Five Common Brand Tracking Reporting Methods and Their Unseen Shortcomings and Impact on Insights

Data, data, data everywhere and not an insight to be had! Brands have more data available at their disposal than ever before, but even companies with in-house insight teams and advanced data collection capabilities are struggling to get valuable insights for brand analysis.

Simply put, the lack of data isn't the problem anymore. In many cases, brand tracking reporting methods make it difficult for the brand team to understand how the data relates to the customer or the company's current and future opportunities in their market. To find actionable insights, your brand team needs the ability to filter through the data and find trends that can help them make better decisions.

That means using the right brand tracking reporting tool - one that can provide the right context and format of the data at the right time, tailored to the commercial goals of the business. Not every tool is right for every application, however. Here are some of the most common tools used for brand tracking (and an explanation of why they may not meet your goals as well as they should):

1. When to Consider Market Research Dashboards for Brand Tracking

Many market research agencies use third-party tools like Forsta (formerly Dapresy), Info Tools, or Crunch to produce dashboards. These dashboards offer a centralized way to view data, but they have some limitations. Many dashboards are narrowly focused, which limits brand teams' ability to customize views or explore data in meaningful ways. For instance, if a team member wants to compare multiple metrics side-by-side on the same chart, they might find that the dashboard can't accommodate this simple request.

If the market research dashboard is hosted on a server that is under heavy load—due to multiple users accessing it simultaneously or other resource-intensive processes—it can cause delays in data retrieval. Server capacity and performance are critical factors in determining how quickly data can be accessed and displayed. Users often experience 1-2 minute delays when querying data, which can be frustrating and lead to a decline in productivity. Sometimes, the slow response times cause users to abandon their queries altogether.

Many teams choose market research dashboards because of their self-service capabilities, but in practice, they aren't as plug-and-play or practical to use as they claim for brand tracking purposes.

If a user in Hong Kong wants to analyze specific imagery attributes among a particular audience, they might have to request additional data from the market research agency. If this agency is located in a different time zone, this dependency on external support could slow decision-making processes and diminish the dashboard's value as a self-service tool.

Brand teams that want a quick snapshot overview of a time-limited campaign focused on specific metrics that don't require any customization will find market research dashboards useful. Teams that want to deeply explore data, perform complex analyses, drill down into specific segments and filter data dynamically should consider an alternative.

2. Why Look Beyond PowerPoint Reports for Dynamic Brand Tracking

PowerPoint remains a go-to method for presenting insights to stakeholders. It's familiar, structured, and easy to use, and it's a good way to communicate information to a diverse audience. But it’s not very flexible.

One of the primary drawbacks of PowerPoint reports is their static, linear format. Presenters have to click through dozens of slides to find the data they need, which makes it difficult to interact with the information or drill down into specific areas of interest. If anyone has a question about the brand tracking data being presented, the team has no choice but to respond, "We'll get back to you on that". There's no way to explore the data further in a PowerPoint format, limiting the potential for uncovering new brand intelligence insights.

Unlike other reporting tools that will easily present data in a visual format, PowerPoint needs to be designed from scratch. The manual effort required to compile, format, and present data can be significant, leading to high costs, especially for large-scale projects. This expense can be a burden for many businesses, making it difficult to justify the investment in regular reporting.

PowerPoint is the ideal tool for creating a concise executive summary for a meeting where high-level insights need to be presented in a structured, narrative format. However, if you need a dynamic brand tracking tool for deep, interactive data visualization, it's time to look beyond PowerPoint.

3. What Are The Barriers with Cross-Tabbing Tools and Excel Files for Effective Brand Tracking

Many client insight teams rely on cross-tabbing tools and Excel files for analysis. While spreadsheet tools are powerful for data manipulation, they have significant shortcomings, particularly for brand tracking.

Typically presented in a tabular format, the accessibility and usability of the data is limited, unless the audience has a strong analytical background. After all, humans process visual information much faster than text. Visual representations such as charts, graphs, and infographics help in breaking down complex data into more digestible formats.

Some marketing and brand tracking users are analytical enough to use data in this format without the help of the insights team, but it requires a significant time investment in data visualization when it’s received in this format.

Others simply don’t have the skills or time to convert Excel data, which means that the insight team has to step in. When data is confined to a small group of analysts, it creates silos and delays progress, reducing the overall impact of the insights. Insights have to be easily accessible and understandable to a broader audience within the organization for brand tracking research to be effective.

4. How Internal Business Intelligence (BI) Dashboards Prevent Strategic Brand Tracking

Some organisations build custom brand tracking dashboards using Business Intelligence (BI) tools like Highcharts and SQL databases. While these dashboards can be tailored to specific needs, they also come with challenges that can limit their effectiveness and brand performance measurement.

One of the biggest challenges with internal BI dashboards is the complexity involved in managing and integrating multiple data sources. This process can be time-consuming and requires significant technical expertise, leading to inefficiencies and delays in getting the right data to the right people at the right time. 

Not all BI tools have great design - and it’s not always user-friendly. This makes sharing content difficult.

Data sources need to be continually integrated, and the dashboard itself needs to be maintained to ensure accuracy and usability, which can be a drain on resources and – if not managed properly – can result in outdated or inaccurate brand analysis data being used for decision-making.

Similar to market research dashboards, BI dashboards can also be inflexible, particularly when it comes to adapting to new business needs or exploring data beyond the pre-configured views. This rigidity can limit the usefulness of the dashboard for broader data exploration and analysis, preventing stakeholders from uncovering deeper insights that could drive strategic decisions.

5. Why Knowledge Gaps Occur with End-to-End Survey Platforms in Brand Tracking

Platforms like Qualtrics and Medallia are popular choices for handling data collection and visualization in brand tracking. Both platforms can gather large volumes of customer feedback through surveys distributed through email, SMS, or in-app notifications, ensuring broad coverage and a high volume of data. However, there are drawbacks.

These platforms can be very expensive, especially when you factor in the additional costs of dashboarding licences and other add-ons. For many organizations, these costs can be prohibitive, limiting stakeholder access to the platform for brand tracking purposes.

Although these platforms are powerful, they are often not as customizable or user-friendly for brand tracking reporting as one might hope. The standard features and configurations might not align perfectly with a brand's specific tracking needs, leading to knowledge gaps.

Another common issue with end-to-end survey platforms is the fact that they often don’t have contextual data (like sales information or NPS data) to enrich the brand-tracking data. Contextual data is really important in helping teams understand how meaningful brand tracking data is.

Without contextual data, it's challenging to create a comprehensive view of brand performance, leading to fragmented insights that don't provide the full picture needed for strategic decision-making.

Lastly, these platforms aren't designed with stakeholder engagement in mind. The user experience may not be as curated or engaging as it needs to be to drive action based on the insights. If stakeholders are not fully engaged with the data, insights will be underutilized.

Conclusion

While all of these brand tracking tools have their strengths and can be highly effective for certain use cases and tasks, they aren't ideal for every team or every situation. To make the most of brand tracking data, teams need the ability to extract actionable insights - and this requires tools that are flexible, user-friendly, and tailored to the specific needs of the business.

Enlyta caters to the needs of different stakeholders. From making it easier for brand teams to find the data they need without analytics support to promoting insights across the business in an engaging, visual way. It’s a more flexible, more user-friendly, and more democratic way of leveraging data across the entire company.

Enlyta gets more people using brand tracking data by making complex data easy to understand and act upon, ensuring that insights are effectively socialised across the business to maximise impact.