With the likes of Facebook boasting close to 1.6 billion users every month, social media platforms are the barometers of public opinion today – as well as the medium through which new public preerences are formed.
The social conversation may take in what people are saying about your brand and the performance of your competitors, or contain the roots of valuable ideas for improving your products and services.
Social media are potent tools allowing businesses to gain valuable insights into current market conditions, customer preferences, and the performance of brands. This guide will help you understand the possible applications of social media in your market research efforts.
Cost and Scale Benefits
As far back as 2011, a report by Nielson confirmed that around 80% of internet users regularly spent time on social media. The figures haven’t reduced since then. That’s a massive user base – one that gives businesses the opportunity to conduct market research on a sample population much larger and more diverse than would be possible under standard survey conditions.
Typically, social media users aren’t shy about speaking their minds, so the reactions you’ll record will likely be honest ones.
And it’s a cost-effective strategy. Rather than dipping into your marketing budget to provide travelling expenses for staff, or sweeteners for survey respondents, you’ll be investing time to study social media platforms. There are plenty of free tools online for social media analysis, so you’ll save on software, as well.
Look to the Trends
The social conversation is largely about buzzwords and trending topics, so you’ll need to look for these.
The hashtag (#) should be your guide here. Set up searches for terms with hashtags relating to your market sector, products, or brand, and you can receive notifications when your chosen keywords appear in content or conversations by your customers and business competitors. And you can get information as to emerging trends and current topics of interest by searching the latest posts.
Speak the Language
Study the syntax of the online discussion going on about your industry or products, and you’ll discover how people are speaking about your brand – and the issues they consider important in determining its value and appeal. This knowledge can then inform how you speak about your products and services to them in your promotional materials and other content on social media.
Knowing what your customers value and how they like to talk about it will give you the means to address them more directly in the terms they understand, and will improve the effectiveness of your marketing message.
Track Progress in Real Time
Social platforms have an immediacy about them that lets businesses assess customer reactions to new promotional materials, product releases, and other developments in real or near-real time. Market research can be conducted in a very short time-frame, and be targeted to follow specific aspects of an ongoing campaign or marketing strategy. And each element of your plan can be analysed separately to gain focused insights that can be used to improve your strategy as a whole.
Join the Debate
Engagement and interaction are key to the social media experience, so you’ll need to join the conversation yourself. You don’t have to comment or question all the time; there’s much to be gained from observing and listening.
Be part of the community, find out what people are talking about, and you may gain insights into aspects of your marketing effort that you would otherwise have missed.
Enhancing Big Data and Business Intelligence
Unstructured information from social media is very much a part of the Big Data analytics drive for targeted promotions and improving customer relations.
As well as identifying trends and measuring the response to them over time, analysis of social media data can assist in finding niche audiences for specific marketing campaigns, establishing criteria to help improve products and services, and providing intelligence on your competitors and their performance in the market overall.
Some Guidelines
Determine who makes up your target market or audience, then study the social media platforms to find out where and how they spend their time. That’s where you should be.
Use targeted keyword searches and hashtags to home in on the discussion about specific topics, products, and trends.
Study Facebook’s App settings to discover what apps your target customers are typically using. This may provide clues for developing your own marketing materials and content that may be distributed via these channels.
Follow the conversations and commentary about your brand and those of your competitors. You should even follow your competitors as a way of keeping an eye on their activities.
Invite feedback. If you post an ad or a set of images relating to a proposed new product, use this as an opportunity to ask for opinions and comments from your customers. This promotes engagement, and can add to your pool of ideas.
Keep plugging. The social media are here to stay, and marketing is an ongoing process. You’ll have to keep studying the market and putting fresh material out there.
Source: MarkITWrite
