Ever heard of a brand launching a new product only to fail in generating sales?
While great brand recognition is key, it doesn't always result in the kind of buzz stakeholders and clients expect. Chances are, something was off. And oftentimes, it's the lack of an effective brand research strategy.
In this article, you'll find out what brand research is, why it’s so important, and how to do it correctly. There are so many ways to conduct brand research that it's easy to go down the wrong rabbit hole for your particular case.
Start conducting thorough brand research today using Prowly's media monitoring and social media listening.
What is brand research?
Brand research is the process of analyzing how a brand is perceived, gathering insights on audience sentiment, competitor positioning, messaging, and brand performance to draft strategies based on actionable data.
The result? A strengthened brand identity, increased customer loyalty, market impact, and visible ROI.
For example, a PR team looking to enter a new geographical market with a particular product needs to conduct thorough brand research to ensure they are spending their resources in the best way possible. In simple terms – a good PR campaign can fail to generate even decent results without thoughtful brand market research.
Types of brand research
There are different types of brand research, such as simple surveys and questionnaires that you can implement on a brand's website, send via email, or place at crucial moments in the customer's journey.
Of course, when, where, and how all depends on your audience.
Sometimes, you might want to collect these answers at industry conferences, universities, or other places where your consumers spend time.
Media monitoring for better brand insights
To have a well-rounded strategy, implementing media monitoring tools that provide social listening insights is vital. Taking this approach to your brand study helps you uncover the overall sentiment toward a product or idea, identify who is interested in your offerings, and gain additional valuable insights.
An all-in-one tool like Prowly isn’t only known for its robust media database.
By utilizing Prowly's media monitoring and social media listening capabilities, you can collect data, analyze your company's performance, audience sentiment, your competitors, and identify powerful links and viral content.
Without a dedicated tool, building a brand strategy can be challenging—but with the right technology in hand, it doesn’t have to be.
P.S. Don't overlook traditional media when conducting your regular research! Be sure to check mentions in print magazines, radio programs, and television.
You can do this manually if you work for a small client, but to ensure you capture mentions nationally and internationally, consider using a tool that automates the process. That way, you'll never miss a mention—whether it's online or offline.
Combine online media monitoring with print and broadcast monitoring in Prowly to have mentions from both digital and traditional news sources at your fingertips—all in one place.
What are the benefits of brand research?
The main benefits of brand research can include precise audience targeting, improved PR strategy results, evaluation of gaps and opportunities, and informed budget allocation, especially for small agencies or PR teams.
Understanding your audience
There’s no good PR without knowing exactly who your audience is. Brand research can show you critical insights that you might have missed otherwise, such as demographics, preferences, and general consumer behavior.
What if you’ve been marketing to 25–35 year old women with your product in the US, while in Canada most of your customers are 35–45?
At first glance, it might not be a big difference. However, the chances are you’ll want to adjust your messaging and target different media outlets and influencers who will better resonate with your consumers.
Measuring brand performance
Tracking metrics like Share of Voice, audience sentiment, reach, and engagement is also part of brand research. They help you understand what kind of brand perception your PR actions are encouraging.
Tools like Prowly's media monitoring and social media listening can measure these metrics by analyzing media coverage and campaign impact.
Building more effective campaigns
We already know brand research is important. However, the end goal is to build more effective campaigns. Brand marketing research can reveal data-driven insights that empower you to create content aligned with audience values and market trends.
This allows you to develop campaigns grounded in genuine action, such as showcasing real changes within the company that resonate with your consumers, or amplifying voices from underrepresented groups. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of possibilities here.
Top brand research methods
Whether you're into traditional methods, such as direct engagement with people through focus groups or face-to-face talks, or you'd love to implement AI to get your results quicker and help you brainstorm, here you'll find all the top methods at your fingertips:
#1 Surveys and questionnaires
If you want to have authentic, direct feedback from your audience, conduct brand research using surveys and questionnaires.
👉 This method allows brands to really get inside the minds of their customers, reveal perceptions, preferences, and oftentimes areas for improvement.
👉 It's also the most valuable method when it comes to cost. You can implement it in various ways, such as email surveys, website pop-ups, social media platforms, live during events, or direct customer interactions in support chats.
Depending on your goals and what you're trying to achieve, here are some of the brand research questions you may want to implement:
- What other brands do you consider when shopping for similar products/services?
- What could we do better to meet your needs or expectations?
- On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?
- If you had to describe our brand in one word, what would it be?
- What type of content would you like to see from us?
- How long have you been our customer?
- How did you first hear about us?
- What social media channels do you use the most?
There are various questions you might want to ask in your brand research, but keep in mind that they all need to align with a goal. It's also worth doing a bit of research into how to frame these questions effectively so that they yield the kind of answers you need.
For example, asking, "If you had to describe our brand in one word, what would it be?" will yield results that might be hard to quantify.
However, if you ask the same question but provide, let's say, five to ten different custom answers, then it would be easier for both the consumer and you to make sense of it.
#2 Social media listening
Monitoring and analyzing real-time conversations about your brand, competitors, and industry can be the cherry on top of your PR strategy.
This goes beyond just tracking mentions or comments. With effective brand research, it's also about:
- Spotting current and emerging trends in your industry
- Figuring out what content can go viral
- Identifying cultural and regional nuances in brand perception
- Finding gaps in the market (or competitor weaknesses!)
- Researching what drives engagement and loyalty
- Getting audience sentiment feedback
Prowly can help you with brand research through effective and accurate social media listening and media monitoring. From tracking conversations, sentiment, and emerging trends to analyzing outlet coverage and public narratives, Prowly will help you draft a concrete brand strategy based on hard data.
Additionally, it will help you detect negative trends as early as possible, so you can address potential crises before they happen (which will, in turn, protect your reputation). Together, these capabilities provide a great brand perception summary. Curious how it works?
#3 Competitor benchmarking
When it comes to the competition, you're either always catching up or you're the one others want to catch up to. Competitor benchmarking is a crucial brand research method in comparing brand positioning, content, actions, strategies, market segmentation and more.
To get valuable information about competitors, you can compare SoV across outlets and different social media platforms (because what if you're focusing on Facebook and your audience is actually on TikTok?), and analyze your competitor's taglines, key messaging and brand positioning.
💡 For example: you can analyze competitor messaging by collecting their social media posts, ads, and PR materials to identify recurring themes and value propositions. The key here is to look for consistency between all touchpoints. Strong positioning can be felt everywhere and in everything, when done right.
#4 Focus groups and interviews
To build a focus group, start by defining clear objectives.
- What do you want to achieve?
- Who is your ideal audience?
- What kind of answers do you need?
Once you've established your goals, find about 6 to 10 people from diverse backgrounds and demographics, making sure they represent your ideal audience.
Then, prepare a discussion guide with open-ended questions such as, "What do you associate with our brand?", "Why would you or wouldn't you pick our brand over competitors?" and so on. Make sure the setting is comfortable, whether in-person or virtual.
The type of answers you receive will help you spot recurring themes, gain insights, and get actionable suggestions on how to move forward with the perfect PR brand strategy.
#5 Artificial intelligence
Of course, we can use AI for just about anything nowadays. No, it's not the perfect solution, but there are ways to implement it in your brand research strategy to achieve great results.
It's not about asking AI who the perfect target audience is for your product or service, but about analyzing the results you already have. After all, AI is nothing short of wonderful when it comes to processing large amounts of data and analyzing it effectively.
Wondering how you can utilize AI in brand research? Think about:
👉 Sentiment analysis
Ask AI to analyze customer feedback and social media mentions to understand your audience's emotions and brand perception.
👉 Identifying trends
By analyzing data from social media, you can spot emerging industry trends and align your brand strategy accordingly.
👉 Segmentation
Feed AI with info about your audience and organize them by preferences, behavior, or demographics. You'll discover connections you never thought of before!
👉 Brand performance
Use various prompts to figure out which content or actions resonate with your audience and which ones to let go of.
👉 Predicting the future
Use AI to forecast what might happen in your industry and how it could impact your customers' needs. It’s not definitive, but why not plant the idea into your strategy in case some predictions start becoming reality?
👉 Customer analysis
Process large volumes of information, such as customer reviews and comments, to extract key themes and focus on them for effective short-term wins.
While your mind might already be buzzing with ideas on how to implement AI in your brand research, don't forget to prioritize data safety and use artificial intelligence ethically. Be cautious about the data you share, and always validate AI outputs with human oversight.
That being said, you can anonymize your data and experiment with different prompts to get the most accurate and reliable brand market research analytics possible.
3 examples on how to use brand research in PR campaigns
1️⃣ You're launching a lightweight treadmill that people can easily use in small apartments, or put away without hassle when they need more space.
By starting brand research through building a focus group and interviewing different participants, you've noticed that younger audiences are more likely to buy from niche fitness influencers, and older groups more often trust expert endorsements and word-of-mouth reviews. Now, you can adjust your strategy and budgets towards the right channels.
2️⃣ You're organizing a meet-and-greet for your client's new book.
You have a certain budget to work with and things here can get expensive. You have the opportunity to ask your client's social media followers where they would like to meet and find out that most of them actually prefer an online webinar over a bookstore tour.
3️⃣ You need to increase social media engagement.
You're starting a brand study as part of your brand research strategy that includes competitor benchmarking and notice that their "how-to" guides and infographics generate the most likes, comments, and saves. With this in hand, you know where to allocate your budget and can think of a strategy that incorporates this type of content to increase your brand's engagement.
Ready to conduct brand research?
No discussion needed: brand research is an absolute cornerstone of any successful (and effective!) PR campaign. By getting to know what your audience really wants, measuring brand performance, and building a strategy based on concrete data, you can start delivering value that drives results.
Now that you know what brand research is, what methods there are, and how to use them to your advantage, it's time to put knowledge into action by creating engaging PR campaigns.
