Tools help brands determine sentiment and niche markets

Have you ever looked at your product list and wondered which product was about to shoot into the stratosphere? Have you ever wondered what the public really thinks about your product? If you have, you aren't alone. Most brands and marketers would love this kind of information. To some extent, the information can be had, brands simply need to know where to look. Enter The Internet Time Machine and NowRelevant solutions.

by Kristina Knight

No, we aren't going sci-fi on you and no, we're not crazy. The Internet Time Machine is a platform which helps brands determine which products or services are part of expanding or about-to-expand niches. The company monitors the supply and demand of products, monitoring more than 40 million nouns, pronouns and key phrases in use around the globe. From that information, they determine where those niches are forming.

"By studying the supply curves it can predict where the hot niches will be rather than which niches are already popular," said Curt Dalton, NowRelevant CEO. "Niches which are already popular, for example, may not have room for another marketer."

And if you want more than a single niche? That is where NowRelevant, a sister platform to The Internet Time Machine comes in. Rather than finding niches, Now Relevant studies information from 14 or fewer days to give brands a kind of heartbeat in what is going on with their brand, their products or services.

"If a user queries the database for U2's concert tour, for example," said Dalton, "they would get results for what is going on right now. Instead of looking at content or search engine optimized websites and articles, our database looks at what is going on right now. What we search for is a blog post, for example, rather than a specific URL."

For example, if a customer queried the database for information regarding Ford's Taurus sedan, the query returns would not include a referral to Ford's Taurus product page. Instead, the returns would include blog posts and other user generated information to show the public sentiment toward the product.

"Brands have to respond to public sentiment, and this technology will pick up what people are saying about products," said Dalton. "Brands have to continue their customer service renaissance; this will continue the momentum that social media has already created."

The database will soon incorporate Twitter and Facebook feeds, including live streaming from the social networks. The company also has plans to categorize results, giving users even more control over what information is passed to them.

Tags: Curt Dalton, market niches, niche identification, NowRelevant, social marketing, social networks, The Internet Time Machine