Make your media monitoring flexible

We’ve recently discussed the lack of accountability in delivering a consistent, reliable media monitoring service by the traditional providers and how this can cost time and money for busy Communications professionals.

We’ve also investigated the general passivity of the industry and how it is set up for the benefit of the big traditional players, rather than the clients they are meant to be serving.

The next industry bugbear we’re tackling is the rigidity and inflexibility of the monitoring brief

While media monitoring contracts are often set up to run for 12 months it is rare for the client’s monitoring requirements to remain the same over this period.

New campaigns, issues, competitors, acquisitions and a whole host of other elements will likely emerge during this period before we even consider changes to the media landscape itself. In short, a great media monitoring service is one that is agile and changes in line with the naturally evolving needs of the client.

So what is the media monitoring industry’s stance on this?

Typically it will be to either a) reject the changes as out of scope (i.e. not in the scope agreed months ago) or b) seek to charge more.

Our approach to solving this client challenge has been to innovate our delivery model to ensure it has in-built flexibility. Our combination of industry-leading technology with human editorial expertise is key to this.

What this all means is that we proactively encourage our clients to review their monitoring briefs. In fact, we have it as a Critical Success Factor that we track for each client. Nine times out of ten a stagnant monitoring brief is not providing the value it could to the client.

Beyond this, we are alert to emerging issues that may affect our clients positively or negatively.

We use our technology to alert us to abnormal spikes in content for a client or a competitor – we call this Volumetric Alerting – and we proactively recommend changes to keywords and media monitoring briefs to ensure that our clients receive the content they need to excel in their day-to-day work.

Clients can also self-serve any additional monitoring needs they may have via our online platform, alva: Live, setting up real-time alerts on a near limitless set of companies, competitors, issues, people, brands and products.

Meanwhile, regular communication with our clients as part of our concierge service, also ensures things are kept fresh and relevant. We talk to our clients to understand what they’re working on and what’s coming up for them in the coming days so we can adjust and adapt the service as needed. Our clients tell us that this way of working means they see us as an extension of their core team.

We don’t see this as a way to charge more, but rather an opportunity to ensure that clients are always looked after by a reliable and dependable partner.

If your current provider doesn’t give you the flexibility you need from your media monitoring, do contact us for a complimentary trial, we would love to welcome you to our concierge service.