Hey! We might have half a brand between us after all...
December 07, 2015

Hey! We might have half a brand between us after all...

Blake Mahaffey | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Pro,Enterprise/Q,Enterprise/M

Overall Satisfaction with Brandwatch Analytics

We are a marketing agency that uses white label Brandwatch Analytics to:

1) Empower our clients with their own data
2) Provide regular reporting on brand presence, market research, and industry analysis

It is our primary product. As far as addressing business problems, it allows us to offer a competitive social media product beyond what most agencies are able to offer.
  • By far, Brandwatch's biggest strength is the ability to customize rules that influence how mentions are tagged and categorized as they enter the system. It allows for in depth categorical and topical analysis that many competing social listening platforms are unable to beat.
  • Brandwatch has a fantastic support team, and implements regular platform updates nearly every month. The platform is generally stable, and any issues are resolved very quickly.
  • Customizable graphs allow analysts to drill deep into data. After two years of 40+ hours a week in brandwatch, I am still finding new ways to drill down.
  • So many Boolean operators! Really helps when trying to get specific and accurate datasets.
  • Being able to collect samples of data (instead of being forced to collect 100%) really helps us stay underneath our datacap.
  • Facebook data is particularly poor. Channels will often break and stop collecting Facebook posts and metrics on owned pages. I would say this happens to about 75% of my channels every two or three months.
  • There aren't ways to filter out criteria beyond keywords while writing boolean queries. This can lead to some serious spam collection from channels like Twitter. While these mentions can later be filtered out through custom rules, it's just another step in the process that can take some time.
  • Doesn't provide information on favorites from Twitter, which has forced us to adopt another third party tool.
  • Longform content analytics is a serious pain. I am not sure if any listening software can get this right.
  • Like all other analytics platforms, the sentiment algorithm is horrible in areas beyond B2C specific products.
  • When we begun using Brandwatch, we were just a fledgling agency that was struggling to stay above water. Now, we are working with clients at the MNC level and providing insights that are way beyond what were able to do previously.
  • Brandwatch's lack of Facebook Topic Data has begun to hurt our advantage in the market. We are sometimes seen as a "Twitter only" analytics agency.
For agency level analytics (clients in different verticals, consistent need to create value beyond brand presence), I think Brandwatch Analytics beats most of these competitors. It is at a more affordable price point, offers unlimited logins, and has custom rules. As soon as they figure out a way to integrate Facebook Topic Data into the platform, I imagine Brandwatch Analytics will be an unrivaled market leader.
3 - All the users of brandwatch at my agency are analytics or social media managers.
I think agencies will find Brandwatch Analytics is a powerful tool, but in house marketers may find its level of complexity challenging and cumbersome. To truly get benefit from Brandwatch, you absolutely need to know the ins-and-outs of the tool. It excels at market research and going beyond brand presence.

In house marketers will probably get more bang for their buck from a competitor like Sysomos, Crimson Hexagon, or Sprinklr.