“Brand Switching Analysis” is one of the most powerful insight-generating tools available for marketers today.
What is Brand Switching Analysis?
When you hear “brand switching,” you can think of social media
authors developing preferences for different brands within the same
sector over time. “Brand Switching Analysis” is the study of those
movements and the greater patterns of behaviour that emerge from them.
eBrandValue harnesses the strength of these insights across the entire
sector to provide brands with a competitive and strategic advantage.
Method and Approach to Insight Generation
Here’s an example:
Let’s say Bob likes Potato Chips. We know this because Bob
continuously interacts with Potato Chip companies on social media. He
might join their social-media hosted giveaways, participate in their
competitions, like their videos on Facebook or maybe he just mentions
their products in a social media post of his own (in a positive light of
course!).
Bob might interact with several brands of potato chips on social
media, but its likely that one brand in particular gets more of his
attention and affection online. When this brand emerges for Bob, we can
say that Bob has “affinity” for that brand over all others.
Over time, Bob’s “affinity” might change if he starts engaging with
another brand at the expense of others in the sector, including his old
favourite. If he does this for a long enough period of time, we say
that Bob has “switched” his brand affinity to another brand.
The key here is to figure out WHY.
Bob might have switched for any number of reasons:
– Perhaps Bob prefers the taste of a new product that was just launched by a competing brand…
– Maybe a competing brand had a two-for-one campaign that Bob liked…
– It could be that a competing brand hired one of Bob’s favourite athletes as their spokesperson…
Or maybe there was a recent news article about the unhealthy sodium levels in the products of the brand he used to like…
Looking at the behaviour of only one person, it’s difficult to
understand what “triggered” Bob to “switch” from one brand to another.
Now imagine taking a step back and seeing the switching behaviour
of all consumers in the sector as they switch between brands over time.
At this scale, you can match large-scale consumer movements to campaign
releases, paid influencer promotions and other macro-level brand
actions.
Being able to identify the causes of these consumer migrations lies at the heart of having a strategic advantage in the sector.
Competitive Advantages of Using “Brand Switching Analyses” in Your Marketing Strategy
This analysis gives you several competitive advantages:
– When you release a new campaign, hire a new influencer or take
any action as a brand, you can study the real-time “switching response”
from your loyal customers and adjust your message in a fast and informed
manner.
– You can prepare for new campaigns by studying the historical switching responses to your previous campaigns.
– You can test which of your actions as a brand will cause the most
“incoming” switching, in which customers switch their brand affinity
from competing brands to yours. By understanding the trigger points for
these movements, you can optimise them for business growth.
– You can study the successful and unsuccessful campaigns and
actions of your competitors, particularly those who are taking the
“affinity” of your loyal customers.
– By looking at “switching” movements across the entire sector, you
can uncover the deeper mechanisms that influence consumer behaviour for
that particular industry.
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