A strong brand with a good reputation usually sells well – this is an undeniable fact. However, it is worth remembering that it is not sales performance or share of the total market that is the only indicator of brand strength. Reputation is quite difficult to measure with numerical indicators. This is because the real strength of a brand lies in the emotions that customers have towards it, i.e. its sentiment. So how do you analyse brand sentiment in the Polish market? Here are some tips from a PR agency in Poland!
Table of contents
- What is brand sentiment?
- How to measure brand sentiment in Poland?
- Customer opinion surveys
- Social media analytics
- Media monitoring tools in Poland
- Tips on how to effectively analyse brand sentiment in Poland
What is brand sentiment?
Brand sentiment refers to the way your customers and potential customers perceive a brand and the emotions they have towards it – both positive and negative. Sentiment analysis is therefore nothing more than the process of measuring and understanding consumer sentiment towards a brand, as well as towards individual products or even brand owners or representatives.
The sentiment is clear feedback from the market – essential to keep a brand’s good reputation under control and to be able to adapt our offerings to meet customer expectations. It shows us in a transparent way how our consumers feel and what condition the brand image is in. The more negative the sentiment, the stronger the signal that something needs to change. It is worth implementing changes based on information received from consumers. Only then can we be sure that we are not making decisions (whether sales or marketing) completely in the dark. What’s more, analysing brand sentiment can help prevent PR crises in advance and mitigate those that have already occurred.
How do you measure brand sentiment in Poland?
The very notion of brand sentiment immediately brings to mind associations with media monitoring tools such as Brand24 or SentiOne. Such tools allow you to automatically track all the content that appears about your brand online. Indeed, in the internet age, ‘manually’ tracking and analysing what customers are saying about a brand is not very difficult. But the bigger the brand, the more difficult it becomes.
Unfortunately, for a long time, reliable sentiment analysis of mentions in Polish based on artificial intelligence was a Sisyphean job. Most of the algorithms that gave great results for English language content were unable to cope with the characteristics of the Polish language and its multitude of grammatical structures. As a result, positive comments were classified as neutral, neutral comments as negative, and so on. All the work ultimately had to be done ‘on foot’. Because of this, marketers developed other methods to analyse brand sentiment in the Polish market.
Customer feedback surveys
Focus groups, email marketing (sending customers short surveys to gauge their satisfaction with a purchase), allowing consumers to write reviews about products, or even surveys exploring customer emotions in YouTube adverts – any of these methods of gathering direct feedback from actual Polish customers will be a source of valuable data for the brand. Qualitative surveys (i.e. surveys in which customers can speak openly about the brand, e.g. by answering detailed questions) allow for a better understanding of consumers, their feelings about the brand, and their needs.
In customer satisfaction surveys, it is useful to use a scale, e.g. 1 to 10 (where 1 stands for a bad rating and negative emotions and 10 for positive emotions). It is also good to ask about different aspects of the brand, e.g. the brand as a whole, the product purchased, or the quality of customer service. Don’t forget the data that will allow you to divide the customers completing the surveys into several focus groups. This will make you notice certain patterns more quickly (e.g. why men in their 20s are indifferent towards the brand and women in their 40s have a lot of positive emotions towards it) and enable you to look for their sources.
Social media analytics
Social listening, i.e. the process of monitoring social media in terms of what customers write about a brand on Facebook or Instagram, should be an essential part of social media marketing strategy in the Polish market. Polish customers are sometimes uncompromising – they are very willing to share their impressions of brands online, especially if their experiences are negative. So what is worth taking into account? First and foremost, reviews left on official brand profiles. This is the most obvious indicator that allows us to find out immediately what customers say about our brand. Poles like to leave reviews on Facebook, so it is worth enabling them to do so.
It’s also good to analyse the figures. The analytics tools that Facebook provides us with, for example, allow us to conduct quantitative analysis conveniently and quickly, such as measuring the number of comments, the engagement rate under posts, the speed at which comments appear, or even the number of new followers (and whether the speed of gaining new followers is holding steady, increasing or perhaps decreasing). Any such change should then be qualitatively analysed. This can be done ‘manually’ or with the support of media monitoring tools.
Media monitoring tools in Poland
The traditional sentiment analysis model here is based on a polarity scale. It measures whether a given piece of content (e.g. social media post, blog post) is positively, negatively, or neutrally charged. Sentiment analysis tools use machine learning as well as AI to detect consumer emotions hidden under specific words or phrases. Today, the algorithms are more refined than those in place a few years ago and can increasingly generate fairly reliable results – even in Polish. For example, the SentiOne tool analyses each text based on 8 basic emotions (e.g. fear, joy, anger).
In addition to being able to manually check each mention, media monitoring tools also generate automatic summaries. On clear graphs, we can see the number of mentions published in a given period or the ratio of positive to negative mentions. When analysing such a report, it is worth following a simple rule – the negative sentiment should be less than 9% of all mentions published.
Tips on how to analyse brand sentiment in Poland more effectively
1. Monitor more than just the brand name
Sometimes we focus so much on analysing brand mentions that we forget that there is much more to a brand than just its name. It’s also worth monitoring product names (especially flagship products), as well as the names of key people working for the company or representing the brand (including influencers the brand works with and ambassadors!). It also doesn’t hurt to keep track of twisted brand names (especially if the name is foreign). It’s also good to analyse competitor brands, industry trends (e.g. specific keywords), and how popular our brand is on Google. This allows you to catch general changes in the industry throughout the year.
2. Don’t base your assessments solely on artificial intelligence
Although modern media monitoring tools can generate reliable results, we still do not recommend relying on them 100%. We always suggest reviewing the generated reports yourself – if only to catch repetitive opinions or keywords. You will always have a better understanding of internet slang and will be able to spot typos or grammatical errors.
3. Carefully analyse the sources of references
Don’t just focus on analysing social media mentions. Admittedly, social media platforms are an insanely important area to watch, but it’s worth looking much wider in sentiment analysis. Also monitor online forums, news portals, blogs, or review sites. Pay particular attention to floods of negative comments in one place. Perhaps someone is doing you black PR?
How they write you is how they see you – and what emotions your Polish customers feel towards your brand translates into its sales results. So if you want to effectively and consciously build your brand’s reputation and react quickly to the seeds of possible crises, sentiment analysis is a must in the age of customer-centricity. Put it in the hands of Polish communications experts and contact us. We are a PR agency from Poland that has been supporting foreign brands in communications and PR activities on the Polish market for years.