When most businesses think about brand monitoring, they focus on tracking direct mentions—instances where their brand name is explicitly stated. While these direct mentions are certainly important, they represent only part of the conversation happening about your products, services, and industry.

Indirect brand mentions—references to your offerings without explicitly naming your brand—often contain some of the most valuable insights about customer perception and can reveal opportunities that might otherwise remain hidden.

What Are Indirect Brand Mentions?

Indirect brand mentions include any references to your products, services, or unique selling propositions without explicitly using your brand name. These can take many forms:

• References to specific product features unique to your brand
• Discussions about problems your products solve
• Comparisons between unnamed products in your category
• Mentions of your marketing campaigns or slogans without naming your brand
• References to your company's values or initiatives
• Discussions about your industry that implicitly involve your products

These indirect mentions are often overlooked in standard brand monitoring approaches, yet they can provide crucial insights that direct mentions might miss.

Why Indirect Mentions Matter

1. They Reveal How Customers Actually Think About Your Products

When customers discuss your products without directly mentioning your brand, they often use language that reflects how they naturally think about and categorize your offerings. This can reveal:

• Which features are most memorable or important to users
• How customers describe your products in their own words
• What problems customers are trying to solve with your products
• Unexpected use cases you hadn't considered

2. They Provide More Authentic Feedback

When customers don't explicitly mention your brand, their comments tend to be more candid and less performative. This can lead to more authentic feedback about:

• Real pain points that customers experience
• Honest comparisons with competitor products
• Unfiltered opinions about pricing and value
• True motivations for purchasing decisions

3. They Uncover Competitive Intelligence

Indirect mentions often occur in the context of comparing different options, providing valuable competitive intelligence:

• How your products are positioned relative to competitors in consumers' minds
• Which features customers use to compare different products
• What factors ultimately drive purchase decisions
• Areas where competitors are perceived to have an advantage

4. They Help Identify Market Opportunities

Indirect mentions often reveal unmet needs and emerging trends that can inform product development:

• Problems that exist in your category that no current solution adequately addresses
• Feature requests that apply to your product category
• Emerging use cases or markets you hadn't considered
• Shifts in customer priorities or values

5. They Expand Your Understanding of Your Total Addressable Market

By tracking indirect mentions, you can identify potential customers who might not currently associate their needs with your brand:

• Adjacent market segments with similar needs
• Users who are looking for solutions but don't know your brand exists
• Geographic or demographic groups you haven't targeted
• New contexts where your products could provide value

How to Effectively Track Indirect Mentions

Tracking indirect mentions requires a more sophisticated approach than simply monitoring your brand name. Here are key strategies to implement:

1. Identify Your Product Category Terms

Start by monitoring general terms that describe your product category:

• Generic product types (e.g., "project management software," "wireless headphones")
• Common problems your products solve (e.g., "prevent blisters," "organize team tasks")
• Industry-specific terminology related to your offerings

2. Track Unique Features and Attributes

Monitor terms associated with distinctive aspects of your products:

• Proprietary technology (even if described generically)
• Unique design elements or materials
• Specific functionalities that set you apart
• Distinctive pricing models or service approaches

3. Monitor Competitor Mentions

Often, discussions about competitors include implicit comparisons to your products:

• Direct competitor brand names
• Comparison-focused phrases (e.g., "better than," "alternative to")
• Industry roundups and "best of" discussions

4. Leverage Advanced Natural Language Processing

Modern AI-powered monitoring tools can help identify contextually relevant mentions:

• Semantic analysis to understand meaning beyond keywords
• Entity recognition to identify when products are being discussed
• Sentiment analysis to gauge emotional context
• Topic clustering to identify relevant conversations

5. Cast a Wide Net Across Platforms

Indirect mentions often occur in places you might not typically monitor:

• Industry forums and communities
• Reddit threads and subreddits related to your industry
• YouTube comments on product reviews (even competitors' products)
• Quora, Stack Exchange, and other Q&A platforms
• Specialized communities related to your industry

Turning Indirect Mention Insights into Action

Once you're tracking indirect mentions, the next step is to translate these insights into strategic action:

1. Refine Your Marketing Messaging

Use the language and priorities revealed in indirect mentions to:

• Align your marketing copy with how customers naturally describe your products
• Emphasize the features and benefits that customers value most
• Address specific pain points that emerge in indirect discussions
• Highlight competitive advantages that customers recognize

2. Identify Product Development Opportunities

Indirect mentions often reveal product improvement opportunities:

• Features that customers wish existed in your category
• Pain points with current solutions that you could address
• New use cases that might require adaptation of your current offerings
• Integration needs with other products or services

3. Expand Your Content Strategy

Create content that addresses the questions and needs revealed in indirect mentions:

• Educational content about problems your products solve
• Comparison guides that help customers evaluate options
• Tutorial content for use cases you've discovered
• SEO strategy targeting the terms people use when describing their needs

4. Engage in Relevant Conversations

When appropriate, join conversations where indirect mentions occur:

• Provide helpful information without being overtly promotional
• Answer questions in forums where people are discussing related problems
• Share expertise that positions your brand as a thought leader
• Connect with potential customers who might not be aware of your solutions

Case Study: How Indirect Mentions Transformed a Product Strategy

To illustrate the power of tracking indirect mentions, consider this real-world example (with brand name changed):

GreenClean, an eco-friendly cleaning products company, had been monitoring direct brand mentions for years. Their products were well-regarded but growth had plateaued. When they implemented indirect mention tracking, they discovered something surprising.

In parenting forums and allergy support groups, people were frequently discussing "non-toxic cleaners that don't trigger asthma" and "cleaning products safe for children with sensitivities"—without mentioning specific brands. While GreenClean had always marketed their products as "environmentally friendly," they rarely emphasized the health benefits for sensitive individuals.

Based on these indirect mentions, GreenClean adjusted their messaging to highlight hypoallergenic properties, created new content addressing specific health concerns, and even developed a new product line specifically for households with allergies and asthma. Within 18 months, their sales increased by 37%, largely from this previously underserved market segment they discovered through indirect mentions.

Challenges in Tracking Indirect Mentions

While valuable, tracking indirect mentions does present some challenges:

• Signal-to-noise ratio: Without careful filtering, you may capture too many irrelevant mentions
• Attribution uncertainty: It can sometimes be difficult to determine if an indirect mention truly relates to your products
• Resource intensity: Comprehensive indirect mention tracking requires more sophisticated tools and analysis
• Context dependency: Understanding the full context of indirect mentions often requires human analysis

Despite these challenges, the insights gained from indirect mentions are often worth the additional effort, particularly for brands looking to deepen their understanding of their market position and customer perceptions.

Conclusion

In today's complex digital landscape, comprehensive brand monitoring must go beyond tracking when your name is explicitly mentioned. Indirect brand mentions provide a treasure trove of authentic insights about how customers perceive your products, what they truly value, and where opportunities for growth exist.

By implementing strategies to capture and analyze these indirect mentions, you can develop a more complete understanding of your market position, refine your messaging to better resonate with customer needs, identify product development opportunities, and ultimately build stronger connections with both current and potential customers.

Remember: sometimes what people say when they're not talking directly about you reveals more than when they are.

Mei Wong

Mei is the Director of Product Strategy at BrandMonitor and specializes in turning monitoring insights into actionable business strategies. With a background in UX research and product development, she helps brands understand the full context of how consumers perceive and interact with their products.