1. Turn
Online Reviews into
Data Driven
Business Decisions
Profitable insights are driving businesses to listen to their
customers, develop targeted marketing campaigns and
stimulate product innovation.
social intelligence

2. 1
70% of consumers say online reviews
are among their most trusted source for
information.
Nielson, 2013
Online reviews are being published by consumers in their
millions for products and services within a range of different
industries.
From what consumers think about a product, to how they feel
about brands, and their customer service, endless valuable
information is being made public by consumers.
In this age of big data, businesses who choose to ignore online
feedback risk falling behind competitors who are using the
information to leverage their brand.
WHAT IS AN ONLINE REVIEW?
The benefit of online reviews can be felt in multiple industries,
however, retailers and consumer goods manufacturers are best
poised to capitalize on the feedback given in consumer reviews.
According to a 2011 study by Sopheon on product development
in the consumer goods industry, 15% of companies who failed
to achieve profit objectives said that the cause was almost always
inadequate product differentiation from the competition.
introduction
An online review can encompass anything from a 140
character tweet to a 1000 word comment published on an
eCommerce site.
A review is usually published unsolicited, and is the result
of an experience with a product, brand, advertisement,
marketing promotion or retailer.
Some of the most common reasons for publishing a review
about a product or brand include the following:
• Contribute to public knowledge about a product
for future consumers.
• Open a dialogue with the brand or other
consumers about their experience with a product.
• A desire to influence others to also purchase or
avoid a product.
• The result of an incentive-based marketing
campaign for reviews by an influencer or brand.
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3. This is an open invitation for innovation given that 25% of revenue
for the average consumer goods company comes from products
introduced in the last 3 years. Of the products introduced only 18%
are considered highly innovative new products. (See Fig. 1)
Online reviews provide data on the distinguishing features of a
brand’s product direct from its consumers. CPG companies can
capitalize on the knowledge of these features, analyze what makes
their competitors products stand out, and have the potential to
produce unique goods.
In recent times online reviews have been made easier to consume
with features such as average star ratings for product reviews, and
limited statistics on the number of times a review was shared or
viewed.
But to get a basic understanding of how 10,000 people felt about a
product one would have to read through each individual review, and
manually calculate the sentiment or feeling of the writer. Product
reviews are published in their thousands every day, and it would be
a tough task for a group of individuals to continuously gather, read,
and analyze these reviews.
sophisticated
online listening
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Social listening takes the guesswork out of online reviews, and
provides businesses with an accurate understanding of how
consumers interact with, and ultimately perceive the product.
DataRank has developed a highly intuitive matching language called
Fizzle (Fast Scalable Searching Language), which more easily allows
the user to search for phrases about buying, shopping, and going-
to the literal word Target, while not matching the verbs “targeted”
and “targeting”. Fizzle also automatically matches words with their
plural form, removing the often limiting restrictions of less advanced
Natural Language Processing methods.
15% of companies who failed to achieve
profit objectives said that the cause
was almost always inadequate product
differentiation from the competition.
Sopheon, 2011

4. 3
Once data has been collected and filtered into a topic, brands
can instantly use the DataRank Insights tools to discover what
thousands of people are saying about their products, their
competitors products, their brand and a multitude of other
items for analysis. (You can even find out how people talk about
your product in relation to the retailer they purchased it from.)
In a hypothetical situation, a brand decides to release 2 limited
edition potato chip flavors, and consumers respond with an
influx of online reviews that include a 1-5 star rating for each
product. One flavor is more highly rated than the other with 4.5
star average rating, whilst the other flavor only gets an average
2 star rating. The business knows that one flavor was more
successful than the other based on reviews and sale numbers,
but why was it preferred? A quick scroll through reviews might
reveal some basic insights, but hundreds of reviews would be
required to reach an informed, data-driven consensus.
With a social intelligence tool to gather and analyze the
comments, brands can quickly discover what appealed to the
consumer and what did not for both products. Not only can
these insights be gathered in a matter of hours, they can also
result in furthering product development.
Sentiment analysis is a big part of social listening because it
gives businesses a quick deep dive into the general feeling
consumers have for a product or brand.
At DataRank we use a combination of both machine learning
based sentiment analysis and manual, human-rated sentiment.
This allows us to rate large data sets of thousands of comments,
while also controlling the quality of the sentiment analysis
process.
Nuances in language such as the use of irony, satire, and sarcasm
are often difficult to detect in machine-based conversation
rating, which is why we employ human analysis of context to
check the sentiment behind the comment.
Comments are given one of four ratings: positive, negative,
get to know how
people feel about
your brand
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an example
“Social media listening tools make
it easy to track brand references and
mentions, and these functions can still
be handled ably by a small, dedicated
team.”
Ryan Holmes, 2013

5. neutral or no rating at all. Sentiment can be seen in the comment
level, and on a heat map showing positive, or negative sentiment by
states and by country. A donut graph depicts the average sentiment
for positive, negative and neutral ratings. (See Fig. 2) It is important
to have alternative views for sentiment so that businesses can narrow
into different points of interest.
If, for example, a business was to determine that negative sentiment
for their product was stemming from a particular location, they can
narrow into geo tagged data gathered from this area to determine the
cause.
DATARANK CASE STUDY
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A baby brand trusted by millions of moms in the United
States was struggling to gain incremental distribution at
Walmart stores in California.
Using DataRank Insights the company was able to see
conversation about their brand and competitors from
Californian parents.
Analyzing thousands of online product reviews, and
social media posts, they found that their product was
actually positively received in California.
They also saw that there was negative discussion around
Walmart for not carrying the product. Some people who
wanted the product also mentioned making special trips
to other retailers just to pick up the product.
During the eight week period following their analysis, the
company shared the information with Walmart. To the
delight of the company and millions of moms, Walmart
decided the data was compelling enough to immediately
make room for the product on shelves in California. The
company increased their distribution by 200 stores.
“Walmart decided the data was
compelling enough to immediately
make room for the product on shelves
in California. The company increased
their distribution by 200 stores.”
DataRank, 2014

6. 5 Before the advent of online reviews businesses were dependant
on traditional methods of product testing and analysis. Focus
groups, interviews, surveys and sales data are still being
used today to understand consumer needs. However, data
gathered through social listening is driving new methods of
product development, and also validating ideas formulated via
traditional methods of data aquisition.
Insights uncovered during a focus group session, for example,
can be tested against online reviews gathered from eCommerce
sites to discover whether a product issue is prevalent amongst all
consumers or within a specific consumer demographic.
Social listening gives businesses larger data sampling sizes to test
theories against, so that ideas turn into profitable new products
sooner.
A groundbreaking tool that gives social listening businesses an
advantage over their non listening competitiors is the ability to
gather conversation about other brands.
Competitive analysis can be performed in many formats within
a social listening platform. The DataRank Insights app allows
customers to compare up to 5 topics at a time.
These topics for example could be a brand, and four competitior
brands, that contain sentiment rated comments. The competitive
overview gives customers a quick glance at how their brand is
performing compared to other brands in the industry. Whether
a brand is concerned about sentiment or volume, conversation
can be narrowed into on multiple levels.
Brands can also use the social listening to gather all conversation
about a category of products. A brand interested in knowing the
most popular flavored chips, for example, could get all online
reviews mentioning chip flavors, whether they be their own
brand or a competitiors brand, into one topic.
New insights can be gleaned from reading reviews of competing
www.datarank.com ©DataRank / Turn Online Reviews Into Data Driven Business Decisions
innovate product
development with
data intelligence
stay on top of
the competition
“Things change in an instant and
brands have to be ready to respond
immediately. Datarank allows you to do
that.”
C-Level Marketing Executive, 2013

7. products , and reviews that mention multiple brands. Features
that people prefer from one brand, might not be available from
other brands. These kinds of insights are available in conversation
gathered from online reviews.
Collecting thousands of comments can lead to a discovery of
products from two brands being paired together to create a new
kind of product.
For example, in 2009 Mattel created an official Barbie® 50th
Anniversary car – the Fiat 500. The two brands mutually benefited
from the creation the Barbie car because it appealed to a shared
female demographic.
In terms of marketing reach co-branding appears to have a strong
effect on consumers who already have an opinion about the
brands in question. Two popular brands with already popular
products coming together to make a new product will generate
social media attention to rival that of the two brands singularly
advertising their own products.
Consumers share their innovative product usage ideas with others
on social media sites like Pinterest, but they also mention product
versatility in their online reviews.
Products are sometimes used by consumers for reasons unrelated
to their original purpose. Off-label uses of products give brands
an opportunity to market and sell their product in new ways. It
also opens new possibilities for product development.
Online reviews can reveal the alternate use case for a product, and
also be used to analyze the popularity of using a product for this
new purpose.
Meta data can determine the demographics that are driving this
new product innovation, and how the brand could go one step
further to create a product that appeals to their customers.
6
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identify
co-branding
opportunities
capitalize on
alternate consumer
product usage
“It took us three years to build the NeXT
computer. If we’d given customers what
they said they wanted, we’d have built a
computer they’d have been happy with a
year after we spoke to them.”
Steve Jobs, 1989

8. 7 Rather than reading each unique review on eCommerce sites
and social media, a business can use their social listening
platform to analyze feedback from customers as a whole.
• Identify issues that customers have with your brand, or
product, quickly, and efficiently.
• Create a plan for addressing and solving their issues..
• Use the information you have gathered with social listening
to design a marketing plan that targets the now resolved
issues.
i.e.: A brand discovers that people are collectively disatisfied
with the lack of spice in a product. A new extra spicy product is
released as a result of the feedback. The marketing around this
new product centers on its extra spiciness.
Responding to customers whether it be in an emergency, or the
result of negative feedback, shows that a business cares about
the feedback they get, and is interested in improving on their
product or service.
DataRank alerts gives businesses the peace of mind that our
platform is listening to brand conversation 24 hours a day, and 7
days a week.
Alerts use a spike detection algorithm to determine significant
increases in volume, and reach.
New alerts appear on the DataRank Insights Dashboard, and
trigger an email alert to any user subscribed to the relevant
www.datarank.com ©DataRank / Turn Online Reviews Into Data Driven Business Decisions
respond to
consumer feedback
24/7 monitoring
with alerts
“99% of people expect a response when
mentioning a brand on social media.”
- Axonn, 2014

9. topic. A log of alerts is also kept in the Alerts tab on the
dashboard.
During a brand crisis alerts give businesses more time to
establish a crisis management plan of action for responding if
the alert is for a negative event. It can also be used to measure
the success of a marketing campaign based on volume of reviews
being published in a specific time period.
Online reviews are driven by a consumer’s desire to share their
experience with a product or service. Unlike a focus group,
social listening does not solicit the opinion of a consumer,
it only collects information freely published in online
conversation.
Online reviews offer businesses endless opportunities for
individual brand growth and competitive benchmarking.
DataRank’s sophisticated matching language methodology
delivers researchers and marketers with the tools to make data-
backed decisions that directly impact marketing efficiency, profit
margins, and consumer sentiment.
Our dedicated team is constantly innovating its processes and
implementing new features requested by its customers to deliver
the best insights in the social listening industry.
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10. thank you
To see how DataRank can help give your business a competitive edge
visit our website and book a live demo with our team.
www.datarank.com/demo
social intelligence
about datarank
DataRank is a leading social listening platform bringing the world’s
online conversation to brands both big and small. Marketers and
researchers are provided with industry leading analytical tools
designed to uncover profitable business insights.
contact
To find out more, please contact:
Candice Evans Gray
candice@datarank.com
Ryan Frazier
ryan@datarank.com
Josephine Hardy
josie@datarank.com
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