What is brand affinity?

The definition of brand affinity consists of the relationship established between the company and the consumer. In other words, it is the set of values that they have in common and that help customers to fully trust the brand.

While we know that the path a consumer takes before making a purchase involves reasoning, emotionality and behavior, this affinity ensures that the customer is carried away by his most emotional side and finally buys our product or service.

What is the difference between brand affinity and brand loyalty?

It is very likely that at some point we have seen the terms brand loyalty and brand affinity used in the same way. We cannot deny that both are similar, but it is true that they do have some differences.

Without going any further, a person can be loyal to a brand because it sells the best product or service, but not feel a brand affinity. As we can see, brand loyalty does not require a high connection at a personal level that creates the company-consumer link, it may simply be perceiving that the company provides some added value. And this value is above pricing or competitive strategies. Customers who are loyal to a brand will remain so because they believe it provides the best experience and quality than the rest of the industry.

This is the main difference with brand affinity. With loyalty, a more rational decision is made. Many companies implement customer loyalty strategies to encourage this loyal buying behavior. While it is true that trying to encourage loyalty with special offers does not increase actual customer loyalty.

On the other hand, affinity with the brand is the highest level of quality and duration, since the relationship between both parties is real.

Brand personality: what it is

Brand personality is a set of human aspects that customers attribute to a company. It is what makes a brand more or less identifiable in the eyes of consumers.

The vast majority of these traits is the one that is able to attract a specific market segment and increase the value and brand affinity. So it brings qualitative values and tangible benefits.

Several studies agree that the more the brand personality resembles the customer’s personality, the stronger the connection will be. We can distinguish between these types of brand personality: sincerity, sophistication, robustness, excitement and competence. Obviously, these groups include other emotions such as carefree or youthful attitudes.

How to increase brand affinity

You are probably wondering how to increase brand affinity. Simply understand your consumers and the traits they associate with your company. Once you’re clear on that, all that’s left is to make sure that each part of the strategy intensifies the message of your brand personality.

Step 1: Know your customers well

The first and one of the most important steps in building brand personality and affinity is to know your audience in detail. To do this, we recommend you to collect data to create a more accurate picture. You can get this data from reviews, surveys, sales and CRM data, and even your employees’ anecdotes.

Social data can be helpful because it allows you to do consumer research before they become your customers. Find out what their tastes and preferences are, what language they use, what they do for a living, and even which media outlets they find reliable sources of information. You know, the more you know about your audience, the more effective your brand strategy will be.

Step 2: Know your brand’s associations.

One tool that can help you gather more information about how your audience is engaging with your brand is social intelligence. Atribus’ social media active listening platform helps you identify and analyze everything that is being said about your company.

In addition, you can segment your audience, such as by gender or location. Not only that, but you can also track your brand’s reputation, helping you manage potential future crises.

Step 3: Create a message aligned with your brand’s personality

After you have done the research to get to know your audience in detail, you can understand how closely the perceived image of your brand matches the reality. During the strategy you can work out all the details so that everything fits with the message you want to convey.

It must be clear that to generate affinity with the brand, it is necessary to have a brand personality that is aligned with the company. That is to say, it must be reflected in every communication platform with the client.

In addition, the higher the brand affinity, the more likely customers are to share content on their social networks. In fact, according to a New York Times study , 68% of users share content on their profiles to give others a better idea of who they are and what they like.

One marketing practice that continues to work over the years is word of mouth. And the more you emphasize your brand’s personality, the more aligned it will be with your audience and the more your content will be shared on social networks. So make sure your brand stands for something that is well defined and communicates that message well.

The post How to increase your brand affinity and discover your brand’s personality appeared first on Atribus.

What do we mean when we talk about brand monitoring?

We refer to brand monitoring when we talk about the process of monitoring different channels in order to find the mentions of your company and be able to evaluate them. Whether they are positive or negative.

Having knowledge of all this information gives you the opportunity to be able to react on these mentions. It can help you to achieve a good reputation or to manage possible future crises. As well as, the opinion of your customers about your products or services.

What to monitor

You can monitor as many channels as possible. Whether you are a small company or a multinational, you can find a lot of ratings on online platforms. Communication is now advancing by leaps and bounds, so it is extremely important to keep up to date.

Some of the channels or areas with which you can do brand monitoring are: online publications such as blogs; broadcast media; social networks; print media, such as newspapers; or forums.

What to track about your brand

The first thing that comes to mind is to think that any company is interested in tracking its mentions, but there are other premises to consider. It is a reality that consumers do not always talk directly about your brand, not knowing this can lead you to error. We explain what things can be interesting to track.

Brand and product mentions

The first, if not the most important step in tracking your brand is to make sure when customers are talking about your company or your products. We are talking about direct mentions. In fact, they can often be the most important and useful.

Mentions of your employees

Monitoring the conversations around your company can go a long way in helping you to understand whether what is being said about your brand is positive or negative. Whether your employees are influencers in their field or not, what your staff is saying about your company can get you publicity.

Inbound links to your website

Many people refer to your brand without the need to name it directly. That is why monitoring inbound links to your website is essential to avoid losing references to your company. This is in addition to the SEO benefit of being mentioned in other blogs or forums.

Influencers and industry-related publications

It goes without saying that knowing in detail the industry you belong to is very important, and with it, the conversations that take place. You have to know the industry trends to know if your strategy includes them. The latter can improve your reputation or cause your company to be left behind.

One thing you can’t lose sight of is press publications. It will help you to be able to prevent possible future damage by association; as it can happen with, for example, a crisis. If there are companies in your sector that are going through public scandals, this can also splash you.

Brand tracking tools that can help you

Since there are many tools that can help you in monitoring your brand, we are going to expose the ones we consider the most important.

Google Alerts

This tool is fast and easy to use. Just enter a keyword and you can receive emails every time it is used on the Internet. It is quite a versatile option, as you can use it to track anything and not just your brand. The disadvantage is that it falls a bit short: it only provides mentions without having a general long-term analysis to support the tracking.

Google Search Console

Google gives you the opportunity to track inbound links to your website. This tool is free and has a simple setup. Still, it falls short when it comes to sorting and analyzing links. It can be a good option if you use it in conjunction with additional data on your website obtained on search terms and rankings.

Ahrefs SEO tool

This tool gives users a deeper dive into their link profile. With it you can see all the links coming into your website, the anchor text and the strength of the domain. This option is very useful to easily find out who is talking about your brand online. Although it is not free, it is worth it.

Atribus Reputation Management

That’s right, our tool for active listening to online conversations, performs all the management of your brand’s online reputation for you. In real time you can control what people are saying about your company in a very simple way.

With Atribus and thanks to brand monitoring you can track the mentions that consumers make about your business and the subsequent analysis of the data extracted. This helps you to build strategies that differentiate you from the competition and to manage possible future crises. It also gives you the opportunity to find out which content or product has had the greatest impact on your audience.

Track print media with LexisNexis

A no ser que desee destinar parte de su plantilla a que lean todos los periódicos, resulta una muy buena opción contar con herramientas como LexisNexis. Esta puede ayudarte a rastrear las menciones sobre tu empresa en miles de publicaciones y, a diferencia de algunas de las anteriormente mencionadas, analizar los datos.

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