The internet is full of breadcrumbs. Everyday we leave behind information: locations, news stories, hashtags. They are all now part of our daily digital routines. Jørn Lyseggen, Meltwater's founder and CEO, explains it best in his book, Outside Insight:
"We all leave a rich trail of online breadcrumbs as we go about our lives in a digital world. But unlike Hansel and Gretel, we often leave these details unintentionally. When we tweet, we share our location, who we are with and what we are doing. On LinkedIn we list our education and work history. On Facebook we broadcast information about our whereabouts, which brands we like, which causes we champion, what and where we like to eat and which events we plan to attend."
We're often told to get inside the heads of our audience, but with the data the internet holds there's no need: instead the trail is left out for us with over 500 million tweets produced around the world, everyday. Similarly, 88.5 million blog posts were published on WordPress in April 2021 alone, and this year 1.4 trillion digital photos will be taken globally.
Each of these crumbs allows a tiny insight into the lives and worlds of your audience. All you really need to piece together the bigger picture is the wealth of information that comes from your customer base, your target market, or your potential audience, who currently invest in you and your competitors.
But, as with any corner of the internet, there is plenty of noise to drown out these helpful insights. Here's where Meltwater's Meltwater's media monitoring services come in to simplify the process.
Table of Contents
Why do I need media monitoring?
Ok, but how much does media monitoring cost?
Is pricing based on a one-size-fits-all approach?
Determining Media Monitoring Pricing
1. Which media channels are relevant to your business?
2. How many users do you need?
3. What level of analysis is required?
4. Are there any other services that can be consolidated?
5. Is customisation required?
Why do I need media monitoring?
Gathering, sifting and analysing these crumbs would take large teams and a whole lot of time that could be used to get you closer to your goals in other facets of your work.
Instead, media monitoring allows you to monitor all mentions of your brand in real-time, tracking your personalised keywords across all forms of media. We capture content from more than 270,000 global news sources, social media platforms, forums, blogs, print publications, broadcasts and podcasts.
- Mention alerts. Your keywords mentions are delivered straight to your inbox, via the Meltwater app or our online all-in-one media intelligence platform. Here, the analytics dashboard gathers your keyword mentions across social media and online news, displaying the data in digestible insights, also in real-time. This includes sentiment analysis, reach and social echo among other customisable options.
- Central dashboard. The dashboard helps you to keep up to date with your brand reputation and maintain a proactive response to reputation management, even on the go.
- The Meltwater app sends push notifications for crisis management, providing a cost-effective, easy-to-use solution for PR and marketing that can be performed entirely in-house.
- The shareable analytics also act as a quick reporting solution, demonstrating progress towards your KPIs and the ROI of your department, as well as specific campaigns. The platform doubles as a data-driven analysis tool to inform future campaigns, based on previous successes or competitor campaigns.
Other aspects of your media monitoring service could also include the media database, our press release distribution tool, social media management, social listening analysis, in-depth reporting or a social media influencer database and outreach system.
Ok, but how much does media monitoring cost?
Stretching limited budgets is difficult in any industry. However, Meltwater operates on a bespoke pricing model which allows you to pick and choose which components are essential to you, effectively tailoring your solution.
Monitoring and analysing your media coverage should be a priority for any communications team. What's the alternative? All of those digital breadcrumbs go unnoticed and you miss out on their potential. Or worse, you face an unmanageable comms or social crisis, poor customer service and/or allowing your competitors to gain the upper hand.
Is pricing based on a one-size-fits-all approach?
No. Understandably, different businesses need different levels of service. Perhaps you're a startup and most of your buzz is generated on social networks? One way of making your solution more cost effective is to remove print clippings.
Maybe you're a member organisation and print is essential, but broadcast monitoring is something you can do without? If you've been using a PR agency for years and you're eager to cut costs, maybe you have room to monitor your organisation in-house?
Or perhaps you're currently paying for three different services; social media management, press clippings and a media list. Consolidating these services could help you save your budget, as well as streamline the workflow for your team by switching to a low-cost, user-friendly platform.
These bespoke reporting solutions focus on keeping services relevant to your specific needs. Pricing is therefore adapted to the level of service as well.
Determining Media Monitoring Pricing
The pricing of media monitoring depends on a number of factors:
- Which channels are relevant to your business
- The number of users needed
- The level of analysis required
- If any other services can be consolidated
- If any customisation is required
So, let's deep-dive and work out what this means for you.
1. Which media channels are relevant to your business?
The channels you wish to monitor will affect the pricing of your solution. Most organisations will need to perform online news monitoring and social media monitoring for keywords such as their company name, their stakeholders and their main competitors.
Meltwater is built for unlimited keyword tracking across online news and social media channels. Unlike many of our competitors, we do not cap the number of keywords you can track using our software, and you’re able to log into your account and amend these at any time.
Additional channels will contribute to increasing the cost of your solutions, such as broadcast monitoring (which uses advanced speech-to-text technology), print monitoring and advanced social listening. Speak to one of our consultants about tailoring a solution that suits you best.
2. How many users do you need?
The scale of your solution is also important in determining pricing. Small companies, charities and startups typically have limited people power and a limited budget. In order to bring an enterprise-level solution at a low cost, fewer users means a simplified solution, with all the power of a larger one. This enables us to supply a broad range of organisations with the right media monitoring service for them.
3. What level of analysis is required?
Do you run two large campaigns a year? Or do you run five campaigns a week? The number of dashboards needed to analyse specific projects, campaigns or competitors can also affect the pricing of your media monitoring.
4. Are there any other services that can be consolidated?
Meltwater's media monitoring service has become a must-have for marketers and communications professionals who have many facets to their media monitoring, analysis and output.
Our monitoring tool is an all-in-one solution for many of the tasks related to media management. The social media monitoring software, social media management tool, media contact database, press release distribution system, newsletter production and reporting tools are all situated in the same cloud-based platform.
This makes customer engagement, crisis management, outreach and planning easy and accessible, as well as effective in cutting costs and streamlining your budget (as well as raising fewer purchase orders).
It also means that your account manager will be familiar with all areas of your business, an always-on contact for all of your needs.
5. Is customisation required?
If you are a larger organisation or have a specific use-case in mind that requires a more customised approach, then Meltwater can help too. We can produce customised, in-depth reporting for a specific event, retrospective data or a single region. You name it.
We also have enterprise solutions for large-scale projects or departments, which can involve further bespoke solutions such as API connections.
Contact Meltwater
Fill out the form and get in touch with us to request a demo and speak to one of our consultants about which solution will best suit you and your team.
