In an age where consumers value endorsements from trusted sources, understanding the metrics of earned media isn't just advantageous—it's essential. Knowing who advocates for your brand and what they communicate is indispensable for navigating today's marketplace with precision.
In the field, industry professionals know how tedious it is to manually track social media or online mentions or sift through numerous print articles to find references to your product, brand, or campaign. This is where a reliable earned media monitoring provider comes into play.
Today, what moves the needle is not just having an earned media monitoring tool but selecting the right one that gives you a holistic view over the quality and performance of your earned media. This unlocks doors to increased visibility, reputation and gives you the control to adapt strategies and allocate resources effectively. Such tools do exist, and as you'll discover, some excel more than others.
Here's why:
In this article you’ll learn…
What to Look for in an Earned Media Monitoring Provider
Let's explore the essential functionalities you should prioritize in an earned media monitoring provider.
All-Encompassing Earned Media Coverage
Ensure your media monitoring tool can track a wide range of global media sources, including print, online, and social media platforms (including Chinese social media), blogs, and photo galleries, guaranteeing widespread coverage across all channels.
Unified Metric to Measure ROI
Find a tool with a unified metric that offers a quantifiable measure of the impact and value of an earned media placement:
- Media Impact Value™ (MIV®): An EU-registered algorithm by Launchmetrics, tailored for Fashion, Lifestyle, and Beauty (FLB) brands. MIV® combines AI Machine Learning to blend quantitative and qualitative attributes across print, online, and social media, offering competitive accuracy.
- Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE): A traditional print metric, calculates editorial placement value based on advertising rates multiplied by page coverage. Suitable for print but lacks accuracy in digital platforms due to non-standardized rates and oversight of quality factors.
- Earned Media Value (EMV): Used for online and social media ROI assessment, EMV lacks standardization and often includes variable factors like media rates. Similar to AVE, it overlooks quality elements, hindering a holistic understanding of impact.
Advanced Analytics
Check if the tool provides advanced analytics, including reach, number of placements, data trends analysis, or even sentiment analysis. These insights can be a turning point for assessing campaign effectiveness and overall brand perception.
Competitor and Brand Benchmarking
Look for features enabling brands to monitor competitors' performance, recognizing your brand’s position within the market, and identifying opportunities for growth.
Customization and Filters
Prioritize tools offering customizable search parameters and filters, allowing tailored monitoring based on keywords, topics, regions, products, or sub-products relevant to the brand's interests.
Real-time Earned Media Monitoring and Easy Reporting
Check if the tool offers real-time updates and alerts, facilitating a faster response-time to emerging trends or hot topics. Additionally, it’s a bonus if it can generate accessible and exportable reports, along with user-friendly newsletters for data sharing among stakeholders.
Integration Capabilities
Opt for a tool compatible with various platforms and capable of seamless integration with other marketing and analytics tools, streamlining brand management workflows.
Now that we’ve looked into some of the essential functionalities of an earned media monitoring provider, let’s take a look at some of the top 10 providers.
10 of the Best Tools to Monitor your Earned Media
Launchmetrics
Launchmetrics offers a suite of brand intelligence modules designed to enhance the monitoring of earned media specifically in the Fashion, Lifestyle and Beauty landscape. With over 1.7K customers worldwide, Launchmetrics is the leader in the field.
Key Features
- Access Brand Insights at a Global Level: Gain a global overview of brand insights and competitor data, across online, social media, and print channels, empowering informed decision-making.
- Tracking Earned Media: Use a visual platform to understand the impact of earned media across channels, Voices, and regions. Compare your brand's earned media performance against competitors.
- Competitor and Brand Benchmark: Leverage brand benchmark data from print, online, and social platforms, including major social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, Douyin, WeChat, and Weibo.
- Advanced Filtering: Enhance focus with advanced filters, sorting articles by reach, engagement, publication date, or MIV® to assess both quantity and quality of mentions.
- Effortless Reporting: Choose from various reporting formats to streamline the presentation creation process.
- Custom Dashboards:
- KPI Dashboard: This feature enables straightforward reporting on brand activations, giving some transparency in performance metrics.
- Analysis and Reporting Features: These analysis and reporting capabilities facilitate the extraction of actionable insights for decision-making.
- Brand Disambiguation: Automatically differentiate between brand names, products, and events.
- Industry Expertise: Tailored for FLB industries, offering specialized insights crucial for accurate brand positioning.
- Unified Metric MIV® across online, social, print, and Chinese social media.
- Sub-category Level Tags: Explore brand performance at a granular level, distinguishing between beauty product categories such as makeup, skincare, serums, mascara, lipstick, etc.
- Integration with Other Tools: Seamlessly integrate with tools like Samples for measuring launch activity performance.
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Considerations
- Sentiment Analysis: Currently testing sentiment tags with AWS integration, adding an exciting new dimension to brand monitoring.
Brandwatch
Brandwatch is successful when it comes to social media monitoring. Its extensive capabilities make it a popular choice for brands seeking to analyze and optimize their online and social media presence.
Key Features
- Keyword Monitoring: Brandwatch can track diverse elements, including channels, hashtags, and specific phrases, providing extensive coverage.
- Analytical Components:
- Custom Dashboards: Users can create dashboards and views, catering to specific analytical requirements.
- Sentiment and Demographics: Advanced analytical components deep dive into sentiment, emotional responses, and demographics for all-encompassing insights.
- Categories: The ability to categorize mentions enhances the structured nature of insights.
- Consumer Insights and Brand Management: Beyond earned media monitoring, Brandwatch is really performant in providing valuable consumer insights. An AI platform enriches the analysis by delving deep into collected mentions.
- Integration Capabilities: Brandwatch integrates with various tools such as Hootsuite, Domo, Audiense, enhancing its adaptability within diverse marketing ecosystems.
Considerations
- Scope Limitations:
- Not FLB-Focused: The lack of industry focus, specifically on FLB, may result in more generic insights that lack relevance for brands operating within this sector.
- Industry-Specific Metrics: The absence of an FLB-focused approach might overlook industry-specific key performance indicators crucial for success, limiting the platform's effectiveness in catering to sector-specific needs.
- Coverage Restrictions: Brandwatch's coverage excludes print, potentially limiting its insights across all media channels.
- Lack of a Unified Metric: The absence of a unified metric makes it challenging by hindering a standardized approach to measuring earned media.
Cision
Cision, next up in our list is another top choice as an earned media monitoring provider, offering a suite of tools for PR professionals.
Key Features
- Monitoring and Coverage: Cision multi-channel monitoring has widespread coverage across channels—online, social, print, and broadcast.
- Analytics and Impact:
- Cision Analytics: This feature offers key metrics, providing insights into a brand's position within earned media coverage, including reputation and sentiment analysis.
- Brand Disambiguation: The platform also incorporates brand disambiguation, a feature refining focus by distinguishing between brand names, products, and unrelated mentions.
- KPI Dashboard and Reporting: Build custom dashboards and views tailored to specific analytical needs.
- Media Contacts and Influencers Database: This helps to identify media contacts and influencers relevant for effective engagement strategies with direct outreach, leveraging its global database.
Considerations
- Industry Specificity: Cision doesn’t have a specific focus on the FLB industry.
- No Metric Unification: The absence of a unified metric may pose challenges in achieving standardized analysis, impacting reporting across channels.
- Chinese Media Coverage: While Cision covers Chinese media, its separation into a distinct platform may require additional efforts for analysis.
- Lack of Sub-Category Level Tags: Cision does not offer Sub-Category Level Tags, limiting the ability to categorize mentions by specific product or sub-product categories, potentially affecting granular analysis.
Dash Hudson
Next is Dash Hudson - a social media management platform and earned media monitoring provider popular for its visual software.
Key Features
- Offered Solutions: Dash Hudson provides quite a few functions, including reporting, insights, trends, influencer and creator ROI, and AI-powered social listening.
- Social Monitoring: Dash Hudson covers popular social platforms, including Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram.
- Visual Intelligence: Dash Hudson uses AI to evaluate the performance of visual content, particularly UGC. This feature provides insights into the effectiveness of visuals across platforms.
- eCommerce Integration: With a direct link to products, Dash Hudson supports eCommerce integration, allowing brands to directly link social content with pages or online stores. However, it lacks features like email integration and customizable web widgets.
Considerations
- Industry Focus: They are not FLB industry-specific.
- Data Coverage: Dash Hudson lacks coverage for print, online channels, and Chinese social media platforms.
Google Alerts
Now, it might seem unconventional to include Google Alerts in this provider analysis. However, it remains a much-used tool for brands in the industry seeking a quick and easy entry into earned media monitoring.
Key Features
- Keyword Monitoring: Google Alerts enables users to monitor the web by sending email alerts whenever a new result matching specific search queries appears.
- Easy Setup: The setup process for Google Alerts is user-friendly, allowing brands to swiftly initiate their monitoring endeavors without technical complexities.
Considerations
- Lack of Widespread Coverage: Google Alerts doesn’t track print or social media platforms, limiting its scope.
- Web Indexing Constraints: Google Alerts also relies on Google's web indexing process, which may omit web pages due to factors such as low traffic or removal requests.
- No Reporting and Data Visualization: Another drawback of Google Alerts is the absence of reporting and data visualization features.
- Missing Brand Disambiguation: Google Alerts lacks brand disambiguation capabilities, potentially resulting in irrelevant alerts.
Lefty
Lefty provides a fully-featured Social Media Marketing Software designed specifically for agencies and brands in the FLB industries.
Key Features
- FLB Focused: Tailoring its features to the specific needs of the FLB industries, Lefty offers a focused approach.
- Advanced Analytics: Lefty analytical capabilities help brands to measure and interpret data, delivering actionable insights for strategic decision-making.
- Social Media Monitoring: Lefty's social media monitoring tools provide a good overview, enabling brands to track mentions, sentiment, and engagement across platforms.
- Customer Targeting: Advanced customer targeting functionalities ensure brands can identify and connect with their specific target audience effectively.
Considerations
- Surface Level Measurement: Lefty relies on EMV as a measurement formula, which may provide surface-level insights without delving into deeper metrics.
- No Print or Online Coverage: The monitoring scope is confined to social media, lacking coverage of print and online channels.
Meltwater
Meltwater offers strong earned media monitoring tool capabilities. It’s especially successful in trend identification, sentiment analysis, competitor analytics, and crisis management.
Key Features
- Trend Identification: Meltwater finds trends through keyword analytics, keeping brands on top of the digital landscape. Their trend detection capabilities ensure users stay ahead in online conversations.
- Brand Mention Tracking: Meltwater tracks brand mentions across digital platforms, contributing to extensive analytics.
- Social Media Management Suite: Meltwater offers social media management tools, housing audience insights, social monitoring, sentiment analysis, and influencer management in one interface.
- Competitor and Customer Analytics: Meltwater offers insights into competitor strategies and customer behaviors.
- Reporting: The reporting functionality enhances Meltwater's value proposition with customized weekly reports that contribute to campaign management.
- Media Contacts Database: Meltwater enhances relationship management with a media contacts database, facilitating efficient outreach efforts.
Considerations
- Not FLB Specific: Meltwater lacks a focus on the FLB industries.
- No Unified Metric: The absence of a unified metric poses challenges for consistent analysis across various channels and platforms.
- Brand Disambiguation: Meltwater's approach to brand disambiguation relies on filter words rather than an AI-driven algorithm.
Muck Rack
Muck Rack offers an array of features tailored to enhance media outreach and streamline editorial projects, Muck Rack has an expansive media database, and expansive analytical coverage report.
Key Features
- Alert System for Media Mentions: Muck Rack employs an alert system to notify users of media mentions, ensuring timely awareness of brand coverage in the ever-evolving media landscape.
- Analytical Coverage Reports: The platform offers analytical coverage reports, allowing users to showcase the return on investment (ROI) for their clients. This feature stands out for providing valuable insights into the impact of PR efforts.
- Media Database: Muck Rack's extensive media database is lauded for its richness, providing users with a comprehensive pool of journalists to engage with and broaden their media outreach.
Considerations
- No Brand Benchmarking, No Metric for Mentions: The platform lacks features for brand benchmarking and dedicated metrics to measure the volume and impact of brand mentions, limiting performance evaluation.
- Occasional Misses in Article Tracking: According to a review on TrustRadius, a buyer intent software that helps businesses track verified reviews and ratings of different products, users report instances where articles are not automatically captured based on specified keywords, necessitating manual loading for monitoring.
Tribe Dynamics
Tribe Dynamics leverages advanced influencer marketing analytics to empower brands in staying ahead in the dynamic media landscape. The platform allows brands to get the full picture of their earned media performance.
Key Features
- Earned Media Monitoring:
- Harness insights from your brand's performance metrics over time and leverage competitor, market, and industry analytics to expand your market leadership.
- Refine and pivot influencer marketing strategies through comprehensive tracking, evaluation, and comparison of campaign performance.
- Brand Disambiguation: Automatically differentiate between brand names, products, and events for precise analysis.
- Objective PR Data Analysis: Tribe Dynamics equips brands with the tools to objectively analyze PR data, enabling measurement of growth and identification of areas for improvement.
- Comprehensive Tracking and Reporting: Efficiently track campaign content, measure success, and receive clear and insightful reports.
Considerations
- Data Coverage: Tribe Dynamics currently lacks coverage for print and Chinese social media.
- Earned Media Value: As mentioned previously, while EMV is used for online and social media ROI assessment, its lack of standardization and consideration of variable factors like media rates may hinder a holistic understanding of impact. Tribe Dynamics users on G2 have also noted its arbitrariness using the platform.
Traackr
Last, but not least, Traackr places an emphasis on influencer discovery, CRM, and reporting & analytics.
Key Features
- Real-time Social Listening: The social listening tool enables real-time tracking of content. Therefore, providing timely insights into ongoing conversations and trends.
- Visualization Map: Traackr features a network visualization map. Subsequently illustrating how influencers are connected both within and outside the user's network. This visualization enhances understanding of influencer relationships.
- Influencer Relationship Management: Traackr provides a significant tool for tracking and analyzing influencer earned media placements.
Considerations
- Industry Specificity: Traackr lacks a specific focus on the FLB industry.
- Lack of Sub-Category Level Tags: The platform does not offer Sub-Category Level Tags. This limits the ability to categorize mentions by specific product or sub-product categories.
- Data Coverage Limitations: Traackr currently lacks coverage for print and online channels. Additionally, it does not include Chinese social media platforms.
Ultimately, each provider brings unique features and considerations to the table, catering to diverse needs within the FLB industries. Selecting the right provider depends on factors such as industry focus, desired metrics, data coverage, and integration capabilities.
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By Launchmetrics Content Team
The Launchmetrics content team is always on the lookout for new trends in the fashion and technology sector. We are geeks with style and lovers of good stories!
