Measuring Sentiment in Influencer Marketing

Brands use advertising to communicate with their target audience, and influences are the messengers that carry brand ideas forward. Within this flow, brands naturally need some kind of feedback to know if the message has hit the target. Of course, we have metrics, engagement rates, and sales numbers — the solid figures. But what about emotions? While the numbers are very useful, they do not paint the full picture of an ad campaign.

That is why brands need sentiment analysis. It’s a marketing tool that helps brands look into the hearts of their followers. Using sentiment analysis can give you information about the reception of your brand’s partnerships with influencers on a more emotional level.

Understanding Sentiment Analysis in Influencer Marketing

The strategic application of brand sentiment measurement lies in identifying early warning signs of reputational risk and crisis mitigation.

Sentiment analysis (opinion mining) uses NLP and AI to determine whether an audience's feelings toward a brand are positive, negative, or neutral.

This analysis covers reviews, social media posts, and surveys to gauge the audience’s sentiment on a spectrum: positive, negative, or neutral. The newer tools driven by machine learning make it possible to understand more shades of meaning in the audience's feedback and make more informed decisions.

Sentiment analysis is important for brands because basic metrics such as audience reach, sales, views, and likes are not enough to understand the true impact of their content and products. 

So, how exactly can brands benefit from sentiment analysis?

• Optimize on the fly: You can adjust your approach faster when you know how the audience feels.
• Get your message across: Sentiment analysis also gives you a guidebook for future ad campaigns. Knowing your audience better, you can choose a different influencer or tone of voice to communicate your ideas more effectively.
• Assess opinion leaders: You can also analyze the sentiment towards a potential influencer and see if they fit your goals and values well.
• Keep tabs on your competitors: Check your audience's sentiment toward similar products to explore possible risks or growth points.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, but the main application areas of sentiment analysis already show it to be a powerful tool for brands.

Calculating Scores in Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment scores are calculated using two primary formulas: subtracting positive from negative words divided by total words, or the ratio of positive to negative words plus one. Your data type determines which method you use to accurately calculate sentiment scores.

Method #1: A total of positive words versus negative words in a given text. This method is often used for long-format content, such as big product reviews.

Formula: # negative words – # positive words divided by the number of words = sentiment score

In this example, marketers used a code to calculate the total number of words in each user review, and then assigned positive and negative labels to the words based on an existing list known as the Opinion Lexicon. Knowing these three values (positive words, negative words, and total number of words), marketers calculated the sentiment score for every user review following Formula #1.

Method #2: Ratio of positive and negative word counts

Formula: # positive words / # negative words + 1 = sentiment score

This method is preferable for scoring big data because it includes both positive and negative words. This way, the longer reviews do not affect the score too much, and the average result is more manageable. In this system, a score of 0 is exactly in the middle, or neutral. A higher score is related to positive, and a lower score is related to negative.

Case Studies in Sentiment Analysis

Brands like Airbnb, Peloton, and Nike demonstrate how sentiment analysis can mitigate backlash, amplify positive messaging, and guide agile campaign management. These cases highlight the shift from reactive monitoring to proactive emotional alignment in modern marketing.

Airbnb's “We Accept” Campaign

In 2016, rental provider Airbnb used sentiment analysis to gauge public opinion and stem the public backlash after being accused of discrimination.

By actively monitoring social listening channels, the brand identified key areas of user frustration and tailored its messaging accordingly.

The brand launched its “We Accept” campaign, which not only helped repair Airbnb's reputation, but also contributed to real anti-discrimination efforts across the globe. The sentiment recovery result was significant, shifting the narrative from overwhelmingly negative to a unified, positive community response.

Peloton and the “Bike Guy” ad

Peloton failed to apply sufficient sentiment analysis when choosing the influencer and tone for their controversial Christmas ad. The campaign was quickly labeled sexist and caused a lot of resentment among the company’s audience. 

Ignoring these insights leaves brands vulnerable to reputational risks. Sentiment analysis could have helped the brand identify the potential for negative perceptions early and adjust the ad or select a different influencer better aligned with their brand values.

Nike's “Dream Crazier” Campaign

In 2019, Nike monitored real-time reactions across social media to identify which messages and athletes generated the most positive sentiment toward the company. The “Dream Crazier” campaign featured female athletes and was narrated by Serena Williams, the main idea being challenging gender stereotypes in sports. 

Sentiment analysis enabled agile campaign management and helped Nike navigate potential controversy.

Top Tools for Sentiment Analysis in Marketing

Brand sentiment analysis relies on core technology like Natural Language Processing (NLP) and machine learning to track emotions across platforms. The market offers a slew of sentiment analysis tools, including Brandwatch, Talkwalker, and Meltwater, which utilize these architectures to provide real-time insights.

The key features of such tools usually include sentiment tracking across different platforms in real time, textual and visual content recognition, and analyzing performance metrics. However, every service is unique:

• Talkwalker excels at scraping social media, blogs, and news outlets and applying AI to both text and images.
• Brandwatch is praised for data visualization.
• Meltwater leans into traditional media sources like print and broadcasting for companies with strong offline coverage.

The table below compares the four leading platforms across core capabilities, ideal use cases, and pricing structure:

Note: Sprout Social is the only platform of the four with publicly listed pricing — the others require a sales conversation to sc

How to Choose the Right Tool

Selecting the right sentiment analysis tool requires evaluating three core factors: your target audience demographics, specific campaign goals, and relevant data sources. Answering the following questions would be a good starting point in the selection process:

1. Who is your target audience? Understanding the demographics and online behavior can help determine which platforms to focus on.
2. What do we want to achieve with sentiment analysis? It can be reputation management, campaign monitoring, competitive intelligence, or something entirely different.
3. What types of data sources are most relevant to the brand? For example, do you primarily need social media monitoring, or do you also need traditional media coverage?

Integrating Sentiment Analysis in Influencer Marketing

Integrating sentiment analysis into influencer marketing involves three main steps: 

1. Pre-launch vetting
2. Real-time campaign tracking
3. Post-campaign efficiency measurement

Pre-Campaign Planning

• Find the right opinion leaders: Sentiment analysis allows brands to vet potential collaborators and see how well the target audience reacts to a particular influencer. Understanding whether the person in question shares your brand’s values is also important.
• Adjust the message: Analyze your past campaigns or those from the competition to see if your message will be received well.

Campaign in Progress

• Track results in real time: Monitor sentiment around your campaign as it rolls out and adjust it on the go if necessary. Flexibility is crucial when it comes to influencer collaborations.
• Track mentions of your brand: This is also an important parameter to monitor if you want to see the whole picture of your interactions with the audience. It’s wise to use sentiment analysis tools to automate these reports.

Post-Campaign Analysis

• Measure campaign efficiency: Check the trends your campaign has generated or supported to see how big a splash you have made in the market. This is tightly linked to the first stage of your future campaigns: analyzing your successes and failures is how you grow your marketing expertise. Make sure that you analyze all sentiments, not just the positive ones. Negative feedback is crucial to identifying areas for improvement.

Best Practices and Common Pitfalls of Sentiment Analysis

Effective sentiment analysis requires setting specific numerical goals and combining sentiment scores with traditional metrics, while avoiding over-reliance on automated, context-blind calculations.

Best Practices

Effective sentiment analysis requires setting specific numerical goals and combining sentiment scores with traditional metrics, while avoiding over-reliance on automated, context-blind calculations.

• Set specific goals and use clear metrics like “increase the positive score from 0.1 to 0.5 in a month”.
• Add traditional metrics to your sentiment analysis results to see the full picture. Sentiment score is an additional marketing tool, it would not be wise to act on this information alone.
• Consider the context and nuanced meaning; people often speak sarcastically online.
  • The same goes for culture-specific language and new generic terms often emerging online. Your sentiment analysis tool should be very agile to adapt to language changes.
• Schedule regular sentiment reports to make your marketing strategy more flexible.

Common Pitfalls

• Do not rely on automated calculations in the long run. As we mentioned, your tools should be easily adjustable. Besides, people are the best judges of what other people say, so it would be wise to use human reviews for scores.
• Do not ignore neutral scores. Positives and negatives act as bright indicators, like traffic lights. However, neutrals can be your source of insights and ideas for future campaigns.
• Pay attention not only to the sentiment itself but also to its intensity.

Balancing Metrics and Emotions

The primary business ROI of brand sentiment analysis includes higher customer loyalty, reduced churn, and improved customer lifetime value. Positive sentiment directly increases repeat purchases, recommendations, and advocacy, making it a critical behavioral influence metric.

For best results, implement sentiment analysis at all stages of your advertising campaigns, from planning to post-campaign assessment. 

Complementing sentiment scores with metrics such as brand mentions, reposts, comments, etc is important. Combined with your existing expertise, sentiment analysis can elevate your marketing strategy to a whole new level and lead to more successful partnerships.

Author Bio

Kira Chesalina, the Creative Director at AAA Agency, an international influence and special projects agency. AAA Agency creates authentic brand stories through collaborations with the best influencers and build audience trust with our clients.

Gaming stands as the cornerstone of AAA Agency's expertise. We specialize in crafting and implementing profitable Influencer Marketing initiatives tailored for game publishers. Our experience is proven by 100+ successful cases from satisfied clients: Wargaming, NCSoft, Lilith Games, Ubisoft, etc. And for 2023, the total reach of our campaigns in the Gaming vertical was about 11,000,000.
 

About the Author

Kira Chesalina Creative Director at AAA Agency

Kira Chesalina, the Creative Director at AAA Agency, an international influence and special projects agency. AAA Agency creates authentic brand stories through collaborations with the best influencers and build audience trust with our clients.

Gaming stands as the cornerstone of AAA Agency's expertise. We specialize in crafting and implementing profitable Influencer Marketing initiatives tailored for game publishers. Our experience is proven by 100+ successful cases from satisfied clients: Wargaming, NCSoft, Lilith Games, Ubisoft, etc. And for 2023, the total reach of our campaigns in the Gaming vertical was about 11,000,000.

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