What is Brand Sentiment – Examples, Analysis and Tracking Tools

Understanding how consumers perceive your brand is essential in today’s competitive environment. Brand sentiment analysis provides valuable insight into customer emotions and opinions, helping businesses fine-tune their products, services, and marketing strategies. Let’s see how companies can effectively track sentiment to stay ahead of trends, improve customer loyalty, and drive overall success.

What is Brand Sentiment?

Brand sentiment is the way people talk about your brand in the media and the emotions behind those mentions. In public relations, sentiment analysis is a key tool for tracking brand perception and word-of-mouth over time. Using AI, it analyzes the context and tone of conversations to determine whether they are positive, negative, or neutral.

By analyzing a large number of opinions, brands get a clear picture of how customers or target audiences perceive them. With sentiment tracking tools, they can map out trends over time, spot shifts in public perception and identify moments when sentiment peaks or dips within 30 days. Explore our Brand Development Explained eBook to deepen your understanding of effective brand strategies.

Why is Brand Sentiment Important?

Brand sentiment is important because it directly impacts public perception, customer trust, and overall business success.

Brand sentiment analysis plays a vital role in shaping public perception, influencing customer trust, and determining the success of marketing efforts. Positive sentiment strengthens brand credibility, fosters customer loyalty, and enhances word-of-mouth recommendations. On the other hand, unchecked negative sentiment can erode trust, reduce sales, and even trigger PR crises.

Understanding and leveraging brand sentiment metrics provides businesses with critical insights to:

• Monitor consumer perceptions in real-time – by analyzing brand sentiment measurement trends across digital platforms, brands can detect shifts in consumer attitudes and adjust their messaging accordingly.
• Optimise marketing campaigns – brand sentiment analysis enables brands to gauge how well their campaigns resonate with audiences, helping them refine their strategies for maximum engagement and impact.
• Manage crises proactively – by identifying and addressing negative sentiment early, businesses can prevent reputational damage and turn negative experiences into positive brand interactions.
• Improve customer experience – understanding how customers feel about a brand allows businesses to enhance product offerings, personalize customer interactions, and foster long-term relationships.
• Benchmark against competitors – brand sentiment tracking provides insights into how a brand is perceived in comparison to competitors, helping businesses identify strengths and areas for improvement.

By continuously tracking and analyzing brand sentiment metrics, brands can gain a competitive edge, build a strong reputation, and drive sustainable growth.

According to Rival IQ’s explanation of why brand sentiment matters, analysis helps identify consumer attitudes and emotions toward your brand, which can significantly impact your company’s success. Positive sentiment can attract customers, while negative sentiment can damage your image and drive away potential customers. Understanding these sentiments helps you tailor your products, services, and messaging, giving you a competitive advantage and enabling better reputation management.

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How Do Brands Use Sentiment Analysis?

Sentiment analysis is a powerful tool that enables brands to extract meaningful insights from customer interactions, online reviews, and media coverage. By leveraging AI-driven tools, businesses can assess public perception, predict market trends, and make informed decisions.

Key Applications of Sentiment Analysis:

• Media Monitoring – platforms like CisionOne track brand mentions across print, online, and broadcast media, offering insights into sentiment fluctuations. These insights help businesses understand how they are being portrayed in the media and adjust their PR strategies accordingly.
• Social Listening – tools like Brandwatch and Brand24 analyze conversations on social media platforms, tracking trends, customer concerns, and brand advocacy in real-time.
• Customer Review Analysis – review platforms such as Yelp, Trustpilot, Google Reviews, and Amazon provide businesses with raw customer feedback, allowing them to identify recurring themes in consumer sentiment and address product or service-related issues.
• Online Surveys – platforms like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms allow businesses to collect direct consumer feedback through structured questions, helping them understand customer preferences and improve offerings based on sentiment analysis.
• Focus Groups – conducting small-group discussions enables brands to gather qualitative insights into customer sentiment, revealing deeper emotional connections and pain points that automated tools might overlook.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS) – measuring customer willingness to recommend a brand through NPS surveys provides businesses with a clear benchmark for customer loyalty and overall sentiment trends.

By integrating sentiment analysis into their decision-making processes, brands can enhance customer relationships, refine their marketing strategies, and ensure a consistent, positive brand image across all touchpoints.

Brand Sentiment Tracking Tools – Understanding and Measuring Public Perception

1. Media Monitoring

Media monitoring tools like CisionOne allow brands to track mentions across various platforms, including print, online news, broadcast, and social media. These tools often come equipped with features such as word clouds, share of voice metrics, and geographical sentiment breakdowns, providing deeper insights into customer perception. Businesses can set up keyword searches to track specific terms related to their brand and industry, ensuring they never miss important discussions.

2. Social Media Monitoring and Listening

For brands heavily engaged in social media, platforms like Brandwatch and Brand24 serve as comprehensive solutions for monitoring audience sentiment. These tools analyze real-time conversations, trending topics, and overall brand perception, helping businesses respond swiftly to feedback. Social listening tools can uncover patterns in customer discussions, enabling brands to identify emerging trends, pain points, and opportunities for engagement.

3. Customer Reviews and Online Forums

Customer review platforms such as Yelp, Trustpilot, Google Reviews, and Amazon offer a wealth of sentiment data. Reviews provide firsthand customer opinions about products and services, helping brands understand strengths and areas for improvement. Engaging with customers through these platforms—by responding to reviews and addressing concerns—can improve brand perception and loyalty. Additionally, online forums such as Reddit and Quora provide unfiltered insights into how consumers discuss brands organically.

4. Online Surveys

Brands looking for direct feedback can leverage online surveys through platforms like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms. Surveys enable companies to gather structured sentiment data from customers, allowing for a deeper understanding of brand perception. Conducting regular surveys helps track changes in customer sentiment over time and provides actionable insights for improvement.

5. Focus Groups

Focus groups provide a qualitative approach to sentiment analysis, allowing brands to collect in-depth feedback from a targeted group of consumers. Unlike automated sentiment analysis, focus groups offer valuable context and emotional nuance behind customer perceptions. These discussions can reveal the motivations, expectations, and underlying emotions that drive sentiment, making them an essential complement to quantitative sentiment tracking methods.

6. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a widely used metric for assessing brand sentiment and customer loyalty. It involves asking customers how likely they are to recommend a product or service on a scale of 0 to 10. Responses categorize customers into promoters (loyal enthusiasts), passives (neutral), and detractors (unhappy customers). By tracking NPS over time, brands can assess overall sentiment trends and take proactive steps to enhance customer satisfaction.

7. Conversation Intelligence

Conversation intelligence technology captures and analyzes customer interactions across various communication channels, transforming unstructured data into actionable insights. These platforms use AI and speech analytics to extract sentiment, emotions, and key themes from customer conversations. This approach provides a comprehensive view of brand sentiment by identifying real-time customer concerns, expectations, and overall perception.

Text Analytics vs. Sentiment Analysis

While both text analytics and sentiment analysis process textual data, they serve different purposes:

• Text Analytics: Focuses on extracting themes, keywords, and patterns from text data, helping brands identify frequently discussed topics and concerns.
• Sentiment Analysis: Evaluate the emotional tone of the text, categorizing it as positive, neutral, or negative. Sentiment analysis helps brands understand how customers feel about their products, services, and brand messaging.

7 Steps for Measuring Brand Sentiment

1. Define Your Objectives

Establish clear goals for sentiment measurement, such as assessing customer satisfaction, brand perception, or industry benchmarking. Setting realistic goals ensures that improvements can be effectively tracked over time.

2. Collect Relevant Data

Gather sentiment insights from multiple sources, including social media, reviews, surveys, and focus groups. Ensuring data diversity helps capture a more accurate representation of customer sentiment.

3. Use Sentiment Analysis Tools

Leverage AI-driven sentiment analysis tools to automate tracking and categorization. Advanced tools, like CisionOne’s React Score, provide deeper insights by detecting specific emotional factors tied to brand mentions.

4. Categorize Sentiment Data

Break down collected data into positive, neutral, and negative sentiment categories. This classification helps identify patterns and trends in audience perception.

5. Analyze Sentiment Metrics

Monitor key brand sentiment metrics, including sentiment polarity, emotional tone, and share of voice. Compare results against competitors to benchmark performance.

6. Track Sentiment Over Time

Brand sentiment is dynamic, fluctuating with campaigns, customer interactions, and external events. Regular tracking allows brands to identify patterns, measure the effectiveness of their strategies, and adjust accordingly.

7. Implement Strategic Improvements

Use insights from sentiment analysis to refine brand messaging, improve customer service, and optimize marketing campaigns. Address customer concerns, close feedback loops, and continuously adapt strategies to strengthen brand sentiment.

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Why Investing in Brand Sentiment Analysis Pays Off

Understanding brand sentiment is not just a trend—it’s a business necessity. Companies that actively track and optimise sentiment see higher customer retention rates, stronger brand loyalty, and increased revenue. Ignoring how your audience perceives you means leaving valuable opportunities on the table.

By implementing a data-driven sentiment analysis strategy, you can:

• Boost customer satisfaction by responding to feedback in real time.
• Gain a competitive advantage by identifying industry trends before your competitors.
• Enhance marketing ROI by ensuring your messaging resonates with the right emotions.
• Drive more sales by strengthening trust and credibility with your audience.

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Strengthening Brand Sentiment for Long-Term Success

Brand sentiment is a critical metric that influences customer trust, business reputation, and sales performance. By leveraging sentiment analysis tools and taking proactive measures, brands can enhance public perception, strengthen customer relationships, and gain a competitive edge in the market. Investing in brand sentiment tracking provides invaluable insights that drive long-term growth and success.

Ready to improve your brand sentiment? Start tracking and analyzing today to gain deeper customer insights and optimize your brand reputation!