 210.)

There is a direct correlation between advertising spending, brand awareness, and market share (given that the brand’s distribution is equal to that of other brands in the category and consumers like the brand’s point of difference). In fact, James Gregory and the Corporate Branding Partnership (and others) have linked advertising spending to increases in sales, earnings, market share, and stock price.

A brand’s perceived quality increases with increases in advertising impressions, regardless of message.

Research has shown that the media environment affects advertising claims. For instance, quality claims are more effective on elite or prestigious websites because people associate the claim with the media environment.

(Source: Dean Donaldson, “Location Matters: How Ad Environments Affect Performance,” Advertising

Age, December 10, 2009, adage.com/article/digitalnext/location-matters-ad-environments-affectperformance/

140980/.)

Aspirational, upscale, and high status brands have the potential to alienate customers who lack confidence. While these customers might admire these brands, they don’t feel comfortable using them. Building warmth, humor, and less formality into the brands to make them more approachable helps overcome this problem.

(Source: Max Blackston, “Observations: Building Brand Equity by Managing the Brand’s

Relationships,” Journal of Advertising Research 32, no. 3, May/June 1992, pp. 79−83.)

Risk taking, innovation, breaking industry rules, products that outperform, and services that exceed customer expectations strongly contribute to brand vitality. “Adequate,” “suffice,” and “good enough” are not a part of a vital brand’s vocabulary.

The products and services that achieve the most “buzz” and that benefit the most from buzz are innovative, leading edge, and of superior quality—often creating a new standard for customer experience.

The typical No. 1 brand is worth 10 percent more than the No. 2 brand to consumers (range: zero percent to 35 percent).

© 2015 Brad VanAuken, excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.