3 Ways to Measure B2B Brand Perception

From brand awareness to customer loyalty, every experience someone has with your brand informs the larger market perception. A fellow marketer once said it best, “it’s like putting a face to a name.” Brand perception is a vital component of your overall marketing strategy and will help dictate future resource allocation as well as spend.

Brand Perception Today

Today’s B2B brands are somewhere in between AI sentiment analysis and an antiquated NPS score. For everyone else, if you’re grasping at the straws of your customer’s perception then it’s time to wake up and smell the bad reviews.

If you watched this season’s Silicon Valley, you got a witty and not so far-fetched depiction of Data Mining for Sentiment Analysis 101. If you haven’t seen it, I’m sure HBO will show you an ad after reading this blog – if not, make sure to catch up on the last few seasons… it’s a must.

However, for someone who spent the last decade in the tech sector, this show always hits a little too close to home. But IT IS a great reminder of what is well within reach for those who are obsessed with customer success teams, and knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to make someone take an action at the right time while growing loyalty and expansion within an existing base.

62% of customers say they share bad experiences with others*

For businesses that don’t have millions to spend on data science for the marketing department – yes that’s a real thing – there are few actions you can take to easily assess your customer’s perception, areas for improvement, and ways to showcase what you’re doing right!

82% of business buyers want the same experience as when they’re buying for themselves.*

Here are 3 easy steps you can take today, this week, and this month to get started:

  1. Google Alerts – Do it today.
    • You can set up Google Alerts in less than a minute. Face it, you don’t have the time or resources for someone to monitor the internet 24/7. Google Alerts will do it for you. Just insert the keywords you want to monitor—such as your company’s name, a specific product/service you offer, or competitive terms – and anytime those keywords appear online, Google will email you an alert. It’s literally that simple.
  1. MarTech Stack – Do it this week.
    • Let’s face it, one bad review in Google’s search results can cause you to lose 70 percent of potential customers. From directories to negative social media interactions, there is a lot to read. Here are some tools that can capture a holistic view of your brand’s perception and help you prioritize what to listen to and how to respond.
  1. Surveys – Do it this month.
    • When it comes to measuring brand perception, customer surveys are your best friend. However, the most vital component of your survey is timing. It must capture feedback at critical moments of the customer journey. Here are a few well-known surveys you can design and implement this month:
      • A customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey measures customer health by asking customers targeted questions. It’s usually sent after a specific customer experience—like a purchase or customer support interaction.
      • Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) measures customer loyalty with a simple question: How likely are you to recommend us? The NPS survey is typically sent at specific stages of the customer lifecycle and is a fantastic way to identify brand advocates. [For those who have Salesforce, the platform will integrate your NPS scores giving you more visibility and actionable insights.]
      • A product survey measures product satisfaction and stickiness. It gives marketing and development teams unique insights on messaging, value propositions and pain points. All of which can inform your competitive positioning.

How will these tactics help your bottom line? A true understanding of these areas will allow your business to graduate from apologetic customer support reps to message refinement, testing, delivery, and conversion. More importantly, it will help you develop a product by the customer for the customer.

If you still need to convince stakeholders to invest time into analyzing your brand’s perception, not to mention something that directly affects your profitability, we, at Kepler & Wilde, would like to leave you with these reviews that popped up on Page 1 of Google when we researched software for our own company.

Real Software Reviews from TrustPilot Review Directory

*Salesforce Report, State of the Connected Consumer