One of the companies that I am involved in, (disclosure: as a non-executive director & shareholder) is Quirk, which is an eMarketing agency. Quirk has just launched an exciting new product called BrandsEye today, which plays in the realm of Online Reputation Management (ORM). BrandEye has been in development for a long time now and it competes with other services such as Trackur, which is headed up by Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim.
ORM deals with managing the huge flux of information, opinion and reviews about your company and your brand online, and both these services make it very easy to track what’s being said about your brand - good and bad. As a business owner, it’s extremely important to understand what’s in the public domain, as a poor online image can really impact your business negatively. The skills and resources to monitor what happens online are not usually available to the average business owner, and therefore it really makes sense to outsource it to a service that can really monitor what’s happening on the web.
The fact that both Andy & Rob (CEO of Quirk) - both of whom I highly respect - have launched similar services within a few weeks of each other, speaks for itself on the opportunity in this space to assist businesses in understanding how to control and manage their brand online. Companies such as Dell & Telkom have had some online PR nightmares with Dell Hell & Helkom - and perhaps these are extreme cases.
In the world of Web 2.0, where sharing is caring, you can expect users to offer more opinions about more companies online and sites like Yelp can make or break a local business if they do no know what people are saying about them. This part of social networking really allows the cream to rise to the top and businesses need to look inward to improve their products and services in order to remain competitive. I see a major marketing exploding in ORM, so I wish both Andy & Rob all the best!
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Comments On This Post
March 11, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Brandeye doesn’t really compete with the likes of Trackur because it is priced so high and is not an “on-demand” solution. i.e. you can’t signup for a month to give it a try and then leave if you don’t like it. Whilst this kind of thing suits enterprises who just want to try one solution, smaller businesses and individualls (as Trackur is aimed at primarily) won’t want to pay $750p/m
I’d also like to add a link to my own service which launched yesterday which does compete with Trackur - http://www.attenalert.com
March 11, 2008 at 9:26 pm
@David
It’s all relative to currencies. In the UK, many small businesses will pay $750/month for this type of serve (given the weak dollar/pound exchange rate). Quirk has offices in the UK and are targeting that audience. I’m sure some businesses in the US will pay but for example, in India - I doubt many small businesses could afford it.
I hope this gives some perspective.
March 11, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Even with the exchange rate though. I am based in the UK and 750 USD = ~375 GBP per month is still very expensive. I know that as an individual I would not pay that, even with a profile in the internet community. And having owned a small business (4 employees) in the past and now with my current startup, I would not be able to justify that kind of pricing.
Of course not to say that nobody will pay for it, but I think it would be a difficult one to justify from my experience running a small business.
March 11, 2008 at 9:39 pm
I tend to agree. I think our definitions of Small Businesses is too narrow, and given what you’re saying, I agree that BrandsEye focuses on a higher market segment than Trackur.
March 11, 2008 at 11:35 pm
Vinny and David,
I am in London, and depends on the type of business really. The price makes sense for online retailer/lenders/lettings, etc, then yes, a powerful tool is needed to see who’s posting what on which forum (am assuming these services go at that level rather than just skimming press releases like most ORM).
March 12, 2008 at 12:27 am
Yes, it will depend entirely how you define “small business” and what that business is after. I suspect Brandeye is a more personal service because you deal with them directly and are paying for such a service. Something like Attenalert and Trackur is less personal in the sense you don’t necessarily have an “account manager” or similar. Brandeye also have a variety of other services which link in with their tool, through their parent company.
March 13, 2008 at 7:43 am
I think that there is also a positive aspect of this which isn’t being taken into account. We work with a company called Attentio (European based) which gives you the opportunity to monitor the social space. From there you can interact with the opinion leaders in your industry, get in a dialogue about your product and get some positive buzz about it.
March 13, 2008 at 8:01 am
[...] that Quirk is targeting larger business. Let’s be honest no-one else online is going to pay US$750 for the service. So they are targeting a specific market and i grasp and respect [...]
March 19, 2008 at 12:27 pm
A service I am very active in and offer to numerous clients. I met Rob a few weeks ago which was a nice experience.
March 28, 2008 at 12:30 pm
[...] It seems that the beleaguered power utility has been paying a bit more attention to its online reputation management and marketing (perhaps someone read my post and approached them [...]
April 8, 2008 at 5:40 pm
With all the money that goods and service providers pay to market research firms, this seems like a winner… I would probably market this service to Ad Agencies, as they tend to be the gatekeepers of big brand management…
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