We get it — Latana’s somewhat newer to the brand tracking world and, right now, you may not be 100% sold on all its purported benefits.
Maybe you googled “brand tracking software” and landed on our website or, perhaps, you heard about us from a colleague? Either way, we understand if spouting on about complicated data science and revolutionizing the world of brand sounds a bit far-fetched — at least at first.
However, we’re aware that — if you’re here — you’re either new to the brand tracking universe or you’re dissatisfied with your current brand tracking solution. Be it unreliable data and scandalously large margins of error or a disappointing lack of audience segmentation capabilities — we understand your complaints, and we want you to know that Latana is different.
Thus, we decided to create this article to fully explain the accurate and actionable data brand tracking software like Latana can provide — and explore how it can help support your brand’s growth.
So, if you’re ready to enter the wild and wonderful world of brand tracking, then read on. Your brand management is about to get a whole lot better.
How Brand Tracking Software Can Support Your Brand’s Growth #LatanaStyle
We’ve found it’s always best to begin with the basics, aka a definition or two. So, let’s start things off with brand tracking — what is it, exactly?
Brand tracking is a means of continuously and precisely measuring brand health via audience brand metrics by using advanced data science and large data sets.
Okay, lovely — but what can you do with it? And how can it support your brand’s growth? Here are our four top reasons brand tracking software will help you improve your brand marketing strategy.
1. Brand tracking software can help you see the true impact of your brand campaigns
We’ve got two unbelievably alluring words for you: high… accuracy. And, yes — we are referring to brand data you can actually trust. See, we have a special ingredient and an irritating (or charming, depending on your viewpoint) habit of wanting to tell everybody about it.
It’s called Multilevel Regression and Poststratification. But seeing as that’s quite a mouthful, we just called it MRP.
Now, MRP isn’t the easiest concept to explain in just a line or two. For those who aren’t as interested in learning all the ins and outs of this more scientific topic, just know this: MRP provides unmatched, high-precision data.
Now, we’re assuming your jaws just (metaphorically) dropped to the ground — and before you have time to pick them up again, be aware that this precision also applies to niche audiences.
We’ll give you a minute to recover.
And we’re back — let’s continue.
With Latana's software, you can accurately track important KPIs like brand awareness and brand perception, and rest assured knowing that any changes you see are due to real-world influences — and not some random happenings.
Translation? If you see an increase in brand awareness from 3% to 8% between data waves, this increase is significant. Unfortunately, this’s not always the case with many other brand tracking software.
Furthermore, you’ll be able to see both growth and decline. And while seeing growth is always a reason to celebrate, seeing decline — while a sad loss — means you’re aware of the work you need to do to gain back previous levels.
But it doesn’t end here. There’s so much you can do with brand tracking data that will help you grow. Please enjoy this list of some of our favorites:
Accurately measure brand awareness
Base future decisions on the insights provided knowing that the data is accurate
Discover which of your brand activities work and which don’t
Understand how target audiences perceive your brand
Concentrate on what actually works for your brand
Now, that’s what we call brand tracking!
2. Brand tracking software can reveal how your target audiences react to your brand
Let’s dig a bit deeper into how you can monitor your target audiences with brand tracking software — and what that means for your brand growth.
Latana's brand tracking software allows you to figure out how your target audiences perceive your brand via brand associations — aka the traits and characteristics that consumers associate with your brand and products.
By tracking this KPI, you can identify any changes in terms of key associations, e.g. “innovative”, “trustworthy” and “inspiring”. And if those changes are not the outcome you planned, you know when to switch gears.
Again, this brings those real-world changes into play. But most importantly, it helps you get inside consumers’ minds by asking (and answering) questions like:
Are they picking up on the trust signals you feel are readily apparent on your website? Did your latest marketing campaign lead them to believe your brand is inspiring?
You can use these insights to ensure that your target audience’s associations are in line with your goals and communication. After all, it's easy to grow when you understand how your audience really thinks!
Let’s consider the following example: you’re the brand manager of a mid-sized tech company that’s recently undergone a pretty extensive rebranding. Management felt that your old brand image wasn’t keeping up with your reputation as an innovative, fast-paced brand and ordered a change.
It’s now been about 2 months since your rebrand and you’re interested to see if your revamped brand image and communication has had an impact on your target audience’s perception of you — specifically, your brand associations.
Whereas before your associations were “friendly” and “accessible”, your rebranded version is shooting more for associations like “sleek”, “innovative”, and “cutting-edge”. Using brand tracking software, you’re able to figure out exactly what your target audience thinks.
To your delight, your main target audience reported 49% for “sleek” and 58% for “innovative” — not too bad! However, you’re falling short for “cutting-edge” at only 21%. With this brand reputation data on hand, you can now use it to inform future brand campaigns and communication. Hurray!
3. Brand tracking software can help you discover new audiences
With our brand tracking software, you have access to 1000s of different audiences — which can be built using standard characteristics like age and gender, much like other traditional brand trackers.
However, that’s not all. One of the things that truly sets Latana apart from the competition is our audience segmentation capabilities. From income to education to specific geography — it’s all up for grabs.
Not impressed yet? What if we were to mention that you can also include custom characteristics of your own choosing. For instance — parents, students, video game players, Londoners, dog lovers, gin drinkers… the list goes on. Now, that makes things more exciting, does it not?
This capability is what makes it possible for us to accurately track niche audiences, such as:
Low-income students in Berlin
Women aged 18-25 with a cat
Guitar-playing males
High-income male car owners
But that’s not all. With this data on hand, you can then draw comparisons between audiences and conduct in-depth analyses to see which ones perform best for your brand. Pretty neat, huh?
With this new, detailed data, you’re bound to discover ways to grow and improve.
Let’s consider the following scenario: you’re the new brand manager of an up-and-coming start-up in the vegan food industry. Your predecessor left a thorough handover where they laid out your top 3 personas — aka your ideal customers.
While these 3 target audiences are spot on, you have a hunch that there may be some untapped audiences out there. After all, the interest in veganism is growing every year.
Thus, when gathering your next wave of brand tracking data, you add in a few extra custom audiences:
Women aged 25-45 with an interest in sustainability
Men aged 35-55 who like outdoor sports
Men & women aged 55-65 with an interest in healthy living
When you receive your data shortly thereafter, you compare your preexisting target audiences with your newly added ones and find some interesting insights. While none of these new niche audiences outperform your 3 main personas, one shows real promise — older adults.
With this information in mind, you decide to test out a brand awareness campaign to nurture and inform older adults with an interest in healthy living. That’s brand data in action!
4. Brand tracking software can help you avoid common industry mistakes
To be fair, there’s a decent way to avoid industry mistakes available to absolutely everyone — it’s called using Google.
Have a browse through the web and take advice from various websites speculating about what your competitors are doing. Or, hope your competitors are transparent enough to fully disclose their campaign details online, however unlikely that may be. (Very unlikely.)
However, there is a better (and easier) way, of course. You guessed it — using brand tracking software.
How? Well, in the same way that you can track brand awareness, brand associations, brand preference, and brand consideration for your own brand — you can do the same for your competition!
With Latana, you have access to accurate data, the ability to discover real-world changes and to locate spikes related to competitor campaigns. You can then use this information to avoid making the same mistakes as your competitors. Likewise, you can also use said information to build upon what they’ve done right.
But above all, this information will help you to leave your competitors in the dust. And what does all that help you to achieve? You guessed it — growth!
Let’s consider the following example: you’re the Consumer Insights Manager at a mid-sized apparel brand. One of your top brand values is sustainability — and your brand has many policies in place that support it.
Recently, your colleagues in Product came to you to express their interest in testing out a new line of upcycled clothing, which would use unsold stock from previous years as its foundation. However, before getting too deep into the idea, they want to know how your brand’s target audiences would respond to such an idea.
Thankfully, you know exactly where to look for this answer. For the past two years, you’ve been not only tracking your own performance via brand tracking software — but also that of your competitors. You also know that in Q1 of this year, Competitor B released a similar line.
Looking back through your data, you find that after their upcycled line was released and they launched brand campaigns to promote it, their brand awareness within a top shared target audience (eco-conscious women aged 18-35) increased by 2.5% and their brand association of “sustainable” jumped from 42% to 53%.
With this data in mind, you are able to give Product the go-ahead, as you know that a similar move had a very positive effect on an important target audience.
Final Thoughts
This is perhaps the easiest article that we’ve ever had the pleasure of summarizing because it all comes down to one simple sentence: brand tracking software provides the insights your brand needs to thrive.
The right brand tracking software provides trustworthy and actionable information about the impact of your campaigns — and those of your competitors. It gives insight into how your target audiences perceive your brand and if they would consider buying from you. It also provides access to yet-to-be-discovered consumer groups — such as niche audiences.
All in all, brand tracking software supports brand growth like no other tool can — it’s hard to find a better deal than that anywhere. But if you believe you’ve found a better platform, do let us know. We’ll use our technology to track them and, then, beat them at their own game.
Updated by: Cory Schröder, 07.01.22
