Brand Sentiment and the Power of Perception

Brand sentiment and the power of perception

October 2, 2023

Brand sentiment is a key indicator of how your brand is perceived by your target audience and the wider world. But what can positive brand sentiment do for your brand, how do you measure it, and what can you do to positively influence it? Read on to find out.

What is brand sentiment?

Brand sentiment is the name given to the feelings your brand inspires. For example, consumers and the wider market might feel positive, neutral, and negative about your brand.

This might be expressed in third-party reviews, submitted in consumer feedback, shared on social media, spread through word-of-mouth recommendations, or more. It’s not just about how your brand appears externally – brand sentiment can also refer to how your employees view your company from the inside.

Brand sentiment gives you the emotional context behind consumer mentions of your brand online – but it becomes even more powerful when you can isolate the sentiment around specific topics being mentioned. This gives you an understanding of positive brand perceptions as well as barriers for consumers.

A consumer can have positive perceptions around one particular area of your business – say product quality – but they may perceive other aspects negatively, such as the price point for your products or services. Your overall brand sentiment will give you insight into how positively or negatively your brand is perceived overall. Ideally, you’ll surface brand sentiment insights on the root causes of why your brand is perceived a certain way.

You can measure brand sentiment with the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning, combined with Natural Language Understanding (NLU). Analyzing text inputs (such as open-text survey responses or social media posts) is made easier with tools that can recognize indicators of sentiment and automatically assign them as positive, neutral, or negative in tone.

Why is brand sentiment important?

Brand sentiment is important because it measures intangible and often hard-to-quantify feelings surrounding a brand, while also highlighting factors that can have a significant impact on your business outcomes.

Measuring brand sentiment might not feel as important or as simple as measuring more easily quantifiable business metrics, such as NPS or CSAT, but positive sentiment is a great indicator of consumer loyalty, potential consumer spend, employee retention, and more.

Similarly, negative sentiment can be a strong indicator of high consumer churn, negative brand image, or problems with how your brand operates.

It’s also important to track brand sentiment to keep up with the competition. To stay ahead of the pack, you’ll need to use this valuable tool to provide better services and hone in on what your consumers really want from your brand.

Why should you track brand sentiment over time?

As your brand evolves, introduces new products, and launches new marketing strategies, how your brand is perceived will change. Tracking brand sentiment over time helps you to build a picture of what shifts consumer sentiment and predict what will happen to your brand’s reputation if you make certain changes.

What is “good” brand sentiment and why do you need it?

“Good” sentiments about your brand might include:

Negative sentiments about your brand could be:

However, sentiment is very subjective, and what might be negative for one brand might be positive for another and vice versa. “Cheap” might be counted in negative mentions for a luxury brand, but could be positive for a value-for-money brand.

Why do you need “good” brand sentiment?

How consumers feel about your brand can greatly influence their behavior, and give you insight into brand consideration and purchase intent.

For example:

Does your audience think your brand is consistent in providing great quality services? They’re more likely to return and recommend your brand as a result.

Is your audience upset with your consumer service and being vocal about it online? When potential consumers are searching social media, search engine results, and third-party reviews for information on your brand, they’ll see these negative brand mentions and form an opinion accordingly.

How do you measure brand sentiment?

To measure brand sentiment, you’ll need to undertake a brand sentiment analysis. Brand sentiment analysis is the process of pinpointing opinions, emotions, and judgments of your brand through the dissection of natural language inputs, such as open text comments, social media posts, or transcripts of consumer phone calls. It’s completed with a sentiment analysis tool, usually software that can automatically “read” inputs and flag text with a positive, negative, or neutral tone.

Determining sentiment through Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Positive sentiment, neutral sentiment, and negative sentiment might seem simple to understand at first glance, but there are several factors that can make brand sentiment more nuanced. A major one is the fact that human beings express themselves in natural language, which can often be tricky for digital tools to parse for sentiment.

Brand sentiment can be significantly affected by the power of your brand analysis tools. Often, brand sentiment can be complex, with shades of positivity and negativity.

Sources for brand sentiment analysis

You can use many inputs as a source for your brand sentiment analysis, including:

Why do you need more than social sentiment analysis?

Social sentiment analysis can help you to pinpoint positive mentions or negative reactions by using social media listening and sentiment analysis tools. While social media monitoring for brand sentiment is important, focusing solely on it only provides you with part of the story.

Analyzing sentiment across all channels where a consumer may be interacting with your brand can give you a wider view of what your engaged audience feels passionate about, and what they’d like to see changed. You will be able to better understand how your brand is perceived and why it is perceived in that way.

Calculating brand sentiment

As mentioned, calculating brand sentiment requires the right sentiment analysis tools. The process of brand sentiment analysis as a whole can be divided into these actions:

1. Find the right brand sentiment analysis tool

Calculating brand sentiment requires a sentiment analysis tool that can collect large quantities of data, process it appropriately, and deliver insights that are targeted and relevant.

2. Collect your data

The more data you collect, the better an understanding you will gain about general brand sentiment and your brand’s reputation.

3. Implement your sentiment analysis

Your sentiment analysis tool will take your collected data and assign tags, flagging items with the appropriate sentiment.

4. Get insights

Insights you should be able to glean from your sentiment analysis should include:

5. Take action

The final step is to take action to improve, based on your insights.

How do you improve brand sentiment?

Improving brand sentiment means taking action when negative or neutral sentiment is flagged. Your brand sentiment analysis should always be ongoing, but your resulting responses and updates should be ongoing as well.