Understanding consumer behavior and the effectiveness of marketing campaigns is an essential part of any business. To get a full picture of how most people will respond to your organization, marketers collect data about everything from demographics to product reviews. Sentiment analysis has risen as a valuable way for companies to understand what consumers are feeling about the products they’re selling or the service they’re providing.
Surveys
Survey data is the oldest type of analysis, and it’s most commonly used by big companies like Facebook and Google to survey communities about their relationship with those organizations. It can be a great way for customers to show the brands that they do love through the comments they make on their Facebook walls or via emails sent out to their contacts.
Customer Reviews
Online reviews are the first kind of analysis that businesses can use. Reviews were originally posted for customers who were looking for others’ opinions about whether a product or service was worth their money. Now, most businesses conduct over reviews because they want to understand what people are saying about their products and avoid any common misconceptions as well as toxic language and phrases.
Social Media Comments
Social media comments are a pretty recent evolution of sentiment analysis methods. They are also the most direct form of public opinion on any brand, product, or service imaginable. Social media comments are precious to businesses because they understand what people feel about their products and services. It’s also a way for companies to hedge their bets about the kinds of advertisements they’re running. If a campaign gets lots of positive social media comments and makes frequent use of positive language, then it’s likely to succeed with other consumers.
News
Casting a wide net with sentiment analysis helps businesses better understand their customers. This kind of data is still helpful in understanding the broader opinion of an entire industry. The news tells a story about what’s happening in the world, and that can help companies determine how to address issues like inflation or a new form of currency.
Social Media Updates
Social media updates are most useful for smaller organizations that can’t afford to do a lot of research. They allow small businesses and nonprofits to analyze their followers and understand what people say about them. Social media updates are precious, but they’re also incredibly fragile. People often post updates on social media when they’re happy, excited, angry, or upset.
What Does Sentiment Analysis Look At?
The analysis is all about the emotions behind the words being used. People can put together complete sentences that don’t express their feelings, but this kind of thing doesn’t fool analysis. It analyzes the emotional context behind any piece of content and looks at different variables to understand what emotion is causing specific actions.
The actual variables that sentiment analysis uses are:
- Positive or Negative – This is the most fundamental piece of sentiment data. It can tell brands what people think of their products and services, and it allows businesses to do a lot of analysis on customer engagement. This data helps companies understand if a customer is complaining or praising something specific.
- Subjective or Objective – This helps companies determine if a customer is making a statement about the product or service itself or just stating their opinion on it in general. If a person writes about how their product was shipped late, their opinion would be more objective. If they’re writing about how a product failed them, their opinion would be more subjective.
Sentiment analysis is the future of public relations and marketing. Ultimately, most businesses will want to turn their attention to data that can help them understand how customers feel and what they think before making any significant changes. The data will naturally change over time, but it gives businesses a way to gauge whether recent events have impacted customer engagement or even just the general public relationship with a brand.
