Item: Brandwatch
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Falcon.io was useful for social media management, publishing, community management, social listening, and measuring content. Before the merger with Brandwatch, Falcon's services were pretty bare bones. Compared to other competitors, they had a better user interface and user experience. In regard to customer service, they were more prevalent than Hootsuite, but support wasn't the most friendly nor was the customer success lead very responsive. Hopefully, the Brandwatch merger improves these processes.

Pros and Cons

Social media management.
Publishing.
Community Management.

Price point is high compared to other platforms that do the same functions.
Insights and reporting are bare-bones, you're better off extracting the data in a CSV and evaluating it yourself.
Not as accessible for smaller businesses.

Return on Investment

Falcon has made cross-collaboration easier since it's easily accessible across different team members. Its Interface is easy and digestible and there's the ease of use for publishing across partners.
While the tool is great, it's expensive. Wish there was a bigger time window to use before locking into a yearly contract. It is more geared towards big businesses or teams managing multiple brand accounts. Sprout is a great option compared to Falcon and is more cost-effective.
Measurement and analysis capabilities are limited. It's more geared towards surface-level analysis.

Alternatives Considered

Sprout and Hootsuite

Sprout and Falcon have the same capabilities in regard to publishing and community management. Sprout's user interface is easier to deploy and more intuitive compared to Falcon. Both tools have clean UI's but their UX differs. Falcon's interface is smoother and its ease of API integration is better. Sprout has better personalization capabilities where customer service is better and readily available. Cross-channel management is preferred on Sprout. Falcon's system can get buggy and lost through windows.

Key Insights

Do you think Brandwatch delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with Brandwatch's feature set?

Yes

Did Brandwatch live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Brandwatch go as expected?

Would you buy Brandwatch again?

Other Software Used

Sprinklr Modern Care, Hootsuite, Sprout Social

Likelihood to Recommend

The user interface is great and is easy to use for social media marketers of all ranges. In regard to planning and scheduling content, it allows all users with access to the capability to view all upcoming on an actual calendar. For organizational purposes, this is great and mitigates any confusion that other team members may have. The tool seems to always be updating which has its pros and cons because once you figure something out, there's a switch and you'll need to relearn how things are positioned but overall, it's not a heavy lift.

Support Rating

The customer service experience was subpar at best once the contracts were signed. Customer success was very intuitive and consistent when pitching the product to our team, however, once the contracts were signed, communications were slow or unresponsive. The only time customer success would reach out would be to ask if we'd like to include any upgrades to the tool aka spend more money, but lacked any assistance whenever the tool was down.

Usability

Usability rating is being given prior to the Brandwatch merger. Its tool is great for managing multiple brands across different geographic. It gives visibility on what content is being published, however, it's on the more expensive side but is considerably cheaper than Sprinklr (an agency's least preferred tool). Community management is accessible, however, analysts will be disappointed in its measurement features. The brandwatch merger should amplify its capabilities though!

Easy to use and collaborative tool for SMM for large scale clients but there are more affordable options.

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Brandwatch