Twitter, Facebook, the blogosphere, online mags, consumer forums, online newswires…the endpoints seem endless where your brand’s image can be enhanced (or damaged). Need to keep track of your brand image?…where do you look? Track tweets?  Monitor your Facebook page for posts? Surf online forums and chat rooms? Even if you are willing and able to dedicate resources to all of this brand tracking, what do you do you with it once collected?

In days of old (say, 2006), there were only a few ways a brand could really tell if it’s brand image online was being “enhanced”, or if it’s marketing plan for the digital world was working…and all of those ways were expensive.  You could conduct an opt-in survey with consumers online, or you could conduct focus group research, or you could perform a full-scale marketing mix model. All of these data collection methods have their flaws, but the greatest flaws are the expense and timing of executing these methods. That is particularly true of any offline method. Not only were the methods limited, but the concept of “social” media was still nascent and not nearly the marketing force it is today.

Those days have changed, however. The recent emergence of new media and tracking tools for online activity has made it possible to get a fuller picture of consumer online behavior, and this data is available for less cost than offline methods. There have been website traffic tools for several years, but on top of that now, throw social media listening and search engine monitoring tools. The combined insight from all of these tools gives a brand a comprehensive view of the consumer’s opinion.

There are multiple levels of a consumer’s relationship with a brand, and they are often represented as a “purchase funnel”, steps in a path from awareness to purchase online. A consumer can become aware of your brand, then research your brand, then engage the brand, and finally purchase the product or service. At least, that’s how the purchase funnel worked before the evolution of social media. Now that step of engagement is a never-ending, 24-hour-a-day cycle, and it requires more robust means of monitoring your brand’s image. A funnel denotes an end to the process, but social media and online activity makes it easier for consumers to be brand evangelists and engage with the brand long after the purchase.  There have always been word-of-mouth influencers, but now these influencers speak with a megaphone to the world, not just their neighbor.

Each of these steps represents opportunity for a brand, and the best marketers are keenly interested in how consumers interact with their brand (and competitors) throughout these steps.  With all the tracking tools, it is possible to have a view into each step.  Online awareness…look to search engine queries. Online research…search engines and visits to your website. Online engagement…find out what people are tweeting or saying about your brand on blogs, forums, and chat rooms.  Also, with the tools available today, you not only can learn IF they are talking about your brand, but what they are saying and if it’s a positive or negative spin. This is where the purchase funnel becomes more of a loop. The consumers who engage with a brand on social media can influence a large number of purchasers. Using monitoring tools for each of these steps is vital to understanding the relationship with your brand.

So, at each step of the online purchase funnel there is a tool that gives you a view.  This is good. Some marketers can stop there.  Sometimes, it’s enough to understand what consumers are saying, or how many are visiting your website.  However, the real power of all these individual tools is when you combine them all for a total view of your brand’s image and awareness.  You get a comprehensive measure of what the consumer thinks of your product and if your current marketing strategy or tactics are working, especially an online strategy. Using statistical data reduction techniques, you can combine all of the data into a single brand “consideration” metric.  Here at Organic, we call this combination our “Consideration of Brand Index” (COBI).

With this new brand-consideration metric, you can see in near real-time if your latest PR campaign changed your brand image, or even if your new TV and radio advertising and spokesperson are helping image. No need to wait months for survey or brand awareness trackers.  You can get answers within weeks, perhaps even within days.  And perhaps the best aspect of the brand consideration metric is that you can get this same information on your competitors at the same time.

Now, when brands combine these online social media tools with statistics, they can get the same type of information they used to collect in the offline world through surveys, but for fractions of the cost and time.  None of these tools are based on a brand’s proprietary data.  It’s all out there, most of it for free.  Use it wisely, and you’re a step ahead.

John Bejnarowicz, Senior Statistician at Organic